Winnipeg’s Weather Station History

St. John’s College, ca. 1880s. (Credit: Archives & Special Collections)

Canada’s meteorological service was founded in 1871, and a station was established in Winnipeg at St. John’s College in the same year. By 1873, Winnipeg had two official weather stations: St. John’s, one of the university’s founding colleges, was a Chief Station, which made eight observations daily. A second station, operated by James Stewart at his downtown drugstore, was a Reporting Telegraph Station, responsible for transmitting observations daily to Toronto and Washington, DC. In May 1882, the college assumed both roles, after Stewart’s resignation.

At the time, St. John’s College was located in the North End, on the shore of the Red River in the vicinity of St. John’s Cathedral. A meteorological observation tower was added to the river side of the building in 1874, and the college’s first anemometer (measuring wind speed and direction) was installed there.  The instrument was dedicated to the memory of Margaret Macallum, whose father was the headmaster of the Red River Academy, the forerunner of St. John’s College. It bore the inscription: “In memory of Marie Margaret Macallum. This register of the winds, one of the latest triumphs of science and art, has been planted on her natal place, the earliest centre of civilization in this lonely and boundless land, by her bereaved mother and sister, MDCCCLXXIV”.

Page from St. John’s College meteorological register for April 1876. Note the comment for April 19 regarding the river rising and the appearance of geese and cranes. (Credit: Archives & Special Collections)

How Observing Worked

As a Chief Station, college staff or students had to take observations every three hours, day and night, and record them in a meteorological register. Three of these daily observations were telegraphed using a special weather code to Toronto and Washington, DC, the headquarters of the Canadian and American weather services, respectively, as there was a reciprocal agreement between the two nations to exchange weather information.

By the 1920s, the St. John’s weather station was in disrepair. An inspector commented that the instrument enclosure (Stevenson screen) was located near a playground and was subject to frequent tampering. The inspector witnessed firsthand people going up to it and shaking it “to pieces”. He noted dryly that “this was not conducive to good records”.

After observations at St. John’s College were discontinued in 1932, the official Winnipeg weather station was moved to the UM’s Fort Garry campus and located on the second floor of the Chemistry & Physics Building (now 55 Chancellors Circle), but its data is considered part of the St. John’s College climatological record.  The station remained there until 1938, when it was moved to Stevenson Field (now the Winnipeg Richardson International Airport), where it continues to operate today.

Location of weather station in the former Chemistry & Physics Building (55 Chancellors Circle), ca. 1930s. Note the anemometer on the roof. (Credit: Archives & Special Collections)

Another station may have operated on campus in the 1940s, but very little is known about it. The geographic coordinates provided by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) place it in Assiniboine Forest, which may be incorrect, as other metadata locates it at the Fort Garry campus. It appears to have been maintained by the Department of Soil Sciences and was perhaps related to the department’s research. At the request of the University of Manitoba, a government station was re-established at the Fort Garry campus in 1961 and operated until 1968. Located near 264C Freedman Crescent, it was probably installed to monitor weather conditions for the nearby experimental agricultural plots in the oxbow of the Red River (known as the Point Lands). A weather station operated by the Department of Plant Science since 1995 continues to be situated in the Point Lands.

Observing Weather on Campus Today

Although the university no longer hosts any official ECCC weather station, meteorological observations have continued at various times on campus. In addition to the station operated by Plant Science, the Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS) in the Department of Environment & Geography had a weather station and all-sky camera system atop the Wallace Building from 2004–2011.

Since then, a meteorological tower has been running at the Sea-ice Environmental Research Facility (SERF) in the Smartpark Innovation Hub, along with a targeted weather balloon program that began in 2013. If summer severe weather is possible, trained Atmospheric Science students will launch a balloon that provides vital atmospheric data for weather forecasters to assess the likelihood of severe storms in the Red River Valley. This balloon program is supported by UM researchers and ECCC.

UM student Shayla Trippier launching a weather balloon at the Sea-ice Environmental Research Facility (SERF) in 2023. (Credit: John Hanesiak)

UM Archives & Special Collections has an original meteorological register from St. John’s College for 1876. It is currently on display in the Archives Reading Room as part of an exhibit related to the “Silk Dress Cryptogram”, a mysterious code found in a Victorian-era dress that was recently solved. The code turned out to be weather observations from 1888, one of which was from St. John’s College.

