Ghost creeks: Winnipeg buried many waterways that could have changed city's shape

NOTE: This story was originally published Sept. 2, 2018.

In a parallel universe,Winnipeg is styled around a network of rivers, creeksand streams, where paddlers driftpast stone mills churning grain into flour.

That pastoral scene sounds like a sketch of some European town but it's onethat easilycould have been Manitoba's capital city. The networkwouldn'texactly have rivalled the canals of Venice or Amsterdam, but Winnipeg's waterways would have lent more weight to the River City moniker.

Within the area now bounded by the Perimeter Highway, there were once 16 major streams and 20 smallcreeksor coulees that carried water when fed by heavy rains or spring melt.

Some of thosecreeks went by the namesMcMillan's, Miry's,Scully's, Catfish, Brown's, Logan's,Pritchard's, St. John's,Inkster's, Taylor's, andMcLeod's.

Some were known through the years by multiple names:Brown's was also called Sinclair's Creek and Ross's Creek, whileMcLeod'swas alsoMill Creek.

Others had none because they were truncated limbs of larger streams or conduits that primarily served as wetland outlets much of the landscape now occupied by Winnipeg was marshland or periodicwet meadow.

The streams and creeks carved thatland, and bowed and twisted as they meandered through farms and fields that are now private yards, city streets, golf courses,and the heart of Winnipeg's Exchange District.

They allemptied into theAssiniboineand Red rivers andcreateda rich, variable texture to the landscape.

"People think of Winnipeg as being flat but there were creeks all over the place, all parts of the city," saidJim Smith, president and archivist with theNorth East Winnipeg Historical Society. "That was the natural landscape."

The popularity of places likeFort Whyte, the AssiniboineForest and theBois-des-esprits, a forested area around the Seine River, suggest people are drawn to idyllic settings if they can find them in the city.

Had the old waterways been preserved, "there could have been a lot more natural beauty to enjoy," Smith said.

"If we had the foresight back then."

Land of windmills andwatermills

The waterwayswere highly valued by the area's first European settlers, who built mills powered by the currents.

The 1838 census, the first to record the colony's millers, lists 14 windmills. The number peaked at 18 about two decades later, with the majority concentrated on the west bank of the Red River, according to the Manitoba Historical Society.

Watermillswere tied to streams and were more scattered throughout the colony than windmills. By 1856 there were nine watermillsin operation.

People didn't appreciate them then, I guess. They got in the way of progress. I think they have a greater appreciation nowbut it's too late.- Historian Jim Smith

But as the settlement grew into a city, the view on those waterways changed.

Instead of continuing to embrace them, early Winnipeggers drained them, filled them in orentombedandrerouted themthrough storm sewers,and builton top of them.

By the early 1900s, Winnipeg was one of the fastest-expanding cities in the world, both in terms of population and construction. The citywent from 7,900 residents in 1881 to more than 179,000 in 1921.

Due to the cyclical nature of wet and dry seasons, the boundaries of the marshland areas would have changed greatly, and indry yearsthe marshland would have beenattractive for the expanding city.

The whole Norwood Flats area is one of those marsh areas, bounded inside an old oxbow of the Red River. Enfield Crescent traces the border of that oxbow.

As a result, the natural shape of Winnipeg was altered in therush of development andlack of environmental consideration, as no legislation existed then to protect the waterways.

"People didn't appreciate them then, I guess. They got in the way of progress,"Smith said. "I think they have a greater appreciation nowbut it's too late."

Of those 36 original channels, only nine still exist, though even some of those are a fraction of what they once were.

Sturgeon, Truro, Omand's, Bunn's, Baldry, and Beaujolais Coulee are chiefly the same length.

McLeod's, which once chiseled several kilometres through North and East Kildonan, is a fragment of what it used to be.Selkirk is a short piece of what was originally Inkster's, and Beaver Dam is a scrap of its former self.

However, traces of even those long-buriedcontours of Winnipeg's past can still be seen in many places on Broadway near Osborne Avenue, on the campus of St. Mary's Academy, in private yards, and in parks and golf courses.

And a century later, those bygone brooksare still responsible for fracturing the foundations of homes or buildings and collapsing roads into sinkholes, continuing likeghosts of the pastto provoke the city that tried to chokethem out.

In poetic irony, the decision-makers who plugged them also fell victim.

Sinking buildings

Winnipeg's first city hall sank into the soft bed of Brown's Creek, which once started around Ross Avenue and wound its way acrossPrincess Street to near the corner of King Street andWilliam Avenue.

