In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • A Diminished Roar: Winnipeg in the 1920s by Jim Blanchard
  • Robert Wardhaugh
Blanchard, Jim –A Diminished Roar: Winnipeg in the 1920s. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019. Pp. 294.

What place and time could be more exciting than Winnipeg in the 1920s? While this question may seem to drip with sarcasm, there is more to it than first meets the eye. Only a generation before, as immigrants poured in and industrialization took hold, this city was heralded as "The Gateway to the West" and more impressively "The Chicago of the North." The rhetoric of boosterism prophesied the heights that Winnipeg would reach. But as Jim Blanchard highlighted in his preceding books, Winnipeg 1912 (2005) and Winnipeg's Great War (2010), the path forward was fraught with obstacles that threatened to derail the path to progress and prosperity. Instead, the Manitoba capital slid into a period of decline that would last decades and dash the dreams of boosters. A sharp recession in 1910 ended the short-lived golden era of the West. The onset of the Great War in 1914 ripped at the very fabric of society, and by 1918, it was clear that the Prairie cities, with Winnipeg at the forefront, had not profited from federal wartime contracts. By 1919, soldiers returned from the trenches to find a city tumbling back into the grips of recession, broiling with labour conflict, and suffering under a global pandemic. Welcome to Winnipeg in 1920.

This book is Jim Blanchard's third in his series on the history of Winnipeg. It follows the traditional path of Canadian historians in taking a decade approach to the chronology following the end of the Great War. But as Blanchard makes clear in the book's title, Winnipeg did not experience the "Roaring Twenties." In truth, neither did the rest of Canada. This decade descriptor is more suitable to the experience of the United States. The 1920s was a difficult decade for Canada. And nowhere was this more evident than in Winnipeg.

The topic of this book is important and timely. While the tides of nationalism and regionalism have again ebbed with Canadian historians, the focus on the local remains prominent. And Winnipeg, despite its contemporary reputation, has a fascinating history. Meanwhile, the so-called interwar period continues to receive scant attention, with the twenties playing the role of the forgotten sibling next to the "Dirty Thirties" and the Great Depression. This book has the potential of killing two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, Blanchard only manages to maim the bird.

A Diminished Roar provides a traditional approach to Winnipeg's history. It is a top-down perspective from the view of the disappointed city elite whose dreams of Winnipeg's greatness are repeatedly dashed. The reader is led on a journey through the bitter aftermath of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, an atmosphere roiling with class antagonism but one in which the business elite, symbolized by the Citizens' Committee of 1000, has clearly emerged victorious. While we get a sense of the anger simmering just beneath the surface, through detailed accounts of battles waged in city council and for the position of mayor, Blanchard makes no attempt to tell the story of Winnipeg's infamous North End or its racial, ethnic, and class cleavages. Instead, the story is decorated with mini-biographies of the "great men" who came mainly from southern Ontario in an attempt to make their fortunes but were instead met by the disappointment of a declining city. The Métis [End Page 183] and Indigenous nations had been pushed from the margins of the dominant story by 1920 and Blanchard leaves them in the shadows. Winnipeg's kaleidoscope of ethnicity so recently created by the western immigration boom from 1896 to 1910 is likewise ignored. The reader learns in considerable detail about the elite's struggle to construct Winnipeg's commercial edifices, boulevards, parks, highways, and festivals, but learns little of the daily struggles, concerns, and aspirations of its average citizens. While Winnipeg may have boasted one of the most progressive and effective women's movements, resulting in the province being the first in Canada to win the right to vote...

pdf

Share