Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 4

Industrial and Agricultural Activities at Lower Fort Garry

by George Ingram

Epilogue

The 1870s were largely years of decline for Lower Fort Garry. As the settlement, now a new province of the Dominion of Canada, developed to maturity, many of the services of the lower fort were displaced. Improvements in transportation made the large farm and oxen unnecessary. Gradually the various functions of the fort were stripped away.

At first, however, the lower fort was able to share in the new era with the turn of the Company to steamboats. Its position on the lower Red River made it an ideal location for the depot for the Lake Winnipeg steamboats. Goods for the northern posts were brought over the southern route and stored at the lower fort until they could be transferred to the Colvile for conveyance across the lake. The old Chief Commissioner stripped of her machinery sat at the mouth of the creek serving as a floating warehouse.

Then came the railway. When the tracks of the Canadian Pacific reached Selkirk, the Hudson's Bay Company had a spur line constructed to Cook's Creek where a more effective linkup could be made with the steamboats. The new depot, Colvile Landing, took over the supply of the Northern Department in 1880. To add insult to injury, the large warehouse inside the lower fort and the buildings by the creek were taken away to form the new depot. Even the old Chief Commissioner was dragged down the river and hauled out of the water to serve out the remainder of its days as a warehouse at Colvile Landing.

The lower fort was left with its sales shop and little else. There was even talk of transferring the fort to the Land Department for sale. Instead parts were rented to the Manitoba government for temporary use as an asylum. One by one the decaying industrial and agricultural buildings were sold off for their materials. When the Canadian Pacific Railway gave notice in 1887 that it intended to close its spur line to Colvile Landing, there was some thought of returning the depot to Lower Fort Garry for now the Selkirk-Winnipeg line passed only 200 feet west of the fort. Instead West Selkirk got the nod. The proximity of the railway did give the lower fort a slight resurgence when it turned to the production of cordwood for the Fort Garry mills and other steam plants in Winnipeg, but this proved to be a short-lived and rather costly venture. Also with the growing responsibilities of the Winnipeg sales shop, the supervision of the posts of the Lake Winnipeg district — the Company shops at Fort Alexander, the Indian Settlement, Dog Head, Berens River, Fisher River and Little Grand Rapid — were transferred to the clerk in charge of the lower fort. But the fur trade at these posts was declining and the district was eventually discontinued.

By the end of the century even the sales shop faced hostile competition from the shops in Selkirk and the polished department stores in the growing city of Winnipeg. In 1911, the shop was finally closed and the fort eventually leased to the Motor Country Club. Only a few decrepit buildings and the odd piece of foundation survived to indicate the past industrial and agricultural activities of the lower fort.

12 By the turn of the century, only the cottage with its detached kitchen and the barn at the extreme right remained of the industrial buildings at the creek south of the fort. (National Historic Sites Services.)