History of Steamboats on Lake Winnipegosis

2004-10-24T06:32:00.000-07:00

The Beginning

Although railway steel had first spread through the prairies in Manitoba territory, and then stretched north and west to the resource heartlands, from the first appearance of the railway in 1883 until well into the twentieth century much of Manitoba remained a steamboat sanctuary. Dashing for the Pacific, the CPR had struck due west from Winnipeg; and, out of convenience, the Hudson's Bay Company had launched it’s steamboat traffic straight north across Lake Winnipeg to the mouth of the Saskatchewan and points far into the Northwest. Both major routes - the steamboat and the railway - circumvented the province's two other principal inland lakes, Lake Manitoba and Lake Winnipegosis. Here, in isolation, inland steam boating flourished.
First to supply a young Winnipeg with lumber in the 1870's; first to build an exclusively Manitoban steamer, the Prince Rupert, in 1872; first to bring harvested grain back from settlement up the Assiniboine River in 1877; first to run a steamer fleet, the Prince Rupert, Marquette, and North West, up the Assiniboine to the Qu'Appelle River in 1881; and, in 1882..
the first to successfully navigate three Hudson's Bay Company steamers, the Marquis, Manitoba, and North West, up the four-and-one-half-mile Grand Rapids cataract to the Saskatchewan River, Peter McArthur had become one of prairie steam boating’s first refugees.
Relieved of his HBC Inland Navigator's post in 1882 when he refused to ship whisky up the Saskatchewan, and muscled out of his North West Navigation Company directorship by William Robinson, Captain McArthur had retreated to a quarter-section farm outside the hamlet of Westbourne near the southwestern shore of Lake Manitoba Discharged but not dispirited, the wiry Scot looked north to nearly four thousand square miles of untouched inland waterway and heavily timbered shoreline. Lakes Manitoba and Winnipegosis, virtually detached from the traditional paths of transport, lay on McArthur's doorstep. With the help of Indian guides, he set out to survey both lakes; he rode horseback, paddled canoes and dogsleds though the best timberland the two lakes had to offer.
Adjacent to the Westbourne settlement, McArthur built a family cottage; at the nearby landing, he constructed and outfitted a mill to plane timber that he would ship from his newly established sawmill at Fairford, 120 miles up Lake Manitoba; and to haul that timber, skipper McArthur designed his fourth steamboat.
Fashioned just below the Manitoba and North Western Railway trestle that spanned the Whitemud River at Westbourne, the Saskatchewan 110-foot hull housed a six-foot-deep holding space, two steam engines, and a ten-foot boiler. Her sidewheels would power a full company of crew, passengers, and freight, as well as timber barges. Across one hundred miles of perhaps the shallowest major lake on the continent. Built at a cost of thirty thousand dollars, McArthur's Saskatchewan was launched in 1883, to the delight of the six McArthur children.
"The Saskatchewan was licensed to carry passengers," wrote McArthur's daughter Agnes. ". I remember Charles Mair, the Canadian nature poet, on his way up the lake for a trip. ... Father was very good about letting us children go up the lake when he went for a load of timber. . . . I liked to see father giving orders to the crew from the top deck when we were casting off. I'll tell you, those men hopped to it! We would back down the river a little way into Perch Creek to turn around; then down the nine miles of the beautiful Whitemud with its overhanging elms, past Totogan to the broad and marshy mouth of the river to Lake Manitoba.
"Mother would take along her sewing machine and on board there was a little square-shaped rosewood piano, which had come from England by way of York Factory and bad been carried over the portage on men's shoulders. We children raced up and down the long tarred and sanded upper deck behind the huge smokestacks. And we never wearied of leaning on the railing behind the paddle wheels watching the rainbows in the spray."The Saskatchewan paddled the McArthur family through some of its happiest moments. Up on the bridge Peter McArthur piloted the millions of feet of spruce timber per year across the lake, while at the rosewood piano on the cabin deck, Pauline McArthur accompanied daughters Eva, Agnes, and Isabelle in singsongs. The summer and the lake-scape offered new vistas each minute. At The Narrows, Lake Manitoba’s. shallow strait where Cree Indians claim they hear the voice of their god Manitou in the water's turbulence, the Sifton family would row out to the steamer to 001leet their mail and to treat all on board to wild strawberries and cream, welcome relief from the English cook's cornstarch pies. Loading timber at Fairford, to fill Peter McArthur'. contracts for railway ties, the Saskatchewan would sail the McArthur mariners home, but not without a final adventure. There was always trouble plying back up the Whitemud River; at every bend the steamer's nose would stick fast in the soft riverbank; the last few miles were a struggle. But by sunset, an exhausted family and crew would moor again at McArthur's Landing.
final adventure. There was always trouble plying back up the Whitemud River; at every bend the steamer's nose would stick fast in the soft riverbank; the last few miles were a struggle. But by sunset, an exhausted family and crew would moor again at McArthur's Landing.
Success had barely touched McArthur's enterprise when fire gutted the planning mill in the 1893 season. And that same summer, settlers along The Narrows witnessed a second blaze when an entire barge of lumber and planks burst into flames in the channel. The Saskatchewan was bound down the lake on her final trip of the season, with a hired British skipper in charge. In addition to her usual timber freight, the steamer carried bags of sawdust on deck.
"The whole barge caught fire and burned in The Narrows," wrote one witness. "The cargo spilled into the lake, where it drifted in the wind. . . and the Saskatchewan. hauling the flaming barge also caught fire." The crew went wild with fright, and could do nothing to extinguish the fire The crew abandoned ship in the only rowboat, and watched as the Saskatchewan burned to the waterline and sank at the south end of Horse Island in fourteen feet of Lake Manitoba water.
