Winnipeg

When Winnipeg was incorporated as a city in 1874, its energetic citizens were already boosting it as the "Chicago of the North." This "biography" of one of Canada's major cities graphically describes and analyzes the events, people, trends, and social movements that played a key role in its phenomenal growth and development up to the First World War. The book's unifying theme is the domination of the city's political, economic, and social life by a growth-conscious commercial elite. The account of this group's efforts to attract to Winnipeg—usually by the expenditure of public money—immigrants, railways, and industry is one of the main elements of this study. A second major theme is the far-reaching results this commitment to growth on the part of Winnipeg's leaders had on the social fabric of the city. Problems such as public health, water and sewerage facilities, prostitution, and city planning were given only passing attention. As a result, after forty years of prodigious growth, Winnipeg in 1914 still lacked decent housing, good schools, adequate recreation facilities, and integrated neighborhoods. Above all else, Winnipeg lacked any powerful group which understood the city as a whole and wanted to deal with it as a public environment, one that belonged to all citizens.