Winnipeg Beach, Leisure and Courtship in a Resort Town, 1900–1967 (review)

Winnipeg Beach explores the styles of ‘courtship’ – the interpersonal social relations between single young men and women – in a Canadian resort town over a period of more than three generations. The author contextualizes his investigations in the history of the development of Winnipeg Beach as a popular summer resort for many thousands of people from Winnipeg and surrounding areas. Indeed, it is this more general aspect of the book that will interest many readers as least as much as the focus on courtship. The story is told in a lively, intelligent, and thorough manner and is mostly free from theoretical jargon.

A rich variety of sources were used in this study. The relevant secondary literature on western Canadian history and historical and comparative studies of leisure and resorts were consulted. Picture postcards, classified advertisements, works of fiction, newspaper articles, government reports, and business archives, especially the Canadian Pacific archives, were all examined and good use made of them. The last was particularly important for the CPR was the creator of the resort and its mainstay for more than half a century. The author consulted two oral history projects funded by the Manitoba Oral History Grants Program: The History of Winnipeg Beach (1991) and the Manitoba Gay/Lesbian Oral History Project (1990), and conducted his own interviews with eighteen people who lived, holidayed, or worked at Winnipeg Beach between 1925 and 1965. He also notes that he, himself, visited Winnipeg Beach a few times as a youth. I must, here, declare an interest of my own. My grandfather acquired a cottage at Winnipeg Beach in 1921, I spent all my childhood and teenage summers there, and cousins of mine continued to vacation at the family cottage until a very few years ago.

Barbour’s study begins in 1901 when the CPR undertook construction of the Winnipeg to Winnipeg Beach line and the development of resort facilities at what had been a small community of Ukranian, Icelandic, and Aboriginal farmers and fishermen. It continues on through the 1950s, when the CPR began to divest itself of involvement in the resort (its regular passenger service ended in 1961) until 1967, when the old boardwalk, an avenue of amusement park facilities, and the dance hall and roller coaster which anchored it at either end all originally built and operated by the CPR – were demolished.

The population of Winnipeg tripled from 1901 to 1911 so a market for a new beach resort existed and the CPR was quick to exploit it. Initially the resort was conceived of as a place were the genteel middle classes could escape the miasma of the city and retreat to their cottages for the summer in order to rest and commune with nature. Winnipeg’s newspapers reported the comings and goings, the parties, and the guests of prominent families at the Beach until 1915. But very quickly, and encouraged by the railway company, Winnipeg Beach became part of a new mass culture of recreation rather than an exclusive resort: Blackpool or Coney Island rather than Muskoka or the Hamptons. By the 1920s twenty to thirty thousand people were coming to the Beach on a busy weekend, some as part of large organized company, union, or ethnic society picnics, others alone or as part of a small group of friends or family. There were, then, three elements in the summer population: the local permanent population, the summer residents who owned or leased accommodation for the season, and the short-term visitors there for the day, the weekend, or a few days holiday.

There was a great deal of ethnic diversity and relations were not always harmonious. A notable feature was the very large proportion of Jews among the summer residents which was the result of their exclusion from other resorts in Manitoba. At Winnipeg Beach the railway company did not discriminate in leasing or selling property and was an agent of diversity. But even here...