"Not one of the Lake Manitoba steamboats operated at a profit at any time," McArthur's eldest son Duncan commented somewhat acidly, "The reasons arc numerous and varied. It seemed to be a tradition. The steamer Lady Blanche was the first, built by Reginald and Walter Pratt in
1879 with Oakville, Manitoba, oak planking and powered by a Montreal harbor tug's machinery; it towed cribs of logs down from Dog-hung-Creek but could never keep Pratt's Totogan sawmill running. Father's steamer Saskatchewan carried too small a cargo and had the grace to burn to the bottom with little insurance. Finally, the Petrel was built in 1898 by hardware merchant C, W. Maloan, who planned to ship limestone from The Narrows of Lake Manitoba. , , , The steamer was constructed by a Nova Scotia deep-sea builder; it was a ghastly failure and half broke the hardware man, who sold the Petrel to the Manitoba Gypsum Company, which teetered on the brink of ruin itself until Rod MacKenzie built the l00-mile Gypsumville railway branch to haul out the ore, and the boats were scrapped. . . . Nothing but woe unrelieved,"But destruction never meant the end. For McArthur, these fiery losses were only setbacks. Later that disastrous season of 1893, Captain McArthur purchased Reginald Pratt's weary steamer Lady Blanche,' refurbished, re-trimmed, and redressed, she became the boatman's fifth steamboat creation, the Isabelle, a screw-propeller steamer with an eighty-foot hull and limitless tow capacity. Four years later the indefatigable skipper entered the fish business as Lake Manitoba's agent for the Booth Fish Company of Chicago. McArthur circulated the lake purchasing every pound of whitefish taken, for a cent a pound, then barged the catch aboard his steam tug Victoria (an 1885 troop carrier refitted to haul fish), and froze and stored the fillets in his newly erected ice-house.
It was inevitable that Captain McArthur - an incurable optimist despite his seemingly interminable series of setbacks - would soon look beyond the seventeen-mile horizon of Lake Manitoba. At Winnipegosis. the tiny fishing village named after the lake "little muddy water", 120 miles north of McArthur's Landing, the nomadic Scot planted new roots. By 1898 he had borrowed $25.000 from his American in-laws to finance a new sawmill at Winnipegosis; his Standard Lumber Company. which would specialize in spruce flooring and siding, was the first lumber operation on Lake Winnipegosis.
Moving himself and his family to the new village site was a simple overland trip, but transferring his vital tow steamer Isabelle from Manitoba to Winnipegosis proved more complicated a task.
"The Winnipegosis country is... one of the most inaccessible regions of the North-West," a Toronto traveler had noted two decades before. '"The Water Hen River is the only floating entrance into Winnipegosis; it adds 30 miles to the water stretch, and is the worst part of the route. . . It will always be the bite noire of lake navigation. . ."
"In 1898 father built mills at Winnipegosis, taking Isabelle up by water," recalled McArthurs daughter Agnes. "But on reaching the mouth of the Water Hen River, the water was so low, and the boat having a deep draft, the captain despaired of getting her through. But father had two small empty barges in tow, and these he lashed, one to each side of the tug, to give her more buoyancy. And empty barrels they were carrying were sunk to help raise the tug over sand bars until finally they got the Isabelle through to Lake Winnipegosis."
McArthur's successful climbing of the Water Hen seemed to signal a general migration of lumberjacks, boatmen, Trappers. and fishermen to the salty waters of Lake Winnipegosis. Hugh Armstrong of Portage la Prairie and his Armstrong Trading Company, a Booth Fish subsidiary, promptly threaded their steamers Lady Ellen and Osprey through the Water Hen from Lake Manitoba; Booth's outside manager, Charles White, followed with the financing.
McArthur repeated his feat with a Lake Manitoba tug, Ida, soon after; and in 1899 his Standard Lumber Company imported another steamer, lona, by rail from Collingwood. That same season the new North West Fish Company arrived, with manager Captain Coffey piloting the steam tug Lottie S. from Lake of the Woods and his own steamer Mockingbird by water all the way from Port Arthur.
And with such thick competition for Winnipegosis fillets, lake fishermen brought in fleets of Collingwood-built yawls and sloops. During those early years fifty Booth and North West sailing boats rivaled each other for the pickerel, whitefish, jackfish, and perch that were freighted by steamboat to Winnipegosis, where freezer cars of a recently arrived Canadian Northern Railway spur line waited to carry the catch onto Winnipeg and Chicago.
But Captain McArthur was no longer interested in fish - he had given up his Booth Fish agency to pursue the prime timberlands around Lake Winnipegosis, stands of spruce he knew could yield twenty-four dollars per thousand feet of two-by-fours and twenty-seven dollars per thousand feet of first class siding and flooring. First the skipper pressed the Iona and Isabelle into day-and-night navigation, towing giant log booms from a series of Standard Lumber camps along the north shore and islands south to town.
"We towed logs from across the lake," recalled Isabelle fireman Mike Harrison, who at fifteen had come with his father from the Ukraine to Canada in search of 160 free acres in 1899. After working for the CPR digging clay for two cents and a loaf of bread a day, Harrison had joined McArthur's boat brigade and there remained for thirty-five years of loyal service. "We had to supply that big sawmill in Winnipegosis, a hundred men putting through one hundred thousand feet of timber in an eleven hour day. . . I fired aboard the Isabelle night and day for fifteen dollars a month. . . . We built booms up the lake; it was alright in calm weather, but when it got rough we'd lose half the lumber. . . . But that steamboat was reliable. We knew we'd get there. The Isabelle's engine was an old-timer, a big upright engine, bolted and braced to the floor to keep her from tipping in a storm. . . . That old steam engine, she must've worn out three or four different boats. . . . ..
"Just a chuck-chuck-chuck sound was all you'd hear of that engine, and up in the pilothouse I'd never hear it at all, she was so quiet," added mate Harry Brown, who wheeled for McArthur aboard the Isabelle after the steamer bad undergone her third face-life in 1902. "My first couple of trips, Captain McArthur stayed in the wheelhouse to teach me the lake; be knew it well. . . . You got to know the lake and its reefs by hitting them. . . . Peter McArthur was tall and slim. He didn't smoke or drink; be just used to carry baking soda water in his pocket and take a sip of it once in a while for his ulcer. . . . Aboard the Isabelle, we used to take the hot lids from the wood stove, wrap them in newspaper and put them on his stomach to relieve his ulcer. One time the lid was too hot and the paper caught fire - well, he wasn't long throwin' the lid overboard. . . but he wasn't one for fun. Peter McArthur was all business. . . ."
