Photo of Fred Ferguson and a boy beside a 1920s Monocoupe aircraft, by L.B. Foote – Submitted by Bob Lower, retired filmmaker and author
“The boy in this photo could be me (though I was not born for twenty more years), thrilled by aviation and this airplane. This photo epitomizes prairie optimism for me, the optimism of the post WWI pre-depression decade, the promise of the new age of personal aviation, and the sheer exhilaration of being 10 years old with the world at your feet. This photo hung in my house for decades and still brings a smile every time I look at it.”
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Fred Ferguson and a young boy pose by a 1920s Monocoupe aircraft in a grass field.
Archives of Manitoba, L.B. Foote fonds, Foote 896. Trans Canada Motor Company Fred Ferguson, 25 September 1928, P7396/4.
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Winnipeg Blue Bombers Team Photo, 1962 – Submitted by the Minister of Sport, Culture and Heritage, Honourable Andrew Smith
“I have chosen a team photo from the 1962 Winnipeg Blue Bombers. That year they squared off against the Hamilton Ti-Cats for the 50th Grey Cup and won. They actually referred to that Grey Cup game as the ‘Fog Bowl’ because the fog was so bad that year that they couldn’t complete the game and they had to play the following day. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers beat them 28-27! Quite an amazing feat then and particularly appropriate since the Bombers are now back-to-back Grey Cup champions.”
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Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg Football Club fonds, Photo 620 “1962 Winnipeg Blue Bombers – Grey Cup Champions”, P8174/12.
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Letters regarding Lt. Andrew Bulger, Governor of Assiniboia and influential British soldier – Submitted by Jacob Richard, MPhil Candidate at the University of Cambridge
“In my work on the War of 1812, figures as influential as Lt. Andrew Bulger are not hard to come by. National heroes, symbols, and indeed the national identities of both the USA and Canada were shaped by the conflict. It was a war of great significance but ultimately minimal consequence to the colonial powers. The Treaty of Ghent returned things back to ‘normal’ for these two nations but dealt an undeniably devastating blow to Indigenous sovereignty across North America. I chose these letters because they demonstrate how critical one person can be in these major historical conflicts, both good and bad.
“These letters and the lauding that Lt. Bulger receives within them demonstrate how particularly important his role in ratifying the treaty and overseeing colonial affairs was. Not only was this man critical in the defense of Canada during the conflict, but he was also an important intermediary between England and her Indigenous allies. He acted as both a peace negotiator and a representative for the English state, proving valuable in accruing Indigenous support for the English cause and the aforementioned treaty of Ghent.
“His legacy and the admiration he gained from his peers is prevalent in these letters; whole communities expressed their thanks when he resigned in his role as Governor of Assiniboia in 1823. What is missing from these letters, though, is very telling. There are no prominent Indigenous supports of Bulger present in these letters. I would imagine his role in ratifying the Treaty of Ghent, which ended any potential for an Indigenous barrier state, left many within those communities feeling betrayed. Prominent Indigenous figures like John Norton (Teyoninhokarawen) certainly felt this way, and Lt. Bulger’s work to remove any thoughts “detrimental to our (England’s) interest” amongst the crown’s Indigenous allies make him complicit in the treaty’s dire consequences. These letters speak of colonial legacy but allow for us to reflect on the injustice towards Indigenous peoples that Canada is yet to fully account for.”
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Interview with Gilbert Abraham, a residential school survivor, and Oblates of Mary Immaculate films – Submitted by Gilbert Comeault, former archivist, Archives of Manitoba
This submission deals with topics that may cause trauma invoked by memories of past abuse. A National Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former Residential School students. Please call the Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419 if you or someone you know is triggered while reading the content on this blog.
“When I was starting a master's program at the University of Manitoba in the late 1960s and early 1970s, one of the few times I remember bringing up the subject of First Nations was in the context of the history of New France. After 1760: total silence, as if they had ceased to exist. They slipped into anonymity, even faded into oblivion. Even the master's-level specialization courses in Manitoba and Western Canada did not touch on this past, let alone the present.
“It was not until 1985 before this topic began to concern me. It was due to an oral history program undertaken by the Archives of Manitoba which included workshops. To practice what I preached, I did a few interviews, one of which survived.
“The subject of residential schools was not new to some of us. But for me, it was new. In 1985 I began an interview with Gilbert Abraham, of the Saulteaux tribe of the Objibwe Nation, who told me about his childhood experiences in a boarding school where he had been sexually assaulted in all possible ways, where he was being washed, mouth with soap if he spoke his native language, where he was called a pagan and where he had to work seven days a week gardening in the summer and doing various chores in the winter. The trauma of his childhood began when he was separated from his family and loved ones.
