A Good Solid Comfortable Establishment: An Illustrated History of Lower Fort Garry

David E. Smith is a political science professor at the University of
Saskatchewan and the author of Building a Province: A History of
Saskatchewan in Documents.

According to the author, Lower Fort Garry (LFG) is “the only stone
fort dating from the fur trade period in North America which has
survived intact and in a good state of preservation.” One reason is
that, like a lot of defence installations in Canada, LFG never saw any
fighting. From coast to coast, citadels and forts dot the landscape,
their presence betrayed by manicured lawns and undergraduate summer
employees garbed in 19th-century costume.

LFG has a more varied history than most, however, having served not
only as a Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) fort but also as a provincial
jail, an asylum, a summer residence for the HBC Commissioner, and a
motor country club. As a National Historic Park, LFG is now a monument
to the fur trade.

MacDonald discusses each of these transitions. Thus, more than a
Baedeker, this history seeks to place LFG in the context of the country
that surrounded it, the people (Natives, traders, and soldiers) who
inhabited or frequented it, and the economy that sustained or profited
from it. This may be the only approach for a fort where no shot was ever
fired in anger.