Each of Standard Lumber's half-dozen camps up Lake Winnipegosis employed twenty-five to thirty jacks and fifteen mill workers, while each of McArthur's tugs was crewed by a captain, a mate, two engineers, two firemen, two or three dockhands, and a cook. Winter trappers took summer work with McArthur; freighters who hauled Hudson's Bay Company goods north by horse teams moonlighted for him; European tradesmen looking to support their homestead claims with part-time labour came to the town mill; and fishermen like Billy Johnson, who knew every quirk on Lake Winnipegosis, came for hire to Standard lumber. Born in North Dakota and packed off to the wilderness with his family at the turn of the century, Johnson had fished and sailed in most of the lake's bays and narrows; twice he bad survived a capsized sailboat and several times he had saved companions from exposure to the lake's stormy elements. Johnson began working for McArthur as a teenager at fifty cents a day, unloading lumber plank-for-plank with grown men.
"McArthur was kind of odd, but not a bad soul," recalled Johnson. "He was awfully strict keeping his crews moving, but he was good to me. . . . Some years later his captain aboard the Isabelle jumped the job and be had one more raft to tow down from Grave's Point, 145 miles up the lake; so he asked me to bring her down. She was a good-sized steamer; she trembled with power. This trip be was pulling out the mill; he'd loaded the mill's steam engine, all the camp horses, the crews, their families and their tents, everything, aboard the raft.
"First we struck some rough weather. Then the boiler blew a stay-bolt in the front end. There was steam everywhere and my feet were cooking in the pilothouse from the heat down below. We cooled her down and repaired that. . . . Then we got to the seven-mile crooked channel at Maggie's Island. It was dark. A stiff breeze from the west. And the Old Man was in his kimono about to go to bed and advised me to anchor.. . . But I decided to chance it because I knew the channel well. McArthur agreed to it, came back all dressed and paced up and down the deck all night, 'til I got through at the break of day Once through, the old fellow went below and made me a cup of tea. And when we got to town he handed me ten dollars extra, a lot of money in those days'"
"Boatmen didn't have money enough to spit on," Hawley Burrell laughed. "I worked two yean on the Isabelle as mate; my cousin was skipper then, Joe Burrell, and he used to argue with old man McArthur. . . . The two of them argued about the weather and where to put up in case of a storm. But one time we got caught. We were going from Pemmican Island; we got out about three or four miles, and it really started to blow. One said to continue, the other said to put in. Well, half the lumber worked its way out of the rafts and went ashore. Lot of the farmers along there got stable and barn wood out of that. . . Being the mate, I was caught in the middle of every argument between the skipper and McArtbur. But wbatever McArthur said went, or else."

If McArthur appeared consistent to one man, to another he was unpredictable. a mosaic of contradictions. He was always setting an example through his determination and leadership. as on one occasion when he led his crew through a five-day blizzard on Lake Winnipegosis
- but he could be terrified by ancient Scottish superstitions. In the bush he used rocks for pillows. but he would drink nothing stronger than weak tea. He fired a lumberjack for calling him "Pete". but never refused a man in need of work. Above all, McArthur's priorities were determined by his sense of enterprise. The Mockingbird incident is a case in point. By 1901 the Mockingbird. Captain Coffey's luxury sixty-foot steam yacht, had freighted and towed North West Fish Company barges regularly for two seasons. That July her five-man crew steered the Mockingbird away from the High Portage wharf at the lake's north shore. Astern on the steamer sat a heavy load of cordwood, which forced her bow up out of the water and reduced her maneuverability. Half-way down Winnipegosis. before the crew could stow the firewood below, the steamer encountered a gale. Three large breakers poured over her already depressed stem.
"Just opposite Big Island, the steamer swamped and sank fast," reported a Standard Lumber employee. "McArthur operated a sawmill at Big Island. And one fella from the steamer swam the two miles in big seas to shore. He ran right to the mill. Peter McArthur had steam on the Isabelle, but he was going to use it for some other work. So he told his men to steam the other tug up. the Iona. to go out and rescue the rest of the survivors.. . . Took two hours to steam up the Iona... I guess he had no feelings. old McArthur."
Ironically. the remainder of the foundering steamer's crew scrambled onto the floating cord wood that had sunk the Mockingbird in the first place, and drifted safely ashore.
Fish versus Lumber. Already Lake Winnipegosis had grown crowded with its two major industries. From a small mill in the urchin-like Winnipegosis settlement at the mouth of the Mossey River, McArthur's Standard Lumber monopoly had boomed up both sides of the lake and onto most of the lake's major islands. The Booth Fish Company had gained control of the richest fishing grounds, had established a host of fish camps across the north end of the lake, and had acquired countless acres of grazing land. on which they pastured cattle for winter beef and their thirty teams of horses for winter fish-freighting to Winnipegosis. Rivalry on land and water sparked incidents that engendered grudges on both sides. Fishermen complained that the sawmills' cuttings spilling into the lake harmed their fish. Lumbermen found spikes in their cut timber and swore that resulting saw breakdowns were the work of crazed fishermen. Standard blamed the fishermen for broken boom chains; and Booth blamed the loggers for torn nets. And sabotage was suspected when Standard boatmen found the Iona submerged to her decks while moored at their planing mill. Competition up and down Winnipegosis, however, was productive. By 1900 Peter McArthur had invited James Parker from New Brunswick to convert Standard Lumber's inefficient boom-towing operation to a more sophisticated raft system, whereby lumber sawed up the lake would be constructed into temporary floating barges for the haul to Winnipegosis. Rafts were more stable, transported a greater volume of semi-prepared lumber, and doubled as scows for carrying men, supplies; machinery, and livestock.
