A Bit Of History...

History
The geographical area now named Manitoba was originally inhabited by Ojibwa, Cree, Dene, Sioux, and Assiniboine peoples, along with other tribes entering the area to trade. The Whiteshell region, with many petroforms, may have been a trading center, or even a place of learning and sharing of knowledge. The first European to reach present-day Manitoba was Sir Thomas Button, who visited the Nelson River in 1612 and may have reached somewhere along the edge of the prairies. Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Vérendrye, visited the Red River Valley in the 1730s as part of opening the area for French exploration and exploitation. An important French-Canadian population (Franco-Manitobains) still lives in Manitoba, especially in the Saint-Boniface district of Winnipeg.

There are two possible sources of the name "Manitoba". One is the Assiniboine words "Mini" and "tobow" meaning "Lake of the Prairie". The other more likely source is the Cree word "maniotwapow" meaing "the strait of the spirit or manitobau". This latter name is derived from the sound produced by pebbles on a beach on Manitoba Island in Lake Manitoba. This noise is linked to the superstition among the Assiniboine of the "manito" (or spirit) beating a drum to create the noise.

The territory was won by Britain in 1763 as part of the French and Indian War, and became part of Rupert's Land, the immense monopoly territory of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Lower Fort Garry, ca. 1949The founding of the first agricultural community in 1811 by Lord Selkirk, near modern Winnipeg, resulted in conflict between the white colonists and the Métis who lived near there. Twenty colonists, including the governor, were killed by the Métis in the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816.

When Rupert's Land was ceded to Canada in 1869 and incorporated into the Northwest Territories, a lack of attention to Métis concerns led their leader Louis Riel to establish a provisional government, The Red River Rebellion. Negotiations between this government and the Canadian government resulted in the creation of the province of Manitoba and its entry into Confederation in 1870. Originally the province was only 1/18 of its current size and square in shape - it was known as the "postage stamp province." It grew progressively, absorbing land from the Northwest Territories until it attained its current size by reaching 60°N in 1912.

The Manitoba Schools Question showed the deep divergence of cultural values in the territory. The French thought they had been guaranteed a state supported separate school system but instead a grass roots political movement among Protestants in 1888-90 demanded the end of French schools. In 1890 the Manitoba legislature passed a law abolishing French as an official language of the province, and removing funding for Catholic schools. The French Catholic minority asked the federal Government for support; however the Orange Order and other anti-Catholic forces mobilized nationwide. The Conservatives proposed remedial legislation to over-ride Manitoba's legislation but they in turn were blocked by Liberals, led by Wilfrid Laurier who opposed the remedial legislation on the basis of provincial rights. Once elected Prime Minister in 1896 Laurier proposed a compromise stating that Catholics in could have a Catholic education if there were enough students to warrant it, on a school-by-school basis. Tensions over language remained high in Manitoba (and nationwide) for decades to come.

By 1916, in wartime, national unity was at stake. Out of a population of 500,000, there were 30,000 French speakers and 100,000 speakers of German, Ukrainian, Polish and other immigrant tongues. Anglophones insisted on an English-only policy, including a repeal of the compromise that had been worked out on the School Question. The plan was to strengthen the education ministry, upgrade the quality of education, and impose a much stronger attendance law. As the education minister explained: "It is necessary to deal with this law [the bilingual clause] both in our own interests and in the interests of the strangers within our gates who have come to make their homes with us with the purpose of becoming a part of this nation. The first essential to individual progress in any land is to know the language of the country. In an English-speaking country, as this is, a knowledge of English is more necessary than a knowledge of arithmetic. No matter what a man's attainments may be, the doors of opportunity are closed to him if he has not a knowledge of English, the common tongue. . . We are building for the Canada of tomorrow, and our common school is one of the most important factors in the work. In this Dominion we are building up, under the British flag, a new nationality. We come from many lands and cast in our lot, and from these various factors there must evolve a new nationality which shall be simply Canadian and British."

Crowd gathered outside old City Hall during the Winnipeg General Strike, June 21, 1919In the 1917 election in the midst of the conscription crisis, the Liberals were split in half and the new Union party carried all but one seat. As the war ended severe discontent among farmers (over wheat prices) and union members (over wage rates) resulted in an upseurge of radicalism. With Bolshevism coming to power in Russia, conservatives were anxious and radicals were energized. The most dramatic episode was the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 which shut down most activity for six weeks, starting May 15 until the strike collapsed on June 25, 1919 as the workers were gradually returning to their jobs and the Central Strike Committee decided to end the strike. As historian William Morton has explained:"The strike, then, began with two immediate aims and two subsidiary but increasingly important aspects. One aim was the redress of legitimate grievances with respect to wages and collective bargaining; the other was the trial of a new instrument of economic action, the general strike, the purpose of which was to put pressure on the employers involved in the dispute through the general public. The first subsidiary aspect was that the general strike, however, might be a prelude to the seizure of power in the community by Labour, and both the utterances and the policies of the O.B.U. leaders pointed in that direction. The second subsidiary aspect was that, as a struggle for leadership in the Labour movement was being waged as the strike began, it was not made clear which object, the legitimate and limited one, or the revolutionary and general one, was the true purpose of the strike. It is now apparent that the majority of both strikers and strike leaders were concerned only to win the strike. The general public at large, however, subjected to the sudden coercion of the general strike, was only too likely to decide that a revolutionary seizure of power was in view."

In the aftermath eight leaders went on trial, and most were convicted on charges of seditious conspiracy, illegal combinations, and seditious libel; four were aliens who were deported under the Immigration Act. Labor was weakened and divided as a result. Famers meanwhile were patiently organizing the United Farmers of Manitoba, with plans to contest the 1920 provincial elections. The result was no party had a majority. The Farmers, running against politics as usual, won in 1922, with 30 seats, against 7 Liberals were returned, 6 Conservatives, 6 Labour, and 8 Independents.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitoba#History