Man vs Machine

It could be challenging for a small-town editor in the 1920s to fill his weekly paper with interesting news. On a slow day, an odd potato could warrant four paragraphs:

Pilot Mound Sentinel Editor Ron Tuckwell loved to tease his friend Pete Fraser.

Even a hole in a sidewalk could earn a mention:

This made the front page of the Sentinel on June 26, 1924.

But sometimes the lead story was dramatic and riveting. Accidents especially were front-page news. Horses kicked or tossed their riders. Horseless carriages created new perils. Household mishaps and farm accidents broke bones.

 
And sometimes it was man versus machine. 

The Sentinel’s front-page news from October 29, 1925 would have been the talk of the town.  

Luckily, Dr. Ferguson could attend promptly. His phone number was 1. Just 1. He operated his medical practice out of “The Maples,” his large house at Broadway and Fraser Street, not far from McKay’s Garage on Railway Street.

McKay’s Garage, c. 1954. The building was built by W. O. Mayne in 1913. [Source: Pilot Mound 50 / District 75 / Reunion booklet, July 1954, p. 50]

Alfred E. Moore escaped permanent injury and made a remarkable recovery. A few weeks after his horrific accident he was re-elected as Mayor for a third term, by acclamation, a post he held until 1937.

Dr. Robert Dickson Ferguson (1866-1942)
[Source: Pilot Mound Illustrated. 1902-1903, p. 13]

 

“The Maples,” Broadway and Fraser Street
[Source: Pilot Mound Illustrated. 1902-1903, p. 13]

Pilot Mound was fortunate to have the services of doctors like Dr. Ferguson. In 1905 he welcomed 26-year-old Dr. Thomas Andrew Cohoe (1879-1939) to his practice. Both were committed to their profession, and worked together for a number of years. A history of the area published in 1969 tells of Dr. Cohoe’s similar devotion:

Mr. [William] Aitken, a recent arrival from Scotland was working on a farm in the Pilot Mound district in 1905. A big Sawyer-Massey steam tractor had been damaged and Mr. Aitken and his employer were hauling it back to the farm-yard for repair. In handling one of the teams his leg became tangled in the driving lines and he was tripped, falling in the path of the big tractor. “The next moment I was on the ground pinned under the heavy drive wheels which had rolled across my chest. Surprisingly enough I felt very little pain while under the wheels, though the blood poured out of my ears, nose and mouth. But as soon as the big tractor was pulled off me the agony was terrible. My ribs were crushed in, both front and back, my collar bone was broken, plus various other injuries. Things were so bad that I asked a young Englishman, who had been taking pot shots at crows with a revolver that morning, to shoot me and put me out of my pain.”

Instead, a doctor was sent for from Pilot Mound. Doctor Cohoe was recently out of medical school and for devotion to duty he would be hard to beat. For four days and three nights he stayed with the injured man. He sent to town for rolls of cheese cloth and plaster of Paris, and without X-rays or any equipment other than what the farm had he brought the patient back to health.

“In two short weeks he had me walking. Six weeks after the accident my brother took sick in the night and though still in a cast I set out on horseback to get a doctor. Part way to town we came to a gate. Knowing I would never mount again, if indeed I ever got off the horse, I had my mount jump the gate, which, luckily for me he did successfully.

“How I survived seems a miracle to me. The will to live was strong in me, but without doubt my recovery is also a testimony to the skill and faithfulness of the young pioneer Manitoba doctor, Doctor Cohoe.” 

[Source: Elsie Moir, ed., Chronicles of Our Heritage, Dec. 1969, pp. 180-181]

Pete Fraser would agree: you do not want to tangle with a steam engine.

 

A Sawyer-Massey steam engine powering the shingle mill at Austin’s Threshermen’s Reunion

Yes, when it’s Man versus Machine, it’s an unfair fight, but with prompt medical attention, Alfred Moore and William Aitken beat the odds and resumed their lives.

But I suspect both men cringed watching Chaplin’s Modern Times movie of 1936:

via GIPHY

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Call before you dig

The local “Call Before You Dig” safety program is well known. Anyone planning to dig deeper than 15 cm for any reason needs to contact Manitoba Hydro to “identify underground electrical and natural gas lines before you dig to prevent personal injury or death, costly repairs, equipment damage, service outages, and environmental pollution.” [1]

Fifteen centimetres isn’t very deep, and nowhere near six feet under. Imagine the surprise in 1967 when workmen digging a sewer trench on Buchanan Boulevard uncovered not a utility line, but five skulls! The community club there ought to be haunted.