That year Booth Fish manager Charles White supervised construction of the largest freighting steamer yet seen on Lake Winnipegosis. "A full 105 feet long. . . the Manitou could carry 40,000 pounds of crated fish,"
Ed Redonets, experienced with steam shovels, dredges, and CPR steamers, worked in the boiler room aboard the Manitou as three times a week she hauled 700 to 800 boxes of frozen fish 100 miles down the lake from the company's fish camp at Whisky Jack Island to Winnipegosis. Forward, the Manitou consisted of hold space; amidships above decks, was the cabin deck and galley; above that rose the captain's and mate's quarters; and aft were the crew's eight bunks, the ten-foot-long boiler, and the two steam engines that powered her twin-screw propellers, This machinery hold was Ed Redonets's home at sea. "Smooth as velvet those engines From the boiler, steam goes through the small forward high-pressure cylinder, then into the larger aft low-pressure cylinder, so your steam is used up twice. Then the steam is pumped through a condenser, and, as water, is pumped back into the boiler. Never waste any steam. Never lose any water. , . . Silent engines. Made in Goderich, Ontario. . slept next to the engine room, too - my head was right beside the engine. . . . Just a constant whoosh-swhoosh sound. Once. got used to it, it was like somebody playing piano. . . and with the rocking of the boat, it was just like a cradle." ". can still hear the whistle of the old Manitou. I loved to hear that whistle blow. It was a long, mournful, , , very deep, melodious moan. It was the nicest of all the steamship whistles I thought. . , the old Manitou." Ruth Patterson called to mind.
Born in Winnipeg, Ruth came to Winnipegosis as a young girl and grew up with the town and its infant industries. No longer the helter-skelter collection of fishermen's shacks of the 1890's, Winnipegosis had prospered, particularly with the fish harvest and the related steamboat traffic.
Previously nursed by a Hudson's Bay Company trading post, Winnipegosis after 1900 sported T. R. Whale's general store and accompanying warehouses (equipped with private telephone lines); the Canadian Northern Railway station; John Seiffert's hotel and the Ross brothers' Lakeview Hotel; a public school; a Methodist Church. a Roman Catholic church, a Presbyterian church, and later an Anglican and a Greek Catholic church; a skating rink and four sheets of curling ice; and two town doctors. As wood-burning was the chief source of energy for this developing town, firewood lined the streets of Winnipegosis. Piled as high as the houses and several rows wide, poplar and tamarack cord wood stretched nearly a half mile from the railway station down to the fishermen's docks and warehouses. And here, at the lake's edge, was the focal point of Winnipegosis, that Ruth Patterson remembered so vividly.
“Fish were caught fresh and put in boxes with chipped ice all around them at the northern fish camps. And then they were brought down by steamboat. As the Manitou would enter the channel at Winnipegosis, she would whistle. That was the signal for men at the warehouses to be ready. It was really a scene of activity; half the town and all the children would flock to the docks to see the big steamboat come in loaded with fish. Talk about a beehive. Real excitement. Men would be running with wheelbarrows and ice boxes to the docks; the fish were unloaded and reiced and packed into the warehouses and then later transported by train out of Winnipegosis. Wages were low, sixteen cents an hour, but the men considered themselves lucky to have work.
"The first time I went aboard the Manitou. was thrilled to death. I thought it was the most beautiful and the most huge thing I'd ever seen in my life. . . . They used to call the Manitou 'the old tub', because of the way she was built, she wasn't very stable in a storm and would roll badly. . recall this one particular fall, me and two of my girl chums were going right to the far north end of Winnipegosis as passengers on this trip. The Manitou was heavily loaded. We were taking winter supplies north on the
Manitou to Whisky Jack and all the fishermen’s cabins. We were taking lumber, empty fish boxes, nets, winter grocery supplies, a fisherman’s pony, and dogs - all the supplies necessary to live the six months during winter ice fishing.
"Well, we got caught in a terrible storm. And that old Manitou would roll right over and I'd swear she would never come back up again. Finally, they had to throw the pony overboard and a lot of the lumber, because we almost capsized. I was frightened. . . . went down to the galley at meal time. But the galley was one place to stay out of when it was rough. . . . Even though things were fastened down, dishes were sliding all over the table and pots falling on the floor. But some managed to eat. The worst of it was that the cook had made roast pork, really rich roast pork. Well ,I took one look at the food and my stomach rolled.. dashed for our cabin. One of my chums was already lying on the bed and green around the gills. 'Move over,' 1 said, and 1 rolled in beside her. Oh, were we seasick. In fact, many of the crew were very sick. . . . "
"I remember rough water aboard the Manitou. That steamer carried ten or fifteen passengers every trip. None in the family was particularly fond of traveling, but we used to go north on this boat in the summer when 1 was small. This one trip, with my mother and two sisters, 1 was a small boy and 1 remember the storm and sliding from one end of the stateroom to the other. But those excursions were fun," recalled Delroy Grenon.
Grenon's family had pioneered commercial fishing on Lake Winnipegosis. Before the Armstrong Trading Company, before North West Fish and before Booth Fish, had been the Grenons. An early student of fish propagation, a former hatcheries superintendent for the United States Government in Michigan, and a proficient sailboat builder on Lake Manitoba, Joseph O. Grenon, Delroy's grandfather, had introduced the first large-scale fishing enterprise to Lake Winnipegosis in 1896. During his first seasons, Joe Grenon had taken immense fish catches, three to four tons of whitefish a day. Competition with North West Fish and other independents drove Grenon to sell his business to the Armstrong Trading Company of Portage la Prairie, itself a subsidiary of the Booth Company of Chicago.
Joe's son, Joseph P. Grenon, was appointed manager of Booth's Armstrong Trading Company interests on Lake Winnipegosis. Yet Joe Sr. refused to give up his life's occupation completely; even as the Manitou hauled out bountiful catches for Booth, he continued fishing privately with his other sons, Walter and Harry. And in 1912, Joe Sr. was appointed Superintendent of the Winnipegosis fish hatcheries at Snake Island. Then, in 1918, after Booth Fish and Armstrong Trading had parted company, Joseph Grenon Sr. returned to active fish marketing when he allied with Hugh Armstrong and two other businessmen, to form the Armstrong-Gimli Fisheries. With two seasoned operations, Booth Fish and Armstrong-.Gimli, the competition for Winnipegosis whitefish and pickerel intensified, especially when the Grenons launched a steamboat to rival the Manitou.
