Aqueduct by Adele Perry

Author:Adele Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History; colonization; municipal water supply; Manitoba
ISBN: 9781927886519
Publisher: Arbeiter Ring Publishing
Published: 2020-10-28T19:14:28+00:00

5

The Histories We Remember

History is a cacophony. There is always more that happened than is passed on in word or on paper. There is always more that occurred than is recorded, more said than unsaid. We pull some things out to preserve, to remember, to analyze, and sometimes, to mourn or to celebrate. What is recalled, commemorated or left behind reflects our individual interests and agendas, and more than that, our social practices and priorities. What histories we choose to remember and what we choose to forget or minimize necessarily tells us more about the present than the past.

A 1934 story in The Winnipeg Evening Tribune saw the history of Winnipeg’s water supply as evidence of the onward march of modernist progress. Image courtesy of the University of Manitoba Archives and Social Collections.

It took very little time for the Aqueduct to be transformed from a subject of Winnipeg’s auspicious present and its promising future to a subject of the city’s illustrious and portentous past. Here the Aqueduct was described as an example of local genius and civic-mindedness. In 1923 An Historical Souvenir Diary of the City of Winnipeg, Canada was published to document the city’s “progress from a settlement village to a prosperous modern city known as THE GATEWAY OF THE WEST.” It documented and illustrated through the particularly modern medium of photography the selection, building, and use of the Aqueduct. The claim that “There are only four other communities in the world that have gone a greater distance to secure their water supply than have the Greater Winnipeg Water District” speaks to the culture of celebration, and to the reaching claims that sometimes went with it.1 Elsewhere the Aqueduct was described as the “largest public works in the British dominions.”2

The celebration of the Aqueduct and its role in Winnipeg’s past, present, and future continued as Winnipeg’s water system aged and was tested by suburban growth. When the Aqueduct was twenty-five years old, the Winnipeg Evening Tribune paid special tribute to “the group of men who three decades ago planned and carried through the building of an aqueduct over ninety miles of wilderness to the city.”3 Three years later, a souvenir booklet published for the seventy-fifth anniversary of Winnipeg’s incorporation explained how “the great aqueduct” made the city’s drinking water “the envy of cities all over the continent.”4

Monument to the Aqueduct’s Second Branch, opened in 1960. Nestled in a median on the busy Bishop Grandin highway in Winnipeg’s southern suburbs. Photograph by Michael Yellowwing Kannon.

Fountain and plaque dedicated to the Aqueduct. Unveiled in 1975, it is located in the boulevard on Winnipeg’s Broadway Avenue. Photograph by Michael Yellowwing Kannon.

As the twentieth century wore on, these celebrations of the Aqueduct were built into the fabric of the city in monuments and plaques. The first monument to the Aqueduct was unveiled at the opening of the Aqueduct’s Second Branch in 1960. Located in the city’s

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