Archaeologists at the University of Manitoba had few clues as to the story behind the odd find. It remains a mystery. [2]

Mysterious, but perhaps not so surprising. A 1970 article reported that local archaeologists recorded 58 historical and prehistorical sites within Winnipeg’s perimeter highway. Extensive archaeological work preceded The Forks development, and its Archaeological Impact Assessment and Management Plan acknowledged that, “The Forks is the most significant archaeological site in Manitoba, if not the entire prairies.” [3] Winnipeg Free Press columnist Niigaan Sinclair has written about the effects of smallpox and locations around Broadway and Main Street, concluding that, “Much of the city’s downtown could be the site of a massive Indigenous burial mound.” [4]

 
A 1970 study claimed, “The Sturgeon Creek area proved ‘slightly disappointing,’ but pre-historic traces indicate a small complex of habitation area and burial mound.” [5]

In 1983 Winnipeg Free Press writer Myron Love lamented that only three or four identified sites in a 1980 archaeological report had received any attention. Dozens were listed, including “a substantial village buried possibly alongside Sturgeon Road,” most likely near a burial mound in St. James-Assiniboia. Love wondered if this was the Indian burial mound “being used as a snow dump.” [6]

In 1968 the Living Prairie Museum was established at 2795 Ness Avenue as a 13-hectare tall grass prairie preserve. The nature park protects a scarce habitat that once dominated the plains. In 1974 the museum wanted the city to extend the site and prevent adjacent industrial development. The newspaper article added a suggestion that “the city acquire the site of an Indian burial ground farther north and link it to the Living Prairie Museum.” [7]

The 1974 plea for more acreage did not prevent industrial development nearby.  [7]

A reunion of sorts was held by the Living Prairie Museum in 2006. The burial mound a mere 400 metres due north of the museum was mentioned when oldtimers reminisced in a project called “A Walk Through the Prairie Past – the History of the Living Prairie Museum” hosted online by the VMC (virtualmuseum.ca). [8]

A map on the VMC site notes location #1 as an “Indian Burial Mound.” [8]

Overlaid on a current Google map, location #1 appears to be an odd collection of stones (circled here in red) just north of Murray Park Road and adjacent to Boeing Canada’s parking lot. 

A closer view of the site [Google maps]

Museum founder and dedicated naturalist Dr. Robert Nero noted the “historic Sioux burial mound that sits on very decent prairie.” He said he was disappointed that this area “had not been embraced within the boundaries of the Living Prairie Museum site and that burial mound preserved and identified and designated.” Archaeologists determined that the site was several hundred years old and contained the remains of five or six individuals. [8]

First excavation of the burial mound, 1930. [8]

Reunion interviewee Jack Brown told of the initial excavation of the burial mound:

They dug out the top, ’til they come to some stones and then they dug by hand and they dug around and cleaned off these stones and there was a pile of stones in the center and four small, small piles in the direction of the compass (north, south and east and west) and it was getting on to late and the guy wanted to take a picture of these, but he said, well, we’ll do it in the morning, so after they left, I guess some kids had come before they got there in the morning and had scattered the stones around so he said, put them back like they looked, and the guy took his pictures, but then they removed the stones and they dug below them and they took out seven skeletons, human skeletons, and the guy took them away, the bones away with him.

The site was excavated again in 1960. [8]

No doubt there are several such local burial sites that have escaped notice. Perhaps that is for the best. May they rest in peace.

Sources

1. “Call Before You Dig” program, Manitoba Hydro.  https://www.hydro.mb.ca/safety/click_before_you_dig
2. “The Case of the 5 Skulls,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 25, 1967, p. 3
3. Forks Archaeological Impact Assessment and Management Plan. City of Winnipeg, Forks Renewal Corporation, 1988. https://www.theforks.com/uploads/bibliographies/1988-Forks_Archaeological_Impact_Assessment_and_Mngm_Plan.pdf 
4. Niigaan Sinclair, “Smallpox epidemic left massive Indigenous burial ground under Winnipeg’s downtown,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 3, 2018, p. 11
5. “Students Comb City For History,” Winnipeg Free Press, January 17, 1970, p. 3
6. Myron Love, “Careless feet walk on rich heritage: Clues indicate a buried Indian village,” Winnipeg Free Press, March 26, 1983, p. 34
7. “Residents Want Park Enlarged,” Winnipeg Free Press, April 226, 1974, p. 31
8. “A Walk Through the Prairie Past – the History of the Living Prairie Museum,” https://www.communitystories.ca/v1/pm_v2.php?id=exhibit_home&fl=0&lg=English&ex=00000661 

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