across all of western Canada from the Red River to Fort Edmonton and electrified most of the continent, was at its height. On the very day that Van Horne arrived to take up residence, the Free Press carried a description of Winnipeg as seen through the eyes of a Dr. Gouinlock of Seaforth, Ontario:
“The bustle and stir can only compare to Wall St., New York. The sidewalks are thronged from morning to night by shrewd anxious looking men, hurrying hither and thither, and intent only on their own business and speculations while the streets are crowded with vehicles of every description.”
The smell of money was in the air. Expensive sea otter coats “for New Year’s calls” were being advertised along with costly oil paintings “from the brush of Canada’s greatest painter, W. L. Jodson.” Stickney’s employees had little trouble raising a thousand dollars among themselves to pay for a handsome silver service as a departing gift for the retiring superintendent. For the past several months, ever since the founding of Brandon, the people of Manitoba had seemed to be going stark, raving mad over real estate. When Van Horne arrived the insanity had reached a kind of crescendo. It would continued unabated until the snows melted and it was snuffed out by the angry floods of spring.
* After the line was shortened, the figure was eighteen hundred miles.
1
The great Winnipeg boom
Van Horne’s first official act, on assuming office, was to place a small advertisement in the Winnipeg newspapers cautioning the public against buying lots at prospective stations along the line until he had officially announced their locations. All but five sites, he pointed out, were still temporary. Future townsites would be chosen by the company and by the company alone, “without regard to any private interest whatever.”
This clear warning to real estate speculators that they could expect no aid or comfort from the CPR fell largely on deaf ears. The little ad was almost lost in an ocean of screaming type, trumpeting unbelievable bargains in lots on townsites many of which were non-existent and in “cities” that could scarcely be found by the most diligent explorer. Such ads had fattened Winnipeg’s three dailies, the Free Press, Times , and Sun , for all of the latter half of 1881; they would continue to dominate the press for most of the first half of 1882. “ MAKE MONEY !” the advertising shrieked. “GET WEALTHY!” “GOLDEN CHANCES! GOLDEN SPECULATIONS!” “MILLIONS IN IT!”
The boom had been launched the previous June with the opening sale of lots in Brandon. By January, the value of those lots had tripled, the town had been sold seven or eight times over, and the price was said to be rising at a rate of one hundred dollars per lot per week. In March, lots on Brandon’s main street were selling at $140 a front foot. In Portage la Prairie the price was $230 a front foot. In Winnipeg, on Main Street the price rose as high as two thousand dollars a front foot for choice locations. This meant that real estate in Winnipeg was more expensive than it was in Chicago. An idea of the inflated values of that spring may be gained from a study of modern real estate prices in the same city. By 1970, real estate at the corner of Portage and Main was again worth two thousand dollars a front foot; but in 1882 the dollar value was worth at least four or five times its 1970 value. In short, the cost of land in Winnipeg was never higher than when the city was in its infancy.
The town was said to have been surveyed into city lots for ten miles – enough real estate to support a population of half a million. In St. Boniface, across the river, the value of land had quadrupled in three months. In three years, farm land in the vicinity had soared from twelve to one hundred dollars an acre. By April, when the boom began to decline, it was estimated that fifteen million acres of land had changed hands. To eastern ears this was little short of
“The bustle and stir can only compare to Wall St., New York. The sidewalks are thronged from morning to night by shrewd anxious looking men, hurrying hither and thither, and intent only on their own business and speculations while the streets are crowded with vehicles of every description.”
The smell of money was in the air. Expensive sea otter coats “for New Year’s calls” were being advertised along with costly oil paintings “from the brush of Canada’s greatest painter, W. L. Jodson.” Stickney’s employees had little trouble raising a thousand dollars among themselves to pay for a handsome silver service as a departing gift for the retiring superintendent. For the past several months, ever since the founding of Brandon, the people of Manitoba had seemed to be going stark, raving mad over real estate. When Van Horne arrived the insanity had reached a kind of crescendo. It would continued unabated until the snows melted and it was snuffed out by the angry floods of spring.
* After the line was shortened, the figure was eighteen hundred miles.
1
The great Winnipeg boom
Van Horne’s first official act, on assuming office, was to place a small advertisement in the Winnipeg newspapers cautioning the public against buying lots at prospective stations along the line until he had officially announced their locations. All but five sites, he pointed out, were still temporary. Future townsites would be chosen by the company and by the company alone, “without regard to any private interest whatever.”
This clear warning to real estate speculators that they could expect no aid or comfort from the CPR fell largely on deaf ears. The little ad was almost lost in an ocean of screaming type, trumpeting unbelievable bargains in lots on townsites many of which were non-existent and in “cities” that could scarcely be found by the most diligent explorer. Such ads had fattened Winnipeg’s three dailies, the Free Press, Times , and Sun , for all of the latter half of 1881; they would continue to dominate the press for most of the first half of 1882. “ MAKE MONEY !” the advertising shrieked. “GET WEALTHY!” “GOLDEN CHANCES! GOLDEN SPECULATIONS!” “MILLIONS IN IT!”
The boom had been launched the previous June with the opening sale of lots in Brandon. By January, the value of those lots had tripled, the town had been sold seven or eight times over, and the price was said to be rising at a rate of one hundred dollars per lot per week. In March, lots on Brandon’s main street were selling at $140 a front foot. In Portage la Prairie the price was $230 a front foot. In Winnipeg, on Main Street the price rose as high as two thousand dollars a front foot for choice locations. This meant that real estate in Winnipeg was more expensive than it was in Chicago. An idea of the inflated values of that spring may be gained from a study of modern real estate prices in the same city. By 1970, real estate at the corner of Portage and Main was again worth two thousand dollars a front foot; but in 1882 the dollar value was worth at least four or five times its 1970 value. In short, the cost of land in Winnipeg was never higher than when the city was in its infancy.
The town was said to have been surveyed into city lots for ten miles – enough real estate to support a population of half a million. In St. Boniface, across the river, the value of land had quadrupled in three months. In three years, farm land in the vicinity had soared from twelve to one hundred dollars an acre. By April, when the boom began to decline, it was estimated that fifteen million acres of land had changed hands. To eastern ears this was little short of
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