"They brought the frame of the steamboat from Collingwood, Ontario," Delroy Grenon explained. "All the forms and materials came up in pieces. And our steamer Armenon was then put together."
"My father and my brother Joe made the planking that went into her," added a jolly Lloyd Burrell. "For twenty-one cents an hour we drove spikes into her, putting her together. And I did a lot of painting when the hull was finished." Growing up during the reign of the Manitou over the lake, Burrell had gained his initial steamboat training aboard Peter McArthur's Isabelle.
Then when his family took up work with the Armstrong_Gimli the youngest Burrell joined the building crew. "After the hull was completed and launched into the Mossey River, she was moored and machinery was installed. It took several days of work with screw-jacks and timber to get the machinery ready, and then a day to fasten it all in. . . . For about two months, Captain Jack Denby and my brother supervised construction. ... Keeping tradition. we put money under the stem post at the Annenon'.J bow for good luck. I didn't have much, but I put in my nickel. My uncle, Hall Burrell, he put his watch under the stem post that day and said, 'She'll always be on time.' ..

Nearly ninety feet long and powered by the fore and aft compound steam engine and boiler extracted from McArthur's old Iona, the Armenon was slim and sturdy and perfectly suited for her Armstrong-Gimli
towing duties. With her screw propeller set low into tbe water astern of
the tow post, the Armenon could tow 300 feet of hauser line and a barge loaded witb 1,300 boxes of frozen fish from the company's Channel Island fish camps 130 miles down the lake to Winnipegosis. At full throttle and without a load, the Armenon could steam a full fourteen miles per hour. By comparison, the Booth Fish Company's Manitou, with a wider and longer hull for hold and deck freighting, was capable of twelve miles per hour unloaded. Despite her greater age, however, and a structural defect which caused her to list to port, the Manitou, with her twin screws, was still a fair match for the Armstrong-Gimli newcomer. Each steamer had supply runs north and fish runs south several times a week across the same seas - ample opportunity for each crew to test the other's efficiency and speed.
Elaborated Lloyd Burrell, ".I was eighteen when . started work as a fireman aboard the new Armenon... . I had to fire up the boiler about every twenty-five minutes; .I'd go down the hole, swing the door open and start piling cordwood in. '" On the lake we traveled night and day. I might be on two of the four watches, say from midnight to six in the morning and from noon to six in the evening, six hours on, six hours off
. . . The Armenon and Manitou used to freight down the lake the same
time and we used to race.. We'd see the Manitou coming a few hundred yards away and when we got abreast of one another, away we'd go. Engineer Jim Bickel kept me busy. We'd be throwing oil into the furnace to keep steam up, and the engine would be wide open.. .. Couldn't race too long. It would drive the fireman crazy, but we did it happily. . . . ..
"Jack Denby was captain aboard the Armenon for years," reminisced his nephew, Jim Denby. "Jack was a good captain. Excellent navigator. . . knew the lake A to Z . . . and was a good drinker too. . . . When she towed a barge, the Armenon couldn't beat the Manitou. Well, one night they came up alongside the Manitou. They were feelin' pretty good. So Jack cut the tow line, let the barge go, then circled the Manitou waving a burning broom out the back end of the Armenon, just to show 'em how much faster he was than the Manitou."
"Jack sure wouldn't let anybody beat him," confirmed his daughter. "He'd break his neck first'"
Steamboat rivalry on Winnipegosis was constant in all camps. But it was amiable. In the seasons that the Armenon and Manitou vied along the full length of the lake in nautical one-upmanship, there was never the likelihood that either Booth Fish or Armstrong-Gimli would emerge supreme because of a faster steamboat run. There would always be plenty of fish to catch, freight, and sell. But skippers on Winnipegosis treated their roles soberly, for the most part, imbuing the boats, their crews, and the lake itself with importance. Whereas the transient steamboat captains of the golden paddlewheel era on the prairies had come almost exclusively from British seafaring families or the American Mississippi tradition, the masters of Winnipegosis steamers had grown up locally with their trade. The lake shoreline was their home year round. And when they piloted lake steamers, they exhibited a colour and a humour all their own.
One of the first to steamboat on Lake Winnipegosis, with his Mockingbird yacht and the Lottie S. steamer, Captain Coffey was a stout man. The ferocity with which he smoked cigars and his gruff manner perpetuated his tyrannical mystique; but beneath the cranky exterior, Coffey was
a lamb. And the Manitou, first lady of the lake. attracted her fair share of characters. During the Manitou's earliest trips, her crews operated under the tightest of disciplinarians, an officious skipper named Fisher. Much warmer, but equally meticulous about the Manitou's sanitary state, Captain Bill MacDonald was a stickler for spotless decks and immaculate machinery. Skipper-manager Charles White, ever-efficient on land and at sea, not only packed the Booth Fish warehouses with record fish catches, but on one occasion herded over ninety fishermen’s dogs onto the Manitou for one trip north to the winter camp sites. The antics and achievements of Captain Alex Vance spread his reputation well beyond the shores of Lake Winnipegosis. First to transport loads of fresh-water sturgeon from Grand Rapids in 1891, the inventor of snow plowing and caboose fish-freighting over frozen lakes, and an innovator of more efficient methods of log towing, Sandy Vance was at home on and in the lake. One spring, with ice still thawing on the lake, Vance stripped all but his cap and swam amid the ice floes. Another time, forced ashore in a storm, he discovered an odd-colored rock; when he later found that it contained gold, he began an annual ritual - searching the lakeshores in vain for that auric location. Captain Vance also was renowned for his carefree attitudes towards navigation. Alone on his watch. he would go below for coffee and leave the wheel unattended. complaining. 'The damn boat goes wherever it wants to anyway'"
"The Manitou had the reputation of being a bard steamer to steer," agreed young deckhand Howard Medd. "The first trip that Vance made as captain of the Manitou, the year I was aboard. a dredge was marking the shallow channel at Sister Islands, halfway up the lake. They were putting buoys at each end of the channel. . . . When we reached the islands and the path that the dredge was clearing, we saw the dredge in the narrow cut and a barge right beside it. There was just room for the Manitou to go by along side the barge. Custom was, when you went through a place as treacherous as that, to slow down. But old Vance didn't bother to slow down a bit. He raced through at top speed. I was at the side of the Manitou and I could have stepped onto that barge, we were so close. Well, next trip we found that a bolt was broken and that the Manitou'" tiller was about to come loose'"
Tbe Manitou survived many near misses, some of which brought her within inches of disaster. Somehow she survived nearly two decades of navigation on Winnipegosis. Her frame had become grossly twisted out of shape - when her forward decks were level. the engine room astern bad a decided slope to it - but the crew could usually improvise by loading her cargo and cordwood fuel so as to keep the boiler and machinery level. The steamer's two upper decks and pilothouse made her top heavy as well. And with her forward above decks always loaded, the Manitou labored at the helm; her wheelsmen used to joke that the Manitou was never on course except when she crossed it. Yet all these shortcomings of age never bothered old-timer Bill Mapes. A rakish steam boatman, Mapes was a renowned storyteller, but the dashing Captain Mapes of his yarns bore little resemblance to the impulsive, inexperienced Mapes on the actual steamboat bridge.
