Take a Walk Through Caboose #76602

Have you noticed anything different about the caboose outside The Forks Market? Something's changed, and it's super cool. 

It's open! Climb up the stairs on the front of the caboose, push open that old wooden door, and travel back to the 1930s.

This caboose has seen more of Canada than most of us ever will. It was built in the 1930s at the Point St. Charles Shops in Montreal and has put on a lot of miles since. 

Until 1988, when it was retired at the Transcona Shops right here in Winnipeg, the caboose traveled the CN lines from coast to coast housing the conductors and crews of the trains it capped off.

Back in the day, the caboose was where the conductor and crew worked, slept, and likely huddled around the wood fire with a celebratory drink along the way. 

The crew would hang out there from time to time to monitor the brake and air pressure and to log the number and contents of each train car in front of it.

On September 15, 1992, the Canadian National Railways donated Caboose #76602 to The Forks as a nod to all the thousands of train crews that traveled through The Forks years ago.

Trains and railways are an important part of The Forks' history. Before it was the great hang-out spot it is today, The Forks was gravel, rail ties, and a whole lot of trains. The Forks – then called the East Yard – was where the trains would stop to load up and receive cleaning and maintenance. 

Now, we treasure gifts like Caboose #76602 as a reminder of one of the many things this land once was before we called it The Forks.

So please, walk to the back of the caboose, take a seat on the bench to your right, look out the window at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, and try to imagine The Forks bustling with trains, horses, and the people that worked so hard to maintain all of it.

Other posts that might interest you:

• Tunes of the Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries Canada Games Festival: Ontario & Quebec
• Endless Choices With the Flights of The Forks Market
• Why don’t you: go on a family bike ride to the Forks?

Railway Days: History & Technology at the Winnipeg Railway Museum

It’s Railway Days at The Forks again this September when the Winnipeg Railway Museum celebrates our railway heritage, technology and culture on tracks one and two at Via Union Station.

Winnipeg’s importance in western Canada was cemented when the Canadian Pacific Railway built here and the old fur trading post became the new centre for banking, construction and agriculture. Our two major railways moved the lifeblood of commerce through Canada and beyond bringing goods to a growing city and beyond.

The jewel of our collection is the Countess of Dufferin, a little American Standard steam locomotive brought here by barge in 1877 to build track between Thunder Bay and Golden, British Columbia.

A visit with Railway Royalty, the Countess of Dufferin, CPR number 1. She's the first steam locomotive on the Canadian Prairies.

Not only is she important historically, she’s a living example of a truly North American technology. European locomotives of the time were small and delicate, built for short distances and smooth track. The American Standard, by contrast, was built for thousands of miles of rough track. Big boned and robust, tough and rugged, all the working parts placed outside the frame, they provided a stable, reliable engine for long haul and heavy haul.

Over the years, bigger and faster locomotives pulled longer and heavier trains delivering untold millions of passengers and billions of dollars worth of freight to stations and ports all across Canada.

The railways replaced steamers with diesels over 50 years ago but their legacy lives on in popular music. Anyone who’s ever heard Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash or Bring It On Home by legendary bluesman Willie Dixon will hear the unmistakable rhythms of a steam locomotive moving the song along.

Our summer student Jeremy Leathers shows some of our visitors the machinery that the railways use to build and maintain track. The rails must be kept clean and dry so that steel wheeled trains can run well on them. The result is an energy efficient system for long haul and heavy haul.

Come out and visit us. Take an up close and personal look at a technology that really changed the world.

Railway Days takes place September 17^th and 18^th on Tracks One and Two Via Union Station, 123 Main Street. We’re open from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, admission by donation. Hope to see you there.

Other posts that might interest you:

• The WRENCH: Learn How to Maintain Your New Bike
• Oodena Celebration Circle: Observing the Stars
• Prairie Garden: 8000 Years of Growth

Prairie Garden: 8000 Years of Growth

Way back when – we're talking 8000 years! – the Tall Grass Prairie started growing. It grew and grew, and eventually, it covered an area that was one and a half times the size of Manitoba, stretching all the way from Winnipeg to Texas. It was big, and it was beautiful!

