WREA Riding Mountain Excursion Dr. Louisa Loeb Permit Teachers Of Manitoba 13Th Annual Reunion

WREA Riding Mountain

Excursion

The Martese that cruises Clear Lake

Article and photos by Judy Olmstead

Our Trip

On the only sunny, calm, warm day in two weeks, 19 WREA members and friends drove to Clear Lake, in Riding Mountain National Park, for their excursion made possible by the RTAM Chapter Initiative grant. We chose Riding Mountain for our trip this year as the National Parks offered free admission in celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary, and a cruise around Clear Lake aboard the Martese was our special event.

The group met at 10:30 a.m. in Brandon to carpool for the one-hour drive to Riding Mountain National Park. Upon arrival, some went to a restaurant for lunch, while others enjoyed a picnic lunch outdoors. Touring the local shops entertained us for the next hour until we met at the beach for our 2 p.m. cruise on the Martese. Once we departed the dock, the young captain informed us of the geology and history of Riding Mountain National Park.

WREA members meet to travel to Riding Mountain National Park

History

During the last ice age, most vegetation in the Riding Mountain region was eliminated and remained that way after the retreat of the glaciers 12,500 years ago. About 11,500 years ago, a spruce dominated forest began to grow. This vegetation changed as the climate changed until grasslands and boreal forests appeared and began to resemble the ecosystems of today.

The area was inhabited by native people at least 6000 years ago. More recently, the Assiniboine and Ojibway fished and hunted in the area. Between 1731 and 1749, Pierre de la Verendrye and his sons explored the region and traded with First Nations. A trading post was first established on Lake Dauphin, north of present-day Riding Mountain National Park in 1741, and by the Hudson Bay Company in 1744. By the 1800s, the highland was surrounded by fur trading posts and a rich harvest of furs travelled to European countries. After 150 years of exploitation, the populations of furbearers were depleted, with species such as the otter, marten, fisher and wolverine disappearing completely.

In 1858, Henry Youle Hind, a professor of Biology and Chemistry at the University of Toronto, became one of the first Canadian explorers to reach the area of RMNP during his surveying of present day Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

After the Canadian Pacific Rail reached Brandon in 1881, settlers established themselves on the plains around Riding Mountain. These settlements used the highland as a source of timber for building, for railroads, firewood, and wild meat to supplement their food supply. Since riding was the easiest means of exploring the rugged highland in search of furs and game, the original name of Fort Dauphin Hill was changed to Riding Mountain.

In 1895, 3975 square kilometres of land in Riding Mountain was designated as a timber

reserve, by the Department of the Interior, due to the quality of resources available to locals. A thriving logging industry was established due to the variety of trees in the forest. The white spruce, black spruce and jack pine were used for lumber; tamarack, oak and birch were used for fuel.

In 1906, the Superintendent of Forests monitored permits for cutting timber, which was intended only for settlers of the region. Many portable mills, as well as stationary mills, were set up in Riding Mountain. The Peden brothers ran a mill on the shores of Whitewater Lake from 1910 – 1938. Alex Kippen also had portable and stationary mills in Riding Mountain. He provided a camp for his workers. They produced lumber for the relief camps of the 1930s and for cottages built on the lakes. Original log cabins from the 1930s – 40s are still used on the north shore.

The forest reserve was set aside as a national park in 1929. The park opened to visitors on July 26, 1933, with thousands attending the opening ceremony held at Wasagaming. The East Gate is the original park entrance built in 1930, and is a National Historic site as the last national park log entrance still operating in Canada.

Depression Relief

The quick development at RMNP throughout its first decade could not have been accomplished without the depression of the 1930s. The economic conditions had put a huge labour force out of work, and the severity of the situation prompted the Federal Government to enact relief measures designed to make work for the vast numbers of unemployed. This federal aid was designated for relief work in Canada’s National Parks, and supplied funds for the establishment of work camps in many National Parks, with Riding Mountain sustaining the largest relief camp operation. The camps employed over 1200 men on various projects from1930-34.

Most of the public infrastructure in Riding Mountain National Park was created during the 1930s by the labourers participating in Canada’s great depression relief programs. There were 10 relief camps supervised by James Wardle with funding provided by the 1930 Unemployment Relief Act and the 1934 Public Works Construction Act. A large portion of these funds was allocated for construction of specific types of buildings in the parks, namely administration and community buildings, garages, warden cabins and staff headquarters. Many of the local craftsmen hired to design and construct these buildings were Swedish immigrants who had settled in the area. In RMNP, 86 buildings of various descriptions, including the one and a half story interpretive centre, the Park theatre, and the east gate entrance, were built between 1930 and 1936 through this program. In 1932, most relief workers were British and over half were from Winnipeg.