"One September, the Manitou was making her run north with fishermen and their families to the winter camps: Long Point, Dawson Bay, Hunter's Point, Shoal River, and she was carrying lumber, fish boxes, horses, and dozens of people aboard," recalled one fisherman. 'This was 1926.. . ."
"After the first half-day's run we dropped anchor at the north end of Birch Island," wrote second engineer JOM McArthur, Captain Peter McArthur's son. '7be sky looked threatening in the north. In spite of this warning, Captain Mapes pulled up the hook and continued the trip north. About two o'clock that afternoon, when we were well away from shelter, a terrific northwest wind sprang up into a whole gale. Heavy seas crashed against the bows, washing an anchor from its place... . Water filled her forward deck level. . . and flowed through the companion ways. She sprang a leak in her bow where there was no syphon and water poured into her fore hold until she was badly down by the nose. . . ."
"Mapes was white as a sheet," claimed one of the two crewmen who had clung to the Manitou’s wheel in an attempt to bring the steamer into the lee of an island. In the galley the cook and a bargeman braced themselves against timberheads and tried to keep the wood stove from toppling when the boat rolled. "Beet juice went flying in the middle of the storm and the interior of the galley looked like a slaughterhouse," pictured one passenger.
Related a fisherman's wife: "Everything was tossed around, from dishes to people to food. Shelves were falling. People were sick. The floors were coated in a pukey slime. No-one could stand up. And the crew bad to crawl across the decks. . . . A skiff containing a dog team turned over and the dogs were drowned. And most of our food was lost or soaked. "
"Fish boxes were tumbling all over the Manitou. It described one Newfoundlander on her way north to cook for the fishermen through the winter. "I stayed in the cabin in bed. I was too scared to be sick!"
Recorded young John McArthur, "Steam was kept at full head and all syphons were kept at full capacity. But the water level kept rising and now the vessel was listing badly to starboard, so much so that she would not answer the rudder. . . . As it appeared to Captain Mapes, there was only one recourse. He gave the order for everyone to get to the lifeboats. . . . Then it came to our captain like a bolt from the blue - the deck load of lumber and fishing crates could be jettisoned. Forthwith it was, the result being that the Manitou righted herself, answered the rudder and we were able to make it to shelter."
Above all, Winnipegosis produced Captain Jack Denby. A mimic, a
faithful churchgoer, the town chanty-singer, a wit, and author of some of tbe town's most colourful language, Jack Denby was the affectionate "uncle" for many of the town's youngsters. When the Winnipegosis dramatic society called for community participation, Denby was always eager; and if his characterization was not exactly according to the script, his ad-libs usually brought down the house anyway. Captain Denby's companions were many, very often the drinking variety, and all were frequently treated to an impromptu mouth-organ recital or a leftover soliloquy. Wheelsman Billy Johnson recalled nights of companionship on the lake:
"I'd come on the second watch at midnight to take her through 'til six in
the morning. But Jack never left mc. He'd sit there in the pilothouse and
- sing hour after hour, to shorten the time for me. He'd sing comical songs
and together we'd sing church hymns."
"I mind the time I was given charge of the Iona, II began Jack Denby about his employment with the Standard Lumber Company. "Captain McArthur was on board himself that trip and On the way down, I hit nearly every rock on the lake. It was getting dark when the boat ran aground about two miles north of Winnipegosis. McArthur went to bed, while I stayed up, got the boat off the reef, and pulled into town. I figured I'd be fired, so I beat the boss to the draw by quitting. . . . McArthur pats me on the back and says, 'Jack, my boy, any fool can run a boat aground, but it takes a good man to get one off.' "
Beginning in 1889 Jack Denby challenged Winnipegosis territory with total enthusiasm. Competitive, strong-willed, and fluent in Icelandic, French, and Salteaux, Denby grappled with the lake's treacherous channels, its cross winds and shallows, its steamers and boatmen. First with McArthur, then with Booth Fish, and finally with the Grenons aboard the Armstrong-Gimli Armenon, Captain Denby learned rafting, fish freighting, and navigation by instinct - he never sailed OD Friday, but, like the watch built into the Armenon's keel, he was always on time. Denby was tough on his crews; the air around him often turned blue with
tbe passion of his orders, but his was a "friendly kind of cussing." In the Winnipegosis tradition, be liked his liquor, he often kept to himself, and he had bad nerves. But in a crisis his reflexes were sharp and his intuition accurate. Some said be bad a sixth sense for the lake and would wake from deep sleep to avert an impending collision or grounding.
