Historic Sites of Manitoba

This is an interactive map of Manitoba’s historic sites. Use the mouse to move the view to a particular part of Manitoba, and the zoom slider in the upper, left corner to move in and out. Then click on a particular marker to open a new browser window with a description of that historic site.

Markers: (Click for index)		Featured site		Building		Cemetery		Other site
		Museum / Archives		Monument		Location

THIS MAP IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. Please send comments on it to the MHS Webmaster at webmaster@mhs.mb.ca.

NOTES:

16 March 2013: Work on a database back end for the map has been delayed due to unforeseen technical problems, but we anticipate it will be done by spring. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, plans are being made for field work this summer to locate additional sites in the southern and southeastern parts of the province. As always, suggestions of new sites, and corrections to existing ones, can be submitted using a form here.

8 December 2012: The map has just passed the 4,000 mark for the number of sites on it. Huzzah! Some additions include a list of interesting rural buildings published in the early 1980s by Manitoba Co-operator, as well as sites found as a result of travels through western Manitoba earlier this year. Stayed tuned for more additions.

19 September 2012: Just learned that we have received a Manitoba Heritage Grant to build a database-driven back end for the map, which should dramatically increase its speed (especially on mobile devices like cellphones and tablets) and user-configurability. Huzzah! We will be working with Mike at Shared Logic in Brandon to add this great new capability, which should be available late in 2012.

11 September 2012: The search goes on. As a result of continued field work in western Manitoba, the total site count now stands at 3,927. We also continue to improve the database by obtaining more accurate coordinates for some sites and removing the odd duplicate entry. Suggestions of new sites, and corrections to existing ones, are always welcome and should be submitted using a submission form here.

21 July 2012: The total number of sites on the map has now surpassed 3,600 as a result of field work in western Manitoba over the past few weeks.

24 June 2012: The search for historic sites has resumed, now in western Manitoba, with the generous support of the Manitoba Heritage Grants Program. Over the past few weeks, I have travelled in the vicinities of Dauphin, Gilbert Plains, Grandview, Roblin, Russell, and Birtle, and obtained the coordinates for over 300 sites. They will be added to the map soon. Some highlights? Wow, where do I start: there are so many? Some especially memorable sites: Birtle Indian Residential School, Millwood Bridge, Asessippi Townsite, Swistun Buddas, Marconi School, Tamarisk United Church, Duck Mountain School, and more. And a special shout-out to the Community Futures Parkland which makes available a historic sites driving tour of the Rural Municipality of Grandview, complete with a guide pamphlet (which I obtained at the Watson Crossley Community Museum in Grandview) and road signs to mark the turns.

18 June 2012: Thanks to Neil Christoffersen, Reeve of the Rural Municipality of North Norfolk, I had a tour of the fascinating concrete-block buildings around the village of Austin. These distinctive structures were built using blocks made for just a few years in the early 20th century by the Thomson family near their farm southwest of Austin. Several buildings survive, including a private residence in Austin, a barn at the Thomson farm site, and the Pitzer House. The concrete blocks used to make other buildings in the general vicinity, such as Matchettville School, were probably also made by the Thomsons.

27 May 2012: Want to view these historic sites on your GPS receiver? Ya, me too! So I worked out a way to do it, at least for Garmin receivers. You will need to download and install the software POI Loader from the Garmin website (Windows and Mac only) then use it to transfer the site database in comma-separated-value (CSV) format into your receiver. Voila! You only get the sites coordinates, and their associated names, not the linked page on the MHS website for each site, at least not yet.

1 January 2012: We ended the year 2011 with a total of ... (drum roll, maestro) ... 3,009 sites. The past year was a productive one, with over 1,000 sites added to the map. We wish to thank the people who helped in making this map one of the most comprehensive inventories of historic sites in Manitoba that has ever existed. A full list of the people who have helped us is given below but we would like to draw special attention to those who were particularly helpful in 2011: Christian Cassidy, Allan Drysdale, Ed Grassick, Rob McInnes, and Peter McLure. Thanks, guys! And we would like to reiterate our thanks to the Manitoba Heritage Grants Program for funds that enabled us to add many sites in southwestern Manitoba. We plan to carry on expansion of the map into other areas of the province, including western Manitoba north of the Trans Canada Highway, in 2012. As always, suggestions of new sites are welcome and can be submitted here.

28 December 2011: We have had remarkably little snowfall this winter and, while travelling today to a meeting in Boissevain, I visited the sites of five historic schools—three whose buildings survive, two marked only by cairns—in the vicinity of Carberry: Edrans Union School, Petrel School, Fairview School, Carberry School, and Prosser School.

26 December 2011: The year is nearly at an end, and we are closing in on 3,000 historic sites -- just 23 to go! If anyone has sites to nominate for addition to the map, now is the time to do it.

25 October 2011: As an experiment, we have created a larger, border-less version of the map. It is not guaranteed to stay here so enjoy it while it lasts.

20 October 2011: Thanks to Peter McLure, another 185 cemeteries, mostly in southeastern Manitoba, have been added to the main map (above). They do not yet appear in site searches or in the cemetery index but this limitation will be removed as the sites are fully integrated into our database.