From there it followed William, then went under a wooden bridge at Main Street and continued along John Hirsch Place before angling across toStephenJubaPark and into the Red River.

Before it was all filled in by themid-1890s, the creek alsohad a smalltributary that ran fromRorieStreet and went betweenMcDermotand Lombard avenues before merging with the main creek on present-day Waterfront Drive atthe foot ofBannatyneAvenue (known for a time as Sinclair Street).

In the1970s, excavations for housing in the Centennial District, west of Princess Street near Ross Avenue, uncovered the bed of theformer creek,still fed by the flow of groundwater, according toRobert Michael W. Graham, who wrote a master's thesis titledThe Surface Waters of Winnipeg: Rivers, Streams, Ponds and Wetlands, 1874-1984.

Other structures are still battling the reclamation efforts of those old waterways, such as the Granite Curling Club, built at the edge of the old Colony Creek.

"We fill things in but nature doesn't accept that. It still wants to work, to make it happen the way it's supposed to," Smith said. "So then it starts running underground."

Spreading across the prairie

The original Colony Creek originatedinthe higher lands of the Manitoba escarpment, northwest of the city.

Flowing in, its waters spread across the flat topography just northwest of The Forks, separating into multiplearms that drained across the prairie. The water finally linked up with theAssiniboineRiver through several outlets Colony, Brown's, Logan's,Pritchard's, St. John's andInkster'screeks.

Sturgeon,McMillan's,ScuIly, Miry andCatfish creeks also began at the escarpment.Sturgeon Creek was, and still is, the largest and most mature of those original streams, notes Graham.

CelestinThomas built the Winnipeg Brewery in 1873 on the banks of Colony CreekatDingman'sCrossing, at the southeast corner of Broadway Avenue and Colony Street.

A dip in Broadway, between All Saints' Anglican Church and Great-West Life, still exists today, where the creek's 15-metre wide couleeused to be.

Flooding

As the marshes, which could contain large amounts of surface water, and the deep ravines and coulees were filled in, flooding became a major problem in the wet years.

"With regard to land drainage, it is hard to imagine, among the great cities of Canada, a poorer physical site for a large urban centre than that of Winnipeg," Graham wrote.

"It has been noted before that had an engineer chosen the site of the future city, the Birds Hill esker or the limestone outcrops of Stony Mountain would have made safer and more logical choices than the poorly drained clay plain."

EngineeringIogic, however, played no part in the city's location. Instead, it owes its existence to its strategic geographical location at the junction of the Red andAssiniboinerivers, which was ideal to the business of the fur trade, Graham wrote.

The1860swere dry or average years and the serious implications of the continuedencroachments into thefloodplainsand the coulees did not begin to appear until the wet years of the late1870sand early1880s.

"But once man has invested his time,energy, and money into the alteration of a natural waterway, there is, the experience of history teaches, no going back," Graham wrote.

"From that point onwards all actions are stop gap and ad hoc."

The city scrambled to create a series of culverts and sewers to alleviate the flooding issues, much of which came from Colony Creek as it spread and sought out its six linkages to the rivers.

The city had expanded ontothe watershed and was in the way. So its politiciansturned to the province for help and the province, in turn, requested the assistance of the Dominion government.

Thediversionknown today asOmand'sCreekwas the result, according to Graham.

The city's engineers created a system of drains that linked Colony Creek toOmand's, which was then routed through the 10-metre wide ditch we see today running from Notre Dame along Dublin Avenue, and adjacent to Empress Street.

It starts out winding through fields north of the airport and then Brookside Cemetery, before becoming a rigid channel through the St. James industrial area and past big box stores.

The location of the original and natural full path of Omand'sCreekis a matter of speculation, as it has long since been backfilled, developed and occupied, Grahamwrote in his thesis.

That diversion eliminated the source for six other major streams in the Winnipeg area: Colony, Brown's,Logan's, Pritchard's, St. John's andInkster's.

Left susceptible to erosion, the empty beds of the streams and coulees became viewed as a nuisance.

"Within 20 yearsonly traces would remain of many of their original courses. Residential lots were subsequently laid down and built over their former courses, sewers laid in or adjacent to their beds," Graham wrote.

Aerial photographs taken of the city in 1927 show most of the stream courses had been obliterated or were remnant only, he wrote.

With the natural drainage and water-storage systems eliminated, the city is now forced to recreate those functions by building retention ponds.

"We were short-sighted back then and now we've got this expense of trying to replace what was already there," said Smith.