"Tension made them hard drinkers. If you didn't toe the line you were out, and you'd lose a good job. Good job? Hell, as master of the Annenon Jack didn't command any more than eighty dollar a month. . . . These fellas were all hard drinkers, had to have a good stiff jolt in the morning to get going," remarked Lorne Lawson, Denby's son-in-law. Lawson bad come to Winnipegosis in the spring of 1929, eager to enter the fish trade; he' entered, carrying cordwood to steamboat furnaces, and worked his way up from there to Annenon wheelsman and then Armenon second engineer.
"There's one trip I'll never forget We bad been making special runs. We hadn't bad time to fix some leaking flues in the Annenon's big boiler, but we were still able to keep enough water and enough steam to make good time on these runs. We came with a full load of fish from Whisky Jack as far as Hill Island, about halfway, and couldn't keep the fire up anymore; water was coming through and washing out the fire. . . . So we pulled the fire right quick, and pitched it overboard as the steam pressure in the boiler crept down.
“I didn’t know what had to be done…We just knew that we had frozen fish aboard and that if we didn't get them to town, money would be lost. But Jack knew what to do. . .'. It was his plan to get some green birch. He got us to cut the wood down into plugs. I kept wondering what
good this would do. I was all agog. . . . ,
"Well, he wanted a young fella; he didn't want a whisky-soak to go into that hot boiler where there was still eighty pounds of steam on. So they asked me to go to the back of the boiler to the return flue, about ten feet a way back in the boiler to plug the holes. You had to stoop over and not touch the sides because they'd bum you. So I put on lots of overalls and sweaters. . . . They laid planks down because me feet'd burn otherwise, and (walked with those plugs and a hammer. . . .
"I got to the back and I could see right away that there were three flues with scalding water shooting out of them with this eighty pounds pressure. He'd briefed me on what to do - get the plugs started in the holes and then hammer them good, to expand the metal out. ( remember thinking all the time that ( had to hurry or else ( would faint. It seemed like hours, but it was finished. ( came out and collapsed . . . and ( remember thinking that those plugs would bum up, but they didn't leak a drop. And they ran three more trips before they had to cut the old flues out. Right there (learned a lot. . . and it was all Jack's idea. . . he knew exactly what to do."
Still, steamboat skippers were not the only heroes of Winnipegosis. After 1920, neither the Manitou nor the Armenon left port for open water without homing pigeons aboard. Booth manager Charlie White had seen motion pictures of these birds covering vast distances at great speeds and, at the end of World War One, decided to experiment with them on Lake Winnipegosis
To prepare the town's fish warehouse crews for an approaching steamboat load, White planned to introduce pigeons as the communications link; a pigeon would be released with details about the size of a catch just as a steamboat embarked on its homeward sailing. The first pigeon pair was taken to Spruce Island, about fifty miles up the lake. Within a few summers the pigeons had multiplied and were carrying information south from Whisky Jack, Fox Bay, Channel Island, and most steamer pick-up points along the lake's north shore. A proud Charlie White soon reported that his home pigeons were flying south to town at a mile-a-minute pace.
"There were no radios in those steam days," recounted Cecil Patterson, captain of his own steam launch on Winnipegosis. "When the fish companies caught their fish one hundred miles up the lake, they would want their men in town to know how much ice to prepare and how many railway cars to order for shipping the fish out. . . . These pigeons had a great- homing instinct; once released, they went straight up 'til they found their bearings and then straight home. . . . The fellow who raised the homing pigeons was a bachelor who lived alone in a small house down by the lakeshore . . . name was John Butler."
"At one time John Butler cooked on one of the steamboats, but then he was given the job of raising and training homing pigeons for the steamboats." Young Ed Kristjanson worked after school and during the summer holidays cleaning the cages and helping pigeon-keeper Butler, for six dollars a month. "He trained them by placing salt at his window for them to home to. I crated the trained pigeons and when the boats came into
Winnipegosis, I put them aboard The boats then went north to meet
tbe flSb boats; they tagged the pigeon with a two-inch-square piece of onion skin paper in a small vial attached to a leg. And in a few hours the homing pigeons arrived in Winnipegosis with information about the size of the fish load, or if a boat was in trouble. . . ."
trouble always happened near Hill Island," frowned Armenon second
engineer Lorne Lawson. "We broke a three-and-one-half-inch crank shaft coming through there one time. She weighed over 1,800 pounds, long and an awful thing to get out of the machinery and complicated pans. The stem bearing had gone out of line and the boat hadn't been pulled out for a few years. . . . It got further out of line and just like working a nail back and forth, it broke off. . . . When she broke, the engine ran free; we knew it'd finally happened. There wasn't a thing we could do. We were helpless. . . .
"Sent a pigeon. . . . Never went out with out pigeons. They were the only way we could communicate. Imagine what 1,200 or 1,300 boxes of fish would be worth. If they'd stayed out there and deteriorated, what could you do. They wanted them in New York right now, and fresh too. The companies wouldn't stand for any losses, no matter what it cost to get that fisb there in time. . . . Right away, they came out to tow us into port."
The Armenon captain and crew paid for the breakdown with their pride - no steamboat man relished entering the home port in tow. Reputations were won and lost from week to week. Competition was stiff, but not destructive. For as well as a sense of humour, Winnipegosis had a sense of community. There was a cohesiveness among the town's swelling
population that overshadowed the severity of the Depression in the late 1920's and early 30's. One might not have a steady job, but he always bad friends close by and the lake to supply nourishment. Year round, Winnipegosis townspeople found gaiety in what their lake provided. As a town school teacher remarked, "Each spring the return of the fishermen and their families was the most exciting thing. There would be mile-long trains of horse-drawn sleighs loaded with fish, and people on cabooses strung out across the lake ice. Everybody in town could hardly wait to get down to meet this whole business. All the young men would be back in town. And there would be dances. Everybody had money again and lively times returned. . . ."
"Most fun was in the fall” smiled fisherman Jim Denby, "gettin' ready to go north for the winter. I remember they loaded horses in a sling on a crane into the steamboat holds. Some would get loose and kick everything to pieces. One time they took one horse down the eight feet into the hold. took the sling off, pulled it out, and the horse jumped right back out on the dock. Two guys on horseback bad to chase it and had a helluva time catching it."
