The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885 by Pierre Berton Page A
Authors: Pierre Berton
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miraculous. In all of southwestern Ontario,which had a population seventeen times that of Manitoba, there were only eleven million acres of land.
Winnipeg, with a population of some sixteen thousand, supported no fewer than three hundred real estate dealers. Its population had doubled in a year, its assessment had tripled. Buildings were popping up like toadstools; the air was thick with sawdust; along Main Street, half-finished buildings echoed to the sound of mallet and chisel. Accommodation was at such a premium that the smallest building – a storey-and-a-half structure, thirty feet by thirty – could rent for five thousand dollars a year before it was completed. A new courthouse, a new government house, and a new legislative building were all being erected. In 1881, more than two millions had been poured into building improvements. In 1882, the figure was expected to exceed five millions.
“Winnipeg … looks as if it had been laid out by a man in delirium tremens,” the Globe’s reporter on the scene told his Ontario readers. “The result is that the business portion of the city must be along the line of the old Indian trail now known as Main Street … the frontage on Main
Street will be as valuable as that of King Street.… Winnipeg will have half the population of Toronto in five years.…”
The news from Winnipeg caught the imagination of the continent. On March 7, the New York Graphic devoted two full pages to “the wondrous city of northwestern Canada.” “Think of $1000 a front foot!” exclaimed the Fargo Argus . “If you haven’t a lot in Manitoba you had better buy one at once,” cried the London, Ont., Herald . “If you find yourself among a group of four or five citizens you will discover that you are quite ‘out of form’ unless you have something to relate about your speculation.” The Thunder Bay Sentinel editorialized that in Winnipeg there was “more money to the square inch than in any other city on the continent double or quadruple the size.”
The Toronto papers were crammed with advertisements from Winnipeg real estate men who had come east offering lots. “The woods are full of them,” the World reported. “You can’t turn a corner without seeing a Manitoba man with a tin case full of maps, St. James, St. John’s, St. Boniface and the everlasting Kildonan, anything from the heart of Winnipeg to its outer skin. There were five land brokers at the Queen’s and three at the Rossin yesterday.” The Globe , noting that auction rooms dealing exclusively in Manitoba lots were springing up in towns and cities all over Ontario, warned its readers of “the necessity of receiving with very heavy discount the rose-coloured descriptions and prognostications of interested agents.”
The eastern press covered the Manitoba boom as if it were a war, sending correspondents into the front lines. Some stayed to speculate themselves. “I have yet to hear of any one who has not made money,” the reporter for the St. Catharines Journal enthused to readers at the end of January. “The ‘race for wealth is a neck and neck one.’ Every one dips in. Some of the more godly wrestle with the Lord with the left hand and gamble in land with the other. I suppose they don’t let the left know what the right hand doeth.”
“Unsophisticated people from Ontario, when they land in Winnipeg go through several stages,” another correspondent reported. “First they deem you all, well, crazy. You all have lots and big figures on the brain. Presently they come a little to themselves.… They gradually begin to think there is something in it. You are not all quite demented.… [Then] they go the whole hog, and talk ‘lots’ at breakfast, dinner and supper, and all intervening times during weekdays, and on Sunday, doubtless meditate on what their ‘lot’ will be in the next world. The boom strikes them sooner or later.”
Stories of fortunes made and lost excited the nation. There was, for
Winnipeg, with a population of some sixteen thousand, supported no fewer than three hundred real estate dealers. Its population had doubled in a year, its assessment had tripled. Buildings were popping up like toadstools; the air was thick with sawdust; along Main Street, half-finished buildings echoed to the sound of mallet and chisel. Accommodation was at such a premium that the smallest building – a storey-and-a-half structure, thirty feet by thirty – could rent for five thousand dollars a year before it was completed. A new courthouse, a new government house, and a new legislative building were all being erected. In 1881, more than two millions had been poured into building improvements. In 1882, the figure was expected to exceed five millions.
“Winnipeg … looks as if it had been laid out by a man in delirium tremens,” the Globe’s reporter on the scene told his Ontario readers. “The result is that the business portion of the city must be along the line of the old Indian trail now known as Main Street … the frontage on Main
Street will be as valuable as that of King Street.… Winnipeg will have half the population of Toronto in five years.…”
The news from Winnipeg caught the imagination of the continent. On March 7, the New York Graphic devoted two full pages to “the wondrous city of northwestern Canada.” “Think of $1000 a front foot!” exclaimed the Fargo Argus . “If you haven’t a lot in Manitoba you had better buy one at once,” cried the London, Ont., Herald . “If you find yourself among a group of four or five citizens you will discover that you are quite ‘out of form’ unless you have something to relate about your speculation.” The Thunder Bay Sentinel editorialized that in Winnipeg there was “more money to the square inch than in any other city on the continent double or quadruple the size.”
The Toronto papers were crammed with advertisements from Winnipeg real estate men who had come east offering lots. “The woods are full of them,” the World reported. “You can’t turn a corner without seeing a Manitoba man with a tin case full of maps, St. James, St. John’s, St. Boniface and the everlasting Kildonan, anything from the heart of Winnipeg to its outer skin. There were five land brokers at the Queen’s and three at the Rossin yesterday.” The Globe , noting that auction rooms dealing exclusively in Manitoba lots were springing up in towns and cities all over Ontario, warned its readers of “the necessity of receiving with very heavy discount the rose-coloured descriptions and prognostications of interested agents.”
The eastern press covered the Manitoba boom as if it were a war, sending correspondents into the front lines. Some stayed to speculate themselves. “I have yet to hear of any one who has not made money,” the reporter for the St. Catharines Journal enthused to readers at the end of January. “The ‘race for wealth is a neck and neck one.’ Every one dips in. Some of the more godly wrestle with the Lord with the left hand and gamble in land with the other. I suppose they don’t let the left know what the right hand doeth.”
“Unsophisticated people from Ontario, when they land in Winnipeg go through several stages,” another correspondent reported. “First they deem you all, well, crazy. You all have lots and big figures on the brain. Presently they come a little to themselves.… They gradually begin to think there is something in it. You are not all quite demented.… [Then] they go the whole hog, and talk ‘lots’ at breakfast, dinner and supper, and all intervening times during weekdays, and on Sunday, doubtless meditate on what their ‘lot’ will be in the next world. The boom strikes them sooner or later.”
Stories of fortunes made and lost excited the nation. There was, for
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