MANITOBA
Winnipeg
NO PART OF THE FOLLOWING
ARTICLE AND PHOTOGRAPHS
MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT
PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR ©
Formerly confused on this website with River Park,
Rob McInnes of Winnipeg submitted that this was a different park.
Accessed by a Winnipeg Navigation Company ship for between 25 and 50 cents (depending on the day of the week), and leaving Norwood Bridge on the Red River, RIverside featured picnic areas, sporting events, and boat excursions.
Picnics were the main, if not the only, attraction in the early days of this park. Besides visitations by individuals, there were organised, annual outings held here by churches, businesses, and other groups. One of those mentioned is the Hudson's Bay Company. These continued up to around the time of the park's demise. A 1920 newspaper writes about a YMCA group that camped on the grounds for a weekend.
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Riverside Park 
During a cloudy-bright day, people lounge on a grassy field while viewing an unknown event out of frame to the left. |
In 1910, the Manitoba Provincial Government bought the park from its private owner. It may be at this time that dancing became another recreation because there is information regarding a dance-hall pavilion with live bands providing the music. Unfortunately, this building would be badly damaged from a flood in the spring of 1916; it would never reopen.
An additional improvement saw tram car service extended to the park in 1913, although excursion boats still operated. There is no reference as to what, if any, amusement rides were ever there.
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Ship Loading  |
Note at the Upper Right, the British `Union Jack' flag, and the guyed structure at Far Centre Left. |
By a few years into the Great War (WW I), attendance had fallen off and the park was in decline. Sometime in the 1920s, the Manitoba Agricultural College came to occupy the land, so the government must have repurposed the area when it saw the park was no longer popular.
Today, Fort Garry University has agricultural plots
on this site for the purpose of experimental research.
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Thank you to Rob McInnes of Winnipeg for bringing this needed correction to our attention, and for supplying the postcard scans. |
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