But, when settlers arrived less than 200 years ago, they flattened the Tall Grass Prairie to make room for crops. Now, less than 1% of that natural grassland is still around. 

We think that the Tall Grass Prairie is too beautiful to let disappear, so we created a Tall Grass Prairie right in the heart of Winnipeg's downtown – we call it the Prairie Garden.

It's filled with 150 native species of plants that grew wild here long before we ever came to The Forks for an evening walk or brought the family down for a weekend visit.

The Canada Goldenrod is one of our favourites. It is a stunning yellow form of aster, and right now, they're at their peak blooms. They really remind us of sunny days on the prairies.

The Cree name for this beauty is chachamos kakew which means "to make one sneeze." We haven't tested this theory, but we dare you, stop and smell the Canada Goldenrod!

The honey bees that live in the hives that the amazing BeeProject Apiaries put on our caboose love the Narrow Leaved Sunflower. The bees need flowers like this one, so they can buzz from bloom to bloom, pollinating each one. And then, they make honey with it, and oh my, is it delicious!

If you've been to Winnipeg Folk Festival, you've probably seen a show or two at the lively Big Bluestem stage. You guessed it – everyone's favourite party stage is named after this grass that dominates the Tall Grass Prairie. It was also the hundreds of buffalo's favourite snack!

The Tall Grass Prairie was a complete ecosystem that included animals like buffalo, elk, deer, and little bunnies like this one!

This weekend, come take a stroll through the Prairie Garden and experience the tranquility of thousands of years ago, when the greenery and critters ruled the land we love so much today.

Other posts that might interest you:

• Getting Cool for School: Back-to-School Shopping at The Forks

• Oodena Celebration Circle: Observing the Stars

• Picking Something Fresh in the Public Orchard

Oral History Tour: Storytelling Through the Generations

In one of my university history classes, we were lucky enough to have Nellie McClung's grand-daughter, Marcia McClung, as a guest speaker. She told us her grandmother's story through memories and conversations with other family. The details were passed down to her through her parents and then to her.

My class and I learned things about Nellie we would never had learned about her through all the books and movies. We learned the oral history.



Last Wednesday, I went to my first Oral History Tour at The Forks.

We learned the history of the indigenous people through stories that Clarence, an elder, was told by his elders and family – stories that have been passed down through generations.

As we walked from the foots of the St. Boniface Cathedral to the Oodena Celebration Circle, he told us an incredible story about how a single feather gave a culture back the remains of their chief.

He brought us to the Red River and told us the story of how the river got its name.

Clarence described the significance of the dream-catcher by describing the one his mother made for him and hung over him while he slept.

As we all stood in the centre of the Oodena Celebration Circle, half-an-hour past the end of the tour, people continued to ask questions about the indigenous community's past, present, and future.

I learned a story that I would never have learned from history books and documentaries. I learned the Oral History.

Join Clarence and his wife, Barbra, on the next Oral History Tour and learn more about Winnipeg's history than you would from a Google search tomorrow, Wednesday, July 27 at 10:00 am. If you can't make it during the week, there will also be Oral History Tours on August 6th and 7th at 10:00 am.

- Laurie Brand at The Forks

Other posts that might interest you:

• Homegrown Summer: A Visit to The Forks Farmers' Market
• Countdown to the 2017 Games: One Year To Go Celebration
• After Interstellar: Wine Tasting, Great Food & Danceworthy Music

Winnipeg Trolley Company

                   

Interested in learning the history of Winnipeg's downtown and earliest neighbourhoods?  Want to know more about the architectural influences that came into play when Winnipeg's oldest buildings were being built?  Need to brush up on some local, and sometimes scandoulous, political history?  Then the Winnipeg Trolley Company is the tour for you.