Archives of Manitoba, Interview with Gilbert Abraham, 1985, C279.
“I also remember Father Adrien Darveau, o.m.i., from the parish of Saint-Pierre du Lac Caribou in Lac Brochet, who contacted me about a 16mm film of which he wanted to obtain a video copy. When he came to the archives to pick up the VHS copy, we watched the film together. Father Darveau explained to me that the native children were boarding a seaplane that took them to a native residential school about 400 miles from their home. Suffering from tuberculosis, dying of malnutrition or abandonment, some of these children would not come back. For the young people who returned home, sometimes they could only speak English, while the parents spoke only Cree. In this film, parents could be seen standing on the shore of Lac Brochet, watching their children board a seaplane leaving their childhood behind.”
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Archives of Manitoba, Oblates of Mary Immaculate collection, screenshots from St. Peter's Mission, Reindeer Lake (St. Pierre du Lac Caribou) film, 1948, V82.
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Two photographs of the wreck of the HBC ship Cam Owen taken in 1889 by James McDougall, HBC post inspector – Submitted by Jean-Luc Pilon, Former curator of Central Archaeology, Canadian Museum of History
“In the early 1980s, I carried out archaeological research along the Severn River in northwestern-most Ontario. At that time, I was told about shipwrecks lying to the northwest of Fort Severn, in the direction of the Manitoba border. My interest then was focused on the region’s Indigenous ancient history and so I never visited those wrecks. However, in 2017 I had the opportunity of returning to Fort Severn. This time, the omnipresence of ATVs allowed us to travel to a half dozen wreck sites along the coast. Three of these appeared to consist of sections of the same wooden-hulled sailing ship. These three sites were sprinkled along a two-kilometer stretch of the same raised beach, which is today over one kilometer from the shore of Hudson Bay. Preliminary observations suggested it dated to the second half of the 19th century.
“Anthony Dalton published a compilation of HBC shipwrecks in 2014, The Fur-Trade Fleet: Shipwrecks of the Hudson’s Bay Company. His work helped me narrow my search for the identity of the ship and the best candidate to emerge was the Cam Owen. This twin-masted brigantine was one of the rare Canadian-built ships in the HBC fleet, built in Prince Edward Island in 1883. It met its end a mere three years later during a violent storm near Cape Churchill, Manitoba, and according to Dalton’s research, ‘the ice carried her away to a private burial at sea’. That, it would seem, was that. However, a search through the online HBC Archives produced an incredible find: two photographs (HBCA 1987/13/043 and HBCA 1987/13/044) identified as the wreck of the Cam Owen taken by James McDougall in 1889 while travelling from York Factory to Fort Severn. The clearly visible, bent iron chainplates (to which the masts are tied off) in McDougall’s photographs are identical to those of the wrecks I visited. Most importantly, McDougall noted that the wreck was near ‘Sandy Head, Hudsons Bay’.
“In the fall of 2017, I spent an afternoon with the late John Macfie, a former Ontario Lands and Forest employee, who photographed two of the ship hulls in 1955 while banding migratory waterfowl. At one point he showed me a picture of a low hill that he told me was called Oosteguanako or Oostegwan-aski meaning ‘Sand Head’. In Macfie’s opinion this name reflected the shape of the sand hill or dune. This elevated land feature, so rare in the very, very flat lowlands adjacent to Hudson Bay, was located just a few miles to the northwest of the ship hull wrecks and the place name seems closely related to the one McDougall noted in his 1889 photograph catalogue entry. Chris Koostachin of Fort Severn, who brought me to see the wrecks in 2017, informed me that there is a hill near East Pen Island is called Ooshdikwanahkahk, meaning ‘beach with skulls’ and it is believed to attest to a battle which once took place near East Pen Island.
“Had McDougall never taken those two photographs and had he not noted the local place name, the identity of the ship would never have been firmly determined. While the vessel did not serve the HBC for very long, it nonetheless was part of the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the fur trade, and Canadian shipbuilding. Located as it is far from the edge of Hudson Bay, it is also a witness to the dynamic and changing landscape of the Hudson Bay Lowlands which continue to this day to rebound from the incredible weight of the glaciers of the last ice age which ended more than 10,000 years ago but whose effects are still felt in these remote and distant lands.”
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![Deck view of the wreck [of Cam Owen]](../images/2021/2021-08-27_full_02.jpg)
