JUNK BOAT TRAVELS: Day 23 - Brandon MB to Winnipeg MB

Sunday, October 1, 2017

Day 23 - Brandon MB to Winnipeg MB

September 2017

Brandon did not have much to attract us when we took a drive downtown.

The Brandon Wheat Kings are a Canadian junior ice hockey team based in Brandon, Manitoba. They are members of the Western Hockey League, joining the league in the 1967–68 season.

The former Cargill elevator on Pacific Avenue.
The crumbling elevator was once a centrepiece of the city’s economy as farmers trucked grain to the Wheat City, where it would be loaded into railcars and sent east and west to market.

The faded decals of "Cargill," "National" and "McCabe" are still visible on the side of the building as a reminder of the ghosts of grain companies past.

It's nice to have a short driving day!

Portage la Prairie is our only planned stop.

Pretty little town with a tractor coming towards us.

The area was first inhabited by Indigenous peoples (Plains Indians), long before European settlers began to arrive prior to 1850. In September 1738, after the fur trade had extended into Western Canada. Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye (a French-Canadian explorer and fur trader) built Fort La Reine north of the Assiniboine River to serve as a fur trading post, and provide the explorers with a "home" operating base, from which they would explore other parts of central Manitoba and western North America.

This former water tank is 85 feet tall. It was moved from the City's water treatment plant quite a few years ago and Coca-Cola paid for the original paint job.

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We haven't seen this before.

The former Dominion Post Office was designed by Thomas L. Fuller, one of Canada’s foremost architects and the designer of Canada’s first Parliament Buildings.

Originally, the ground floor housed the Post Office while the upper floor held the Customs and Revenue Office. Political controversy in Ottawa delayed construction, but the building was finally opened in 1898. In 1920, an addition was made on the south side. The building became the Portage la Prairie City Hall in 1960 and has provided spaces over the years for the Magistrate’s Court, Youth Court, RCMP detachment (with its jail cells), library and arts centre.

A plaque was erected beside the building in 1983 by the Historic Sites and Monuments Advisory Board of Canada. It commemorated the building as a representative of small, urban post offices designed by Thomas Fuller, and the fact that it was largely intact and had not undergone major exterior renovation.

I was intrigued by the three signs on this church.

Trinity United Church traces their roots back through the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches of Portage la Prairie and surrounding area.

The present building was built by the Presbyterian ancestors as Knox Presbyterian Church in 1897. Methodist ancestors built a church in 1880 (and rebuilt in 1891 following a fire) called Grace Methodist Church.

In 1925, The United Church of Canada was created by the Union of the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist Churches of Canada as well as a number of Local Union Churches scattered primarily through Western Canada. Both Grace Methodist Church and Knox Presbyterian Church became part of the United Church of Canada as Grace United and Knox United respectively.

After lunch we headed towards Winnipeg.

The Manitoba Legislative Building (French: Palais législatif du Manitoba) is the meeting place of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba. The neoclassical building was completed in 1920 and stands seventy-seven metres tall (253 ft). It was designed and built by Frank Worthington Simon (1862–1933) and Henry Boddington III, along with other masons and many skilled craftsmen.

I was sure this was another of Fairmont's historic hotels but it isn't/

One of Canada's grand railway hotels, the Fort Garry Hotel was built in 1913 by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and is designated a National Historic Site of Canada. A symbol of Winnipeg's importance as a transportation hub, this iconic hotel located just one block from Union Station is one of the city's most recognizable landmarks, defining the skyline for more than 100 years.

Constructed between 1908 and 1911, the station was built as a joint venture between the Canadian Northern Railway, National Transcontinental, Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and the Dominion government. The first train to enter the station did so on 7 August 1911, with the official opening the following year on 24 June 1912.

We drove to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights as we missed the entrance we drove across the bridge.

Esplanade Riel is a pedestrian bridge named in honour of Louis Riel.

It is a side-spar cable-stayed bridge which spans the Red River connecting downtown Winnipeg with St. Boniface; it is paired with a vehicular bridge, the Provencher Bridge. The bridge includes an architectural composite tower that is prestressed with a cantilevered and stayed semi-circular plaza area at the base of the tower. The plaza provides space for commercial activities and as well as a restaurant.
The Esplanade Riel is the only bridge with a restaurant in North America.