The Trolley tours starts The Forks and makes its way over the Provencher Bridge into St. Boniface for the first leg, giving tourists a taste of how Winnipeg's French Quarter came to be.  Tour guide and company owner Ben Gillies informs tourists that St. Boniface was once a city all on its own.  Tourists will learn about St. B's rich cultural, political and educational history.  Did you know that its home to the oldest post-secodary institution in Western Canada?  Neither did I.

Gillies has a great deal of experience working in the tourism industry with a resume that includes working as a tour guide on Parliament Hilll in Ottawa and in Vimy Ridge, France.  His love for history and knowledge of how Winnipeg came to be the city that it is today is impressive.  Ben infuses just the right amount of humour to keep the 90 minute tour fun and upbeat.

Once finished in the Francophone section of the city, the Winnipeg Trolley loops back over to the Excange District for a lesson on some of the city's finest architecture and historical landmarks.  Expect to hear about Winnipeg's connection to New York City, some background of the Upper Fort Garry site and a drive down what was formerly known as Bankers' Row.

The tour also takes a ride down one of the city's most affluent streets, Wellington Crescent, before taking a cruise through Assiniboine Park.  There are some great tidbits about famous Winnipeggers and where they lived before their big breaks on this portion of the tour (think Neil Young and The Guess Who).

The tour runs this Friday, August 30 at 10:30am and Sunday, September 1 at 10:30am and 1:00pm, which will mark the end of the official summer tours.  However, the Winnipeg Trolley Company has been so successful in its inaugural season that they've extended and added tours into September.

Here are the September dates:

Friday September 6th at 10:30am

Sunday September 8th at 1:00pm

Sunday September 15th at 1:00pm

Sunday September 22nd at 1:00pm

Sunday September 28th at 1:00pm

Tours cost $26.25 for adults, students for25.20 and youth for $14.70.  You can buy tickets at Two Rivers at The Forks or order online at winnipegtrolleycompany.ca.

Splash Dash River Tour

It's going to be a beautiful weekend, Winnipeg!  And we deserve it.  Summer almost threatened to leave us as quickly as it came.  Thank goodness it's decided to return and grace our shoulders, cheeks and noses with its bright and sunny presence.

To celebrate the return of summer, I went for a Splash Dash River Tour at The Forks yesterday.  I'm embarassed to admit I had never previously been.  Working at The Forks, I see the boats launch and pass through the Historic Port all day long, but I'm always working and therefore never seem to get my behind onto said boats to take a little cruise myself.  So yesterday, when things slowed up a bit in the afternoon, I decided it was high time I hit the waterways of Winnipeg to see what these Splash Dash Tours are all about.

The tours leave every fifteen minutes from The Forks HIstoric Port and guides start by taking you down the Assiniboine River first.  The guides offer tourists a bit of a local history lesson where you can expect to hear about Duff Roblin's floodway, the Legislative Building's tie to the Masons and Louis Riel's resistance.  The stops along the tour aren't just for history lessons though, they're also an opportunity to get to know fellow tourists.  On my boat there were several out of towners including some folks from Calgary and Victoria.  They were snapping loads of photos and seemed very interested in our Manitoba history. It reminded me of how fun it is to be a tourist in your very own hometown.

Once at the Legislative, the boat does a 180 and heads back down the Assiniboine, passes by The Forks and turns onto the mighty Red River.  Coming off the Assiniboine and onto the Red really gives you a perspective of how much bigger the latter is to the former.  She's a big river and when you think of all the historical events that took place on and around this mighty waterway, you really get a sense of the incredible heritage that is embedded in our city's culture and history.

I highly recommend taking your sweetheart, your kids or your grandma down to The Forks this weekend and treating them to a Splash Dash River Tour.  It's definitely an activity that can be enjoyed by all ages.  If possible, ask to be on Ian's tour.  His relaxed and friendly style made everyone on the boat feel at ease, and his humour made the already interesting history lessons even more enjoyable.  

Tours leave the docks in the Historic Port every fifteen minutes from 10am until sunset and operate until about mid-October (weather permitting).  Cost is $11/adults and $9/seniors and youth.