Link to:
Library Locations | Photos & Coordinates | Sources
The first comprehensive set of air photos of Manitoba was taken in 1923, shortly after the First World War. Many trained pilots were looking for work so the federal government hired them to begin aerial surveying from a base at Victoria Beach. These photos were more than novelties — they allowed cartographers to map areas for which there had never been mapped before. Two cartographers even developed a method to turn oblique photos into vertical maps.
The next major advance, with respect to air photos in Manitoba, came in 1930. That was the year Manitoba gained control over its natural resources from the federal government. One of its first actions was to establish a Surveys Branch within its Department of Mines and Natural Resources. It began surveying the province’s boundaries with adjoining provinces and territories. Aerial photos were essential to this work.
After the Second World War, another cohort of trained pilots returned home and, in 1948 and 1949, many more aerial photos were taken. The focus was northern Manitoba — mapping for mining and forestry, but also southern Manitoba for agriculture, and the routing of hydro lines, telephone lines, and highways. In 1948, the province formally established the Manitoba Air Photo Library to collect and preserve its growing archive, which already numbered about 65,000 iamges. Those late 1940s photos are useful today because they preserve information that can be found nowhere else.
A 1986 government report put the total number of photos in the library at 700,000, whereas a 1980 report estimated more than one million. Today, satellite imagery has largely replaced aerial photos as a source of landscape-level information.
In late 2025, the Manitoba government announced that the facility from which aerial photos were made available to the public was being closed. Access to this large, important collection is presently uncertain.
Period
Location
1948-1950
?
1950-?
University of Manitoba (Broadway Campus)
c1961
401 York Avenue, Winnipeg [Norquay Building]
?-?
1007 Century Street, Winnipeg
?-2025
14 Fultz Boulevard, Winnipeg
A view of photos in the Manitoba Air Photo Library (December 2015)
Source: Gordon GoldsboroughSite Coordinates (lat/long): N49.81260, W97.19057
denoted by symbol on the map above
See also:
“When out hunting take along map and compass,” Steinbach Carillon, 6 October 1961, page 13.
“Resources news,” Baldur Gazette, 16 December 1986, page 15.
Surveys and Mapping Branch: 1930-1990 by Province of Manitoba, Department of Natural Resources, July 1990.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 27 June 2026
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