Remnants

A keen eye can still locate remnants of some of the old waterways, while others have been marked by plaques or other monuments that pay tribute to what was once there.

"Quite often you'll see on a street a low area, which is an indication there was a creek there," said Smith, noting there are several places like that along Henderson Highway.

One of those inthe Elmwood neighbourhood, running through the Kelvin Community Centre and over toward ChalmersAvenue, is the vestige of a former channel of the Seine River, much like the Norwoodoxbow.

According to Graham's thesis, there are several relics of the old creeks.

• McMillan'sCreek

Traces are seen in a dip in Portage Avenue at Overdale Street and in a small wooded coulee immediately south of the roadway.

• Miry Creek

A dip in Portage Avenue west of theTruroCreek culvert is all that remains.

• Brown's Creek

A plaquemounted on a carved stone lion's head at a bend alongJohn Hirsch Place in the Exchange District acknowledges the location.

Light fixtures along JohnHirsch Place, erected in the past year,celebrate the former Brown's Creek with a rippling water effect cast onto the brick.

The still flowing groundwater meets the river in a storm seweroutlet in StephenJubaPark.

• McLeod'sCreek

A pair of stones used for grinding grain in a gristmill that operated alongMcLeod'sCreek between 1860 and 1870 are displayed in a small park at the corner of Edison Avenue and Henderson Highway, along with a plaque.

The creekoriginally extended for kilometres throughmarshes and drainagerunoffs. It was buried in culverts around 1913 as part of the construction for the Canadian Pacific Railway's Bergen line.

Only a small portionremains within theRossmeregolf course and another short section at the mouth where it meets the Red River.

• Logan's Creek

The approximate site of this stream's mouth is marked by a cairn commemorating Fort Douglas, just north of the AlexanderDocks. Asmallwooded coulee lies just behind the cairn, which Graham believes maybe a remnant of the former streambed.

• Pritchard'sCreek

Only a small indentation in the Red River near the formerPritchardBoat Yardindicates the creek's former mouth at the Red River. The marina was built over it but that was torn down about two decades ago and is now a park.

The rest of thestreambedwas built over at theturnof the century after the Colony Creek diversion cut off the major source of its flow.

• St. John's Creek

Traces of the coulee of St. John's Creek can clearlybe seen in St. John's Park. Astorm sewer carries off floodwaters in the coulee bed, which was also the spot where Lord Selkirk landedin 1816.

• Inkster'sCreek

A remnant still flows throughKildonanParkas Selkirk Creek. The presence of the former creek can also be seen in many depressions in roads in theLuxtonarea, from north of St.John's Anglican Cathedralto the Battle of Seven Oaks monument.

The creek was a multi-branched one that was fed in three places by the Colony Creek.Two limbs went west from the Red River throughKildonanPark andShaareyZedekCemeteryin the Margaret Park neighbourhood.

Another ran parallel to the river throughLuxton, intersecting with the branch that went upInksterBoulevard. Slight traces of the depression that marked the location ofInkster'sMiIlPond and the flume to the Red River can still be seen.

• Truro (Scully)Creek

TruroCreek exists today and carries waterfrom private stormwater sewers. Its floodplain, north of Portage Avenue,is now usedas a park. South of Portage, some the floodplain hasbeen encroached upon by development in Bruce Park, but it remains undeveloped where it meets the Assiniboine.

• Omand's-Colony Creek

First called Catfish Creek, it was whereCuthbertGrantand othersrested before theBattle of Seven Oaks in 1816. It was laternamed after John Omand, who farmed near the mouthfor nearly 50 years in the later 1800s.

The diversion of 1880 still exists in the same configuration originally excavated. The upper reach of Colony Creek has been dammed within BrooksideCemetery to protect downstream development from floodwaters.

• Bunn's(Taylor's)Creek

Although extensive housing has developed along its length, the floodplain hasbeen preserved and was designated as a provincial waterway in the 1970s to protect it. The creek's path was slightly altered to straighten some of its contours when Bonner Avenue was being put through.

According to Smith, the winding creek would originally have crossed the path of Bonner in three places but now it does so only once.

• Beaver Dam Creek

A fragment of this small stream was preserved due to late development in the Charleswood area. It serves dual usage as a parkwaterway and storm drainage outfalI.

• BaldryCreek

Once an extensive coulee and stream, Baldryhas been excavated and developed into a retentionsystem for the Fort Richmond area.

• Beaujolais Coulee

It still exists in much of its original condition, nestled between the St. Norbert Community Centre and a condominium building.