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The Point
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Last updated July 27/10
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A Rich History Commemorating Forgotten History Old Cottonwood History Lives Commemorating Forgotten History By Shirley Kowalchuk (Reprinted from The Point, April 2009 edition) It was a December evening in 1869 when John Christian Schultz’s home was surrounded by Louis Riel’s men. To the protests of Schultz’s wife, who reportedly was ill, Schultz was pulled outside of his house and placed under arrest. In a spectacle watched by residents and merchants all along Main Street, Schultz was trudged along to Fort Garry (where the historic gates now stand), pulling a sled that carried his wife - who refused to leave his side until they were finally separated by a clanking prison door. Rivaling anything seen in a movie, he soon escaped with the help of a loaf of bread - ingeniously baked by Mrs. Schultz - with the unlikely ingredient of a metal file baked within its savory core. Slipping away from the Fort Garry, Schultz first sought refuge at Barber House, and then was transferred to various “safe” homes until Riel fled out West. This historic incident occurred during the conflictual days when the vast tract of land of the Northwest, including the Selkirk Colony lands with Point Douglas, was to become part of the Confederation of Canada. Schultz was the leader of the outspoken Canadian party and was adamantly opposed to Louis Riel’s ideas and methods. Beginning this summer, historical places such as Barber House, Schultz’s later home at 2 Beaconsfield St. and other spots of intrigue will be marked by historical plaques and markers. The “Living History of Point Douglas” project of the Point Douglas Resident’s Committee has been awarded $20,000 by the Winnipeg Foundation, along with contributions from other supporters, to capture and recount the neighborhood’s dramatic history. Tasks will also include a compilation project of oral histories. “We’re just ecstatic,” said PDRC president Sel Burrows. “Point Douglas will begin to transform with the many visible things we want to put in place to show our history, and more importantly, to show the example of who we are, not only to us but to the world”. When completed in a few months, the network of historical plaques will offer a magical journey, taking residents and visitors alike into the significant historic drama of the neighborhood. The project will be hiring Point Douglas residents to canvas homes for permission to place dramatic linear art along houses and structures to reflect where the waters rose during the disastrous 1950 flood, as well as application of date-of-construction plaques. “There is still dried river mud in the walls of my house to the second floor where the flood water rose,” said Sel Burrows of his Grove Street residence. “Like the sod homes of the early prairie settlers, I figure it’s good insulation.” A significant historical spot is the mammoth Point Douglas cottonwood tree. With a circumference over 24 feet, the tree is estimated to have been a seedling around the time of the Riel Rebellion, bowing its head in the cold winter breeze as Riel’s group surrounded the home of John Christian Schultz a short distance away. It has inspired the slogan of the renaissance occurring in the neighborhood today: Rooted in History. The huge tree is unusual because it grows at a greater distance from a waterside tributary than is typical. In the tradition of many Point Douglas people, the tree grew even stronger amid struggle. For decades the tree was nurtured by the annual cyclical torment of the nearby Red River as is flooded. After the great 1950 flood, when most of Point Douglas was underwater, Rover Avenue was raised into a dyke and the Winnipeg Floodway was built. Today the towering cottonwood is no longer fed by raging floods, but it remains strong from an immense root system that penetrates the subterranean water table. The PDRC would also like to capture stories of anyone who might have lived these times or heard passed down stories of Point Douglas people, especially Aboriginal experiences. Much of the project is held within the hearts of people who reside or know of past experiences in Point Douglas. It is expected that the project will create great interest in the area, from people wanting to move into the community to residents proud to say they are from Point Douglas, a place known for historic characters and spaces and heroic survival and triumph against the odds.