18 October 2011: After a productive two-day trip to southwestern Manitoba last weekend, where 103 sites were found, the total now stands at 2,665 sites. For most of the recent additions, there is only a point on the map; creation of pages for each of them will take place during the winter.

8 October 2011: We are busy adding historic sites around southwestern Manitoba, with support from a recently received Manitoba Heritage Grant. (Thank you!) Over the coming months, lots of new sites will be added from the area south of Riding Mountain National Park to the US border, and west of Brandon to the Saskatchewn border. As of today, there are now 2,516 sites on the map.

24 April 2011: Acquisition of GPS data for historic sites resumed last week, after a winter hiatus, with a productive visit to the Town of Manitou and the Rural Municipality of Pembina. Sites added to the map now brings the total to 2,034.

24 December 2010: Added hyperlinks to the symbol legend below the map to open indexes related to specific site types, each in a new browser window.

26 November 2010: There are now over 1,900 sites on the map with the contribution of 200 sites by Murray Peterson and Giles Bugailiskis at the City of Winnipeg. Thanks, guys!

23 October 2010: We are switching to Version 3 of Google Maps. This necessitates switching quite a lot of the underlying code for the various map pages. Many maps will continue to be rendered with the Version 2 mapping engine until programming changes have been completed. Pages rendered with Version 3 should work better on mobile devices.

22 October 2010: We finally found the cause of the long-standing problem that prevented maps from displaying correctly in Internet Explorer. Maps should now display in all major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome.

27 September 2010: We are aware that this prototype map performs slowly under some conditions, depending on the web browser you are using to view it. We find that the Google Chrome web browser renders the map noticeably faster than Internet Explorer or Firefox. We will continue tuning the software to improve performance on all browser platforms. In the meantime, you may wish to try Chrome if you are experiencing unacceptably slow performance.

If you know of an historic site omitted from this map, go here.

Other Information

Name changes

Acknowledgements

Development of this map was made possible, in part, with financial support from the Manitoba Heritage Grants Program.

We gratefully acknowledge contributions to this project made by the following people: Wayne Arseny, Trish Aubin, Dorothy Brooking, Doug Brown, Jennifer Brulé, Giles Bugailiskis, Raymond Burns, David Butterfield, Chris Carson, Christian Cassidy, Allan Chambers, Karen Chrest, Shirley Christianson, Glen Cook, Bill Crerar, Ken Cudmore, Reid Dickie, Heather Docking, Kurt Dorward, Allan Drysdale, Logan Dumanske, Richard Dupuis, Emily English, Don Finlay, Alan Calvert Fox, Bill Fraser, Cyrena Friesen, Henri Gamache, Gordon Goldsborough, Ed Grassick, Marcel Gauthier, Nola Geard, Sheila Grover, Derryl Hall, Erin Halliday, Darcy Hammett, Tetyana Haraschuk, David Harkness, Jean Henderson, Brian Hubner, Chris Irwin, Doug Irwin, Ken Jacobs, Ev Janzen, George Johnston, Jacquie Seaman Jones, Lynn Jones, Violet Joss, Amber Lahti, Mike Lauze, John C. Lehr, Harriet Lehrbaum, Ross Madder, Keith Maitland, Peter McLure, Brian R. McGregor, Scott Melvin, Janet Moore, Doug Morrison, Cassandra Morrow, Bette and Walter Mueller, Blair Myskiw, Blaine Myskiw, David Neufeld, Teyana Neufeld, Lynn Nolden, Bobbi Jo Panciera, Jean Paterson, Mary B. Perfect, Murray Peterson, Neil Pryce, Meghan Rasmussen, Jake Rempel, Kelly-Anne Richmond, Tim Schlegel, Ralph and Mildred Schneider, Douglas Scott, Don Sexton, Merlin Shoesmith, Greg Sigurdson, Diane Skogstad, Robert Smith, Pat Sparling, Craig Spencer, Christine Stewart, Millie Stuckert, Carol Sundmark, Glen Suggett, Larry Taylor, Kevin Teneycke, Philip Thordarson, AL Thorleifson, Jeneen Tomko, Henry Trachtenberg, Leslie Tsai, Kevin Tutthill, Barb Unger, Jan Wagemaker, Christopher Walker, Cheryl Wark, Bruce Wiebe, Don Wilkes, Tim Worth, Dale Wrubleski, Judy Young, and Maria Zbigniewicz. We also thank the many kind people who gave us directions to hard-to-find sites in rural Manitoba, told us about sites, and gave us site tours.

Information for this page was collected and prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.

Page revised: 5 May 2013

A collection of historic sites in Manitoba, compiled by the Manitoba Historical Society. Please note that some sites in this collection are situated on private property, for which permission would have to be secured from the owner prior to visiting. Search the collection by word or place name, type of site, or other text: Custom Search Browse indexes relating to: Featured sites | Museums | Buildings | Monuments | Cemeteries | Locations | Unknowns | Miscellaneous Send inquiries to the MHS Webmaster at webmaster@mhs.mb.ca Map of all sites  | Suggest a site  | Questions | Sites wanted  |  Acknowledgements Support the MHS and