David Asper's history lesson

Yesterday in the Free Press, David Asper had an article appealing to the citizens of Winnipeg to support the Friends of Upper Fort Garry in their plan for a park on some of the Upper Fort Garry site (a good portion of the fort sat on where Main Street runs today).

Increasingly, the lack of substance behind the Friends' plan is being revealed, and blogs like Anybody Want a Peanut? (a clever reference to The Princess Bride) and Policy Frog, and a couple of today's letters to the editor comment on this nicely. It would seem that, in spite of their supposed clout in a province where vast sums of public dollars flow freely to the latest downtown scheme du jour, economic reality is catching up the Friends, and the scope of their park is being scaled back to the point where it would be no more grand than the park that was already planned for the site when Crystal Development was allowed to build an apartment beside the Fort's site.

And so, this is increasingly becoming a choice between having a nice park and an apartment that adds to the downtown population and tax revenues, or simply having a nice park.

In spite of this, the myths persist. People think that the Upper Fort Garry gate--the oldest structure in Winnipeg, the only physical link to the fur-trading of the 18th and 19th century, and a feature in the City's coat of arms--is actually threatened by demolition. The Fort continues to be called "the birthplace of Winnipeg" by some media outlets--a debatable claim to say the least.

Then there was David Asper's article yesterday, which painted a rather misleading picture of the Red River settlement in 1800s, where "there existed a precinct of five forts associated with the fur trade. Upper Fort Garry sat angled across what is now Main Street in a southeastern-facing rectangular shape. Across the Assiniboine was Fort Rouge, located right on the nose of the land that bisects the Red and Assiniboine rivers. Sitting on the land where The Forks is now located were two forts -- the original Fort Garry and Fort Gibraltar. Fort Douglas was located a little farther north on the river's edge of what is now Point Douglas.

This was, Asper says, "...a time full of keen entrepreneurial spirit... looking back, the five fort district of Winnipeg may be the model on which the modern auto mall is based."

For anyone that imagines some kind of Pointe West Fur Park, it must be understood that no other forts were standing at the time of Upper Fort Garry. Fort Gibralter, Fort Douglas, and the old Fort Garry had all been demolished or destroyed by fire by the time the second Upper Fort Garry was built in the mid-1830s. Fort Rouge, meanwhile, built circa 1735, was lost to memory long before the American Revolution began. Throughout the lifespan of Upper Fort Garry, there was no concentration of forts in the region of The Forks, and the Hudon's Bay Co. tried their hardest to stifle the imminent "keen entreprenurial spirit" that began to swell up around them as the century wore on.

Mr. Asper is Chairman of the conservative National Post, which includes that paper's very laissez-faire business section, the Financial Post. Under this role, as a businessman himself, and as a member of a media empire that has frequently had to do battle with the over-regulating bodies such as the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, it could be assumed that he would surely sympathise with the free-traders of Red River. Or with the free-traders of today, which in this instance, is Crystal Development, who wants to build an apartment building alongside the Fort's site.

Before 1849, it was a punishable offence to engage in trade that was not sanctioned by the HBC, who also happened to serve as the local government and judiciary. In that year, the HBC's monopoly on trade effectively ended at the trial of Gaillaume Sayer, who was brought to court in Upper Fort Garry for trading outside the control of the HBC. He wasn't charged, and the enforcement of their monopoly lost it's potence. Only then, when free trade was allowed to occur, was the city able to grow.

Later, with hegemony no longer thiers, the local fur trade all but gone, and a growing city (the incorporation of which, by the way, they fought against vigorously) beginning to encroach on their land reserve (which encompassed all of today's downtown between the Assiniboine River and Notre Dame Avenue), the HBC jumped on the urban development bandwagon. It was this newfound role, in the midst of a dizzying real estate boom, that the Company demolished their fort and allowed the City to straighten Main Street so that it would be easier for lot surveying, and allow for easier passage to Fort Rouge and St. Boniface. It was hoped in those heady days of 1881-'82, and in the 32 years of growth that followed it, that significant buildings would come to replace the fort. Sadly, they didn't, and besides the stately Manitoba Club, which obstructs the Fort Gate from Broadway, the built history of this block has been wholly unspectacular. Today, a parking lot, a curling rink, and a dreary civic building stand where the fort did. A Petro Canada station stands at Broadway and Main, on or near the site where Thomas Scott was executed by Louis Riel's guerillas.

Sadly, what passes for "keen entreprenurial spirit" in Winnipeg today, is to ask citizens, businesses and government for money to build a vaguely-planned park.

It was ok to let this immensely historic site decline and be ignored as a litter-strewn, flood-prone, and dilapidated patch of land behind a gas station's garbage bins (maybe the Friends couldn't see this from the windows of the Manitoba Club). When a call for development proposals went out last year, it was ok for any of the Friends to not bother to submit a proposal. Only when Crystal Developers came along did the Friends form, standing the way of a business that had a plan to--imagine!--invest private money into downtown housing.

Like Gaillaume Sayer, Henry McKenney, and the hundreds of men who followed, coming to Winnipeg to get rich and build a city, Crystal Developers simply want to do business in downtown Winnipeg (while making every provision to respect the heritage of Fort Garry). Unfortunately, it seems this region is once again governed by a desparate, jealous, and antiquated ruling set who are not quite ready to let a city grow up around them.