In the winter of 1933, 10 men from the relief camps stood on the ice at Clear Lake and played hockey games against the Intermediate hockey

team from Dauphin. These men were part of the Riding Mountain Relief Camp All Stars, a group of hockey players from various camps around the lake who would play against teams from the surrounding communities. RMNP was the only park at the time that had organized sports events for camp workers and on some Sundays, a thousand people would gather around the board to watch the games. Their goalie, Walter “Turk” Broda, from Brandon, would go on to win five Stanley Cups with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Grey Owl

In April 1931, Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney), having been offered a job by the Park Commission, arrived at a secluded lake with his two pet beavers, Rawhide and Jellyroll. His main goal was to re-establish beaver colonies in areas where they had been exterminated. He spent six months

living in a cabin studying and working with wildlife. He was not successful in establishing a beaver colony at that time due to a drought which lowered the level of water in the lake. He, along with Rawhide and Jelly Roll, moved on to Prince Albert. His cabin at Beaver Lodge Lake, now known as Grey Owl’s cabin, still stands and is a tourist attraction.

P.O.W. Camp

During World War II, a fuel shortage brought on by the war left many Canadians dependent on cord wood, so Riding Mountain was made accessible to rural municipalities for the cutting of fuel wood again. Urban centres such as Winnipeg were also supplied with fuel from the stock cut by German prisoners of war interned at Whitewater Lake from 1943 to 1945. They cut wood from a fire-killed stand located east of the lake.

Due to its remoteness and available wood supply, Riding Mountain was considered a desirable place to have a Prisoner of War camp. The Camp was surrounded by bush and distant from the park boundary and outlying communities. Located within central Manitoba, in the centre of Canada, escape from the country was considered to be virtually impossible. The Camp was unique in that it had no fences or walls enclosing it. Construction began in the summer of 1943, with 15 buildings erected, including five bunkhouses with complete washroom and bathing facilities, administrative staff quarters, an administration office, a large cookhouse with dining room to accommodate the entire camp, a store, garage, blacksmith shop, power plant, machine shop, barns for horses and a small hospital. By October, 450 German prisoners, captured in North Africa, arrived at the camp to reside and work.

Guards present at the camp were responsible for standing guard while the prisoners cut cordwood. They also accompanied the prisoners to Dauphin to pick up daily rations. Each prisoner was paid 50 cents a day for cutting the required amount of wood, (a cord per day). Since this was a “minimum security” camp, the prisoners often fraternized with guards, helped farmers, slipped away to visit local villages, and attended district gatherings.

The prisoners entertained themselves with a choir and an orchestra and played numerous sports. One popular hobby was wood carving and building dug-out canoes, some of which can still be found on the banks of Whitewater Creek. In the summer of 1945, with a fuel wood surplus, the prisoners were put to work on the Central Trail. At the end of the war, they were sent back to Germany.

Overview of the Park

The park is 2969 square kilometres (1,146 sq. metres). It sits atop the Manitoba Escarpment, 457metres above the prairie farmland surrounding it. The park is a rolling landscape of mixed forests and grasslands, dotted with lakes, streams

Due to its remoteness and available wood supply, Riding Mountain was considered a desirable place to have a Prisoner of War camp.

and bogs. It was designated a national park because three different ecosystems converge here: the upland boreal forest, the prairie grasslands and the eastern mixed deciduous forests. In its habitats, 233 species of birds, 60 kinds of mammals and 10 species of reptiles and amphibians thrive. Elk, moose, wolf, beaver, black bear, white-tailed deer and a herd of bison are the parks largest inhabitants. It has one of the largest populations of black bears in North America. In 1931, 20 bison were reintroduced from Alberta to re-establish the bison population. In 2016, the bison herd numbered about 40 animals.

There are 1900 lakes within Riding Mountain National Park, with Clear Lake being the largest. Clear Lake is much larger than the small area visitors see from the beach area at Wasagaming. It is approximately 4.5 km wide and at least 5 km long with a long finger extending to the east, which is the Wasagaming cabin and golf course area. The lake has a surface area of 29.37 square kilometres. Its maximum depth is 34.2 metres (or 110 feet) with a mean depth of 11.5 metres. Clear Lake’s water comes from underground springs rather than from streams. A sand bar, which shifts shape from day to day, separates Clear Lake from South Lake.

In 2015, very cold temperatures and calm winds as the lake was freezing in the fall, combined to create clear ice so that you could see straight to the bottom of the lake. It was amazing to skate on the ice surface and see the sand and rocks at the bottom below your feet!

There are many hiking trails, paddle routes for canoeing, and fishing lakes in Riding Mountain. You can fish for lake trout, northern pike, perch, walleye, and whitefish. There are more than 19 wilderness campsites in the park for backpackers or horseback riders to enjoy. You can walk one of the self-guiding trails or go dip netting on the Ominnik Marsh boardwalk. There is so much to do and enjoy even in winter. You can ice skate, cross-country ski, snow shoe, slide down the toboggan hill or ice fish. We enjoyed our trip to Riding Mountain National Park. Why don’t you plan a visit to a “free” National Park this year? ¡

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