Table Of ContentDICTIONARY OF MANITOBA BIOGRAPHY
DICTIONARY
OF MANITOBA
BIOGRAPHY
J.M. BUMSTED
THE UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA PRESS
©J.M. Bumsted 1999
The University of Manitoba Press
Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada R3T 2N2
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Cover and text design: Doowah Design
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For credits to cover illustrations, see page 275.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Bumsted, J.M., 1938—
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-88755-169-6 (bound)—ISBN 0-88755-662-0 (pbk.)
1. Manitoba—Biography—Dictionaries. I. Title.
FC3355.B85 1999 920.07127 C99-920213-8
F1061.8.B85 1999
The University of Manitoba Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided for its publishing
program by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program
(BPIDP); the Canada Council for the Arts; the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Citizenship;
and the Manitoba Arts Council.
For Jeremy and Thomas,
two new Manitobans
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INTRODUCTION
This volume has its origins in a long-time fascination I have had with biography. I began
researching and writing biographical sketches for various reference works while in graduate school.
One of my earliest books was an extended biographical sketch of the Nova Scotia evangelist
Henry Alline. For some years I prepared a good many longer sketches for various volumes of the
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, nearly 100 in total. That great work always seemed to me to have
several very serious weaknesses. For one thing, it was difficult to use as a reference work, partly
because of its multiple volumes, partly because of the size of the biographies, partly because of its
organization by death date, partly because of its national focus. In more recent volumes, it is
possible to find at the end a list of biographies broken down by region and province, but that was
not true of earlier ones. In any case, one needs an entire library shelf to store a complete set of the
DCB, hardly recommending it to the occasional user. Moreover, the slow pace at which the twentieth-
century volumes of the DCB are being produced has meant that there is an enormous hiatus of up-
to-date biographical reference material for much of recent Canadian history. For me, an equally
serious weakness of the DCB was its concentration on major figures of national and regional
importance, to the relative neglect of the second- and third-rank people who often operated on
only the local, regional, or provincial level. The DCB was simply not designed for anyone wanting
a quick reference work to identify an individual or to find some birth dates and death dates, espec-
ially within a provincial or regional context.
Conscious of the weaknesses of the existing reference system for Canadian biography, when
I prepared for publication my study of the Winnipeg General Strike in 19941 decided to include an
appendix that would offer some biographical material on the major players in the strike. I did not
want to burden the text with a plethora of material on the lives of the participants, although few
were household names. Most of those involved had died fairly recently, or were still alive; their
biographical details simply were not readily available. For many, the General Strike represented
their major moment of historical prominence. The appendix was such a success with readers that
I repeated a similar effort in my history of the Red River Rebellion. As with the Strike book, it was
the relative obscurity of many of the major actors that made such an appendix necessary. My
research for these two appendices further highlighted to me the need for a biographical reference
INTRODUCTION
work for Manitoba. ThisDzctionary of Manitoba Biography is the result.
A few words must be said about principles of inclusion. I started with three basic principles.
Those whose lives would be sketched had to be deceased, they had to have set foot — at least
briefly — upon Manitoba soil, and they had either to have made some impact upon Manitoba or to
have had their lives seriously formed or influenced by Manitoba residence. The restriction on
residence was essential to keep from overloading the text with individuals whose actions and
decisions somehow impinged upon the history of the province but who had no direct connection
with it. I ended up breaking this rule several times, once in the case of George-Etienne Carrier,
whose involvement in the creation of Manitoba was central, and who actually was elected to repre-
sent a Manitoba constituency in the House of Commons in 1872, although he never visited the
province. The other exceptions were individuals whose relationship with the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany or the Selkirk Settlement made their inclusion seem essential. The insistence on some influ-
ence of residence on the life seemed necessary to avoid including individuals (Deanna Durbin, the
Hollywood actress, is a good example) who were born in Manitoba but who left the province at a
very early age.