"Hall Burrell ran a little steam launch with a five horsepower engine in
it. called the Eve/yn B began Cec Patterson, who later owned that converted York boat and renamed it the Rambler. "We had a couple of pigs and some cattle on late that fall. He dumped them overboard near the shore. And one of these crazy pigs turned around and swam out toward the open lake. Well, Hall was half tight and he took after the pig in the steamboat. I told Hall to let it go . . . but Hall ran that engine all out yelling, 'Pigs are worth too much money!' He caught up to it and turned it around."
Life at Winnipegosis was never dull. If Jack Denby wasn't serenading the town with his hymns late in the evenings. Bill Mapes might be out spinning yams with his accomplice, Wags. a wire-haired terrier. On occasion, a towering Negro merchant named Bob Jones would steam into town aboard his launch Irene. Jones was noted for his tremendous strength and for his love for children. When he had arrived at Duck Bay in 1915, he ran a trading post, established a school for the settlement children, and professed to be "the first white man in Duck Bay." For the children, the summer days by the lake were an endless adventure. One game of hide 'n' seek led the group to the hold of the docked Manitou; when the chase concluded, her seacocks had been pulled and the Manitou had sunk above her bulwarks. Not surprisingly, many of the youngsters' capers originated from the shack down by the docks, where steamboat cook Bill Foley lived. There, in winter and summer, bachelor Foley told tall tales, cooked up stolen garden vegetables, and amused the boys with gadgets like his two gramophones, played simultaneously at peak volume to penetrate the peace uptown.
"Foley for a time was cook aboard the dredge," narrated Ruth Patterson, "and he used to bake pies for the crew the night before. He had a shelf where he used to line the pies up to cool. And every night after
Foley had gone to bed, the crew would sneak down and snitch some of these pies in a midnight feast. . . .
"When, Foley got fed up with this, because he'd be short of pies for the
next day's meals. So he started collecting flies. He collected and collected until he had gathered a half a quart. He then made a batch of raisin pies, and he put flies in some of the pies; but the good pies weren't put up on the shelf that night. . . . So the boys came down at midnight, stole them and feasted themselves on almost all of the shelf pies.
"Next morning. Foley came down and asked, 'Well boys, did you enjoy the pies?' 'What pies?' they said, acting innocent. So he said, 'Just to make this interesting, I'll show you what you've been eating.' So he took these half-eaten pies from the shelf, and opened them up, and there were flies and raisins mixed together. Some of the fellas hit for the deck and threw up. One lost his false teeth over the railing. . . .
"Not to be outdone, one of the dredge crew offered Foley a remedy for his dandruff problem. He didn't tell Foley it was peroxide. He told Foley to rub it into his hair faithfully every night for so many nights to cure his dandruff. Well, Foley ended up with green hair. . . ."

Diesel fuel. Internal combustion engines. Steel-hulled lake boats.
These marked the sudden decline of Winnipegosis steam. By the mid1930's, old Joseph Grenon Sr. bad retired, the Armstrong-Gimli Fisheries bad amalgamated with Booth Fish, and the government had purchased the Grenon's proud Armenon for tugging barges loaded with dredge diggings. It became cheaper to operate a diesel boat. A diesel engine occupied very little hull space compared with a boiler, a large steam engine, and all the cordwood fuel that went with them. Diesels could carry more fish, or load significantly more freight. But when the first of its kind, the diesel-powered Myrtle M., slid down the ways at Winnipegosis, there was naturally great animosity among steamboat men. Booth's Myrtle M. had few well-wishers.
... never made a trip on a diesel. I never liked the Myrtle M. I saw it, but I never made a trip on it. Diesel. . . . Ah, but 1 liked steam," eulogized engineer Lorne Lawson. "I learned to smoke my first pipe aboard a steamboat. . . ."
"And I miss the whistle of the steamers. My old Rambler had a high shrill whistle," Cecil Patterson agreed. "The diesel engines didn't have the thrill. They weren't romantic like a steam engine. The smell of steam cylinder oil to me was always sweet. . . ."
For fireman Lloyd Burrell, aboard the Armenon. "The smell of wood burning in the furnace was wonderful. To an engineer or a fireman. there is no perfume in the world that can beat it . . . and steam was dam reliable!"
Economy won over reliability. Diesel won over steam. And yean won over the old-timers. During the 1930's, Standard Lumber Company
sawmills closed down and Peter McArthur sold out his timber interests and equipment to the Pine Falls Pulp and Paper Company. His steam tugs /ona and Isabelle were worn out and bad been drawn ashore. Captain McArthur was in bis nineties. A devout Christian, a pioneer, an acquisitive monopolist, a frontier aristocrat, an aggressive, frugal. unaffectionate, punctual individualist, Peter McArthur bad probed the West, bad investigated it, bad invested in it, and bad grown with it. It was still young, but McArthur was not.
"I remember the Old Gent after the mill had closed," pictured one steamboat man, "when he was on an angel food diet (or his bad stomach. Coming down to the lake with his cane, he'd walk over the sawdust and wood slabs. And I remember his posture so well - his bands behind his back, stooped over :- and his white beard. . . . Peter was kind of a Scrooge character."
"His business was the business of shipping," concluded. grandson. "Peter McArthur was a businessman, not a captain."
When be and his era died in 1936, Captain Peter McArthur's estate was worth two hundred thousand dollars. Not a monumental sum, considering the extent of his life's investment. McArthur had fathered half a dozen enterprises, most from personal savings; be bad risked his business investment on such early unknowns as the CPR. Canada Cement, and International Nickel; be had survived a veritable series of adversaries, including Louis Riel; virtually alone be had pioneered (our major prairie
water systems; be bad successfully piloted three paddle wheeled up Grand Rapids, never conquered by steam before or since. An acute sense of power and money had elevated him to the directorships of two key prairie transportation syndicates; and he had designed and outlived five graceful ladies driven by steam - Prince Rupert (1812-81), Marquette (1879-97), North West (1881-99), Saskatchewan (1883-93), and Isabelle (I893-1920's).

Winnipegosis Boats

History of Steamboats on Lake Winnipegosis