by Bruce Cherney (part 3)
The Manitoba Free Press said American Thiel Detective Agency strikebreaker A.G. Cardwell’s brutal acts in the first days of the 1906 streetcar strike was just “one of the many actions on the part...
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by Bruce Cherney (part 2)
Provincial Police Magistrate Alexander McMicken admitted to the Free Press that he had sworn-in the “special constables” at the request of the Winnipeg Electric Railway Company and not civic auth...
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by Bruce Cherney
The mob’s anger had been approaching the boiling point for hours and then went beyond when they saw the source of their malice coming down the streetcar rails. Shortly after 8 o’clock in the evening on Ma...
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by Bruce Cherney (part 2 of 2)
A July 28, 1884, site diagram in the Winnipeg Daily Sun shows the 2-1/2-storey brick Canadian Pacific Railway passenger station and office building opened a year earlier as a long and narrow r...
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by Bruce Cherney (part 1)
After the first Canadian Pacific Railway train crossed the newly-built Louise Bridge into Winnipeg on July 26, 1881, its destination was an “unassuming” 1-1/2-storey wood-frame depot at the corne...
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by Bruce Cherney (part 3 of 3)
Captain William “Fighting Bill” Code of the North Fire Hall, corner of Higgins Avenue and Maple Street, said the first alarm for the Manitoba Hotel fire was heard at the Central Fire Hall at...
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by Bruce Cherney (part 2)
By two o’clock in the morning of February 8, 1899, fire had consumed the Manitoba Hotel from its north to south corners as flames leapt tens of metres into the air.
According to the testimon...
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by Bruce Cherney (part 1)
W.E. Sampson told a fire commission inquiry that the first indication he had that something was terribly wrong occurred when firemen burst into his fourth-floor room of the Manitoba Hotel, abruptly awake...
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by Bruce Cherney (part 2 of 2)
On December 26, 1926, hundreds of Winnipeggers filed past the four caskets of firemen Donald Melville, Robert Stewart, Robert S. Shearer and Arthur Smith, who lost their lives during the disastrous Winn...
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by Bruce Cherney (part 1)
Fire safety concerns expressed about the Winnipeg Theatre in the late 1890s and early 1900s were an early indication of a looming tragedy. Two decades later, the warnings were realized when the theatre erupt...
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