Winnipeg 1912

Paul G. Thomas is the Duff Roblin Professor of Government at the
University of Manitoba, the author of Parliamentary Reform Through
Political Parties, and the co-author of Canadian Public Administration:
Problematical Perspectives.

This wonderful book focuses on the city of Winnipeg at the peak of its
development, when it was the third largest city in the country. The
author describes his work not as an academic history, but rather as a
travel guide to a city long lost. Beautifully written and richly
illustrated with black-and-white photographs of the period, the book
will appeal to non-specialist readers, not only in Winnipeg but to
others interested in Canadian regional and social history.

Like a diary of a year in the life of a booming city, Winnipeg 1912
covers with great insight and entertainment such topics as social
classes and their social lives, railways and immigration, the grain
trade, labour relations, real estate and retail (including the
commercial anchor of the downtown, the Eaton’s store), Aboriginals,
and both provincial and municipal politics. The city’s population was
young, energetic, and ambitious. Many of the historical landmarks that
dot the city’s landscape today were constructed or conceived of during
this heyday year. 1912 Winnipeg was “the Chicago of the North,” a
highly commercial city that extended its influence over the entire
Prairie region. The boom was not to last. Beginning in 1913 with the
slowdown in railroad construction, the commencement of World War I in
1914, and the slowdown in immigration, the factors that had supported
the 40-year boom leading to 1912 disappeared. There was never again as
fortuitous a combination of circumstances. Winnipeg continued to grow
slowly, but its commercial and residential downtown deteriorated and it
never regained the optimism and energy of the watershed year of 1912.
Life-long Winnipeggers (like this reviewer) will read this superb book
with mixed feelings of pride in our city’s rich past and
disappointment that its economic and cultural influence will never
likely come close to what it possessed in 1912.