Old Cottonwood
Initially I wrote about this tree in a column on notable heritage trees in Manitoba, and like tree writers everywhere I tried to get a reliable age for my subject and to find out about the important historic events that have occurred in the tree’s long life. I phoned Dave Domke, who is Winnipeg’s City Forester and the first person to tell me about the Point Douglas cottonwood. His guess for the tree’s age is 150-200 years. I told Dave I’d take 200, since that would put it growing on its site since before the arrival of the Selkirk Settlers. Point Douglas had the first farms tilled by those intrepid immigrants, and the slim sapling must have watched oxen haul plows, the Gaelic-speaking farmer skipping along behind in the newly broken furrow. 150 years back just didn’t work as well for me! Next I called Provincial Forrester Jon LeFrink, who said he might be able to authorize a core-drilling test for the tree, which would take the guessing out of this whole project. Jon called back to say that the coring machine only works on trees the size of telephone poles. Our cottonwood is as big around as a small car. Jon then pointed out that using other big cottonwoods that have died recently as handy comparisons might not work either. A cottonwood near the river bank, where the water table is high, would grow much faster than a park tree, he said. Jon said he would get Keith Knowles, an expert on cottonwoods, to talk with me about the tree. As advertised, Keith knew a lot. The terrific 1987 book Heritage Trees of Manitoba features writing from the late Vern Hildahl. Vern and Martin Benum had recorded the Point Douglas cottonwood a generation ago. Keith Knowles either had the publication in front of him or has it memorized, because he mentioned the part of the description that says, “Residents point out that their parents claim that the tree was very large when they themselves were small.” Keith volunteered that the tree could be a lot younger than people might think, and he sent me some detailed information regarding cottonwoods. There was a 300 year-old specimen recorded in New York State. Three hundred years! I imagined French explorers paddling past our young tree, the first Europeans to see its shadow, not knowing the tree’s species unless their native guides told them and still hoping for the Pacific Ocean to open up around the next bend. Keith went on to add, dampening my imaginative spirit considerably, that the cottonwood in question could be a little over 100 years old and still be that size. After thinking about it, it seems less important to find out exactly how old the Point Douglas cottonwood is. The most impressive thing about that tree to me now is that so many people already do know it and are working for its survival, that since it was written up 20 years ago it has gained another 14 inches of girth, and that you could sit under it and know that this tree has been there a long time and is cared for, in some way, not just by a network of concerned citizens and government experts, but by everyone who knows it. CJ Conway is a board member of the Coalition to Save the Elms, lives in Point Douglas, and recently finished his fourth book.
History Lives in Point Douglas From a window above Kriese’s Grocery Store, the mezzo-soprano voice of young Gladys Kriese could be heard on Sutherland Avenue. Years later, Gladys would share the stage with Franco Corelli as a performer with the New York Metropolitan Opera, but for now the only accompaniment for her after-school practices would be the sound of boxcars shunting and locomotive bells ringing along the CPR tracks behind the family store. Across the tracks, along the south Point Douglas riverbank, a group of neighborhood boys melted down pieces of tar to make pitch to repair an abandoned boat they had found. Further up river a group of Aboriginal families made camp, coming down the Red River by canoe to sell blueberries door-to-door in Point Douglas. On the eastern side-streets of Stephens, Syndicate, and McFarlane, housewives would catch up on the neighborhood gossip in the front yards, and in the roadways the horse-drawn wagons from Eaton’s, Crescent Creamery, City Bread, and Arctic Ice made their deliveries. Further west, at Euclid and Hallet, some teenage boys sat outside Safrin’s Drug Store, spitting sunflower seeds and watching girls walk by, until Safrin’s employees chased them away. On Austin near Jarvis, a group of kids played cricket in the street, using old juice cans as wickets. In the distance could be heard the sounds of the streetcar’s electric engine as it made its way down Main, past the Sutherland Hotel, the Unity pool room and barber shop, Doner’s Hardware, Wolch’s Department Store, Keleki’s chip shop, and the Times Theatre. This was Point Douglas around 1945, as recalled by several individuals who lived in the neighborhood at the time and have shared their memories with us. Over the summer we have worked at researching the history of the neighborhood as part of the Living History Project of the Point Douglas Residents Committee. It will be a long-term project aimed at bringing alive the vast and dynamic history of this place at the bend in the Red River above The Forks. In addition to collecting stories from the residents, there has been an emphasis on researching the history before the arrival of the Selkirk Settlers and learning how the Aboriginal people inhabited Point Douglas. While The Forks was for millennia the pre-eminent meeting place for trade, it was often an unsuitable place to make camp. The sloping terrain was wet, and the trees were dense shrubs that would have been very difficult to navigate. The lands in and around Point Douglas were much more suitable for camping, as the trees were taller and provided better shelter. Some accounts explain that this was actually the favored spot for Aboriginals to gather and trade prior to the urbanization of Point Douglas in the late 19th century. Other pieces of the neighborhood’s story, such as the development of the “village of Point Douglas” in the 1860s, the impact of the 1950 Flood, and the lives of pioneers and residents of Point Douglas like Robert Logan, John Norquay, Margaret Scott, and Roy Matas, have been discovered and documented. It has been exciting to be a part the Living History Project, and we look forward to these stories coming to life and being celebrated in the future. Explore Life in The Point!
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