There are doubtless very important individuals whose names have been omitted through
oversight; no reference work is ever perfect, and most readers will turn to it in the first instance to
play the game "Who Has Been Omitted?" The real challenge in this work, however, was in decid-
ing who among the slightly less important should be included. To produce a biographical sketch for
every Member of Parliament from Manitoba, for every MLA who sat in the provincial legislature,
for every judge who sat on the bench, for every local reeve and school board chair, for every
businessman, for every university professor, or for every cleric — much less every writer, artist, or
architect — would have made this work considerably longer than it is already. Instead, I have tried
to include elected officials and judges, as well as such people as businessmen, doctors, professors,
and clerics, only when they did something special in their careers. Mere progression towards the top
of one's field is thus for this volume not enough. The space saved I have devoted to individuals
who once made an impression on their society in the often-neglected social and cultural arenas. I
have worked very hard at finding out about artists, architects, educators, musicians, writers, poets,
journalists, performers, reformers, and agitators. I have also worked hard at finding out about
members of the neglected communities: of immigrants, of women, of Aboriginals, of Metis. For
every individual possible I have tried to list some important writings or other creative productions,
if there were any, and also to suggest sources for further biographical or critical information if
available. I would hardly claim that every Manitoban who deserves a biographical sketch is in-
cluded here. But this is a start.
There are some real problems inherent in preparing a biographical dictionary of one prov-
ince. The lives and careers of many individuals are not constrained by geography. For a province
like Manitoba, which experienced a continual influx of new immigrants, the early lives of many of
its prominent people are shrouded in obscurity. On the other hand, many people passed through
Manitoba on their way someplace else, usually further west in Canada, where they really became
prominent. If they did not retain some connection with the province after their departure, they
sometimes became lost to it, their later careers and deaths unrecorded. While there are thus some
people who virtually disappear, the more common problem with those who move is deciding how
much of their non-Manitoba lives and careers ought to be included in a Manitoba volume. My
instincts were to be generous in this regard.
Further and sometimes related problems result from the nature of the sources, particularly
for those who were not prominent Manitobans. To a large extent, a researcher of a volume of
this nature is dependent on the biographical information generated by others, the accuracy and
viii
INTRODUCTION
coverage of which is fairly variable. One might think that the presence of a lengthy obituary in a
local newspaper, for example, would virtually guarantee certain minimal biographical details and
accuracy. But such is simply not the case. Many obituaries say litde about the early life, others litde
about the later life. Some obituary writers seem unable to produce dates for the important events in
their subject's life, perhaps because they don't really know them. Some obituary writers are really
not concerned about the details of the background or career of the subject, but only about offering
an effusive assessment of how beloved he or she was. I am indebted to the biographical scrap-
books and vertical files at the Legislative Library of Manitoba. These 20 volumes of newspaper
clippings and supplementary files contain thousands of obituaries and other biographical clippings
on the well-known and the obscure alike. Without their existence this book could not have been
prepared.
While I have employed obituaries extensively, they are hardly my only sources of informa-
tion. The Provincial Archives of Manitoba provided a good deal of material in its manuscript
collections, and I have listed collections of personal papers held by the archives in the sketches
themselves. I have also relied heavily on other biographical directories, reference books, and his-
torical works. The most useful of these sources are listed in a brief bibliography at the end of this
introduction. Whenever possible, I have in addition employed specialist material, including journal
articles, unpublished theses, and books; these references are commonly listed in the biographical
sketch itself. The sketches contained herein are doubtless riddled with factual errors, which I would
hope to be able to correct in subsequent editions. But all sketches are based on the best information
presently available to me. If people have better information, I hope they will let me or the Univer-
sity of Manitoba Press know about it.
Unlike the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, this work is not particularly designed for the
casual browser, although I hope browsing will prove possible — and illuminating. The sketches are
for the most part too short to be works of literary art. On the other hand, I have extended beyond
bare bones the sketches of some Manitobans whose lives I have found unusually fascinating and
revealing of the development of the province, or who have been forgotten and deserve to be
remembered. The residents of Red River and early Manitoba often led more fascinating lives than
most of us realize, and this is reflected in the coverage. Size of sketch is therefore not always a
guide to importance. In any case, I hope that the user finds some value in perusing this book's
pages beyond the search for the facts of a single life. Manitoba has produced an incredible number
of interesting people, many of whom are worthy of more attention than is given them here. I hope
this work calls attention to the province's rich collection of achievers — and failures.
J.M. Bumsted
Winnipeg, September 1999
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