Additional Resources & Images

Link to “Breaking the Silk Dress Cryptogram” article: https://canwin-datahub.ad.umanitoba.ca/data/publication/breaking-silk-dress-cryptogram/resource/ed7d67d0-5563-4747-8a32-380fc413fda3

Over a decade ago, he set out to write a biography on the former premier. What started as a small part of his thesis work as a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto later became a project Gerald pursued after finishing his forty-year teaching career at the University of Manitoba.

The Distinguished Professor Emeritus of history and retired St John’s College fellow expressed relief as the long-awaited Norquay book arrived and was ready for launch this month. The book has been published by UM Press, located in St John’s College

“The immediate research took about five to seven years, the writing two to three years, and preparing for the topic began decades ago. It is a happy moment to have the book in my hands after such a long time.”

In an interview Dr. Friesen mentioned the book’s connection with the late John Bovey, then the provincial archivist and husband of Patricia Bovey, recent recipient of an honorary doctorate at the College:

“Fifty years ago, having decided that John Norquay would make an ideal subject for a biography, I consulted John Bovey, a family friend who was then the provincial archivist of Manitoba. He urged me not to undertake the project. I swallowed my disappointment, knowing that he knew the archive better than I did. I came to appreciate only later that he was saving me from the disaster of doing a lot of research and publishing a flawed book that failed to employ a crucial resource. Bovey could not tell me, for fear it might ruin a potential transaction, that practically all the letters received in and sent from Norquay’s office in the 1880s rested in a trunk in the home of historian Ellen Cooke. He was negotiating to obtain this collection, between five and seven thousand documents. It eventually reached the shelves of the provincial archives and I relied on them. John Bovey can take some responsibility – and credit — for the delay in delivery and the consequent depth of this biography.”

With the book ready for launch, Gerald will have busy months ahead, with book launches in McNally Robinson, a Lieutenant Governor’s evening at Government House, the Selkirk Heritage Fund Evening of History, and visits to Saskatoon, Calgary, and Banff.

To learn more about the book, visit the UM Press website. 

Coach Brian Dobie has said the CFL has reached out to wanting to mark the moment by asking if any of Turner’s gear could be donated to the hall of fame for a future display.

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There was a time when University of Manitoba students had a rifle range, a diving platform into the Red River, and nap rooms with pillows and blankets that could be checked out.

Those are some of the peculiar stories that have resurfaced in a new virtual tour that delves into forgotten places during the university’s 145-year history.

“It gives you a different view of what life was like in the past for students and staff and faculty. You just get a sense of a different kind of lifestyle,” said Shelley Sweeney, former head of archives and special collections at the U of M.

“When I saw it, I thought ‘I love this.’ Oftentimes it’s hard to digest history because it’s too much all at once, whereas I think this gives you kind of a bite-sized picture.”

The virtual tour features old photos and anecdotes juxtaposed against current locations on the main campus in Fort Garry as well as a satellite campus by the Health Sciences Centre and a long-gone downtown one.

The tour was assembled by Wayne Chan at the university’s Centre for Earth Observation Science, who says it stemmed from hearing UM alumni comment on how much the campus has changed.

He says he created it “to bring those lost places back to light” and preserve them in some way.

“With each new generation of students, they have no idea what was here on campus before them,” he said.

See the full CBC story here and the story on UM Today here.

To bring these lost places back to light and introduce them to new generations, I created a virtual tour of some of the UM sites in Google Earth.

Screenshot of Google earth view of UM Fort Garry campus.

The UM historical virtual tour covers the old UM Broadway campus and the Bannatyne and Fort Garry campuses. It is by no means a comprehensive list of lost places at the university—most of the locations were chosen for interest or intrigue. A number of interesting places could not be included for lack of images or information.

The idea for a historical tour first came about in 2019 in a discussion between former UM archivist Shelley Sweeney and me. We recognized that while the university offers present-day tours, many people are interested in the history of the university.  The concept of a virtual tour became particularly relevant due to the COVID pandemic.

Since I’ve always been fascinated by “lost places,” I decided to narrow the focus to spaces and places that once existed on campus that have now disappeared.

An online virtual tour definitely has its advantages, accessibility being one. People who are unable to visit the campus can easily view and explore our history from the comfort of their home.

Archives & Special Collections was instrumental in helping to find images of the lost places described in the tour.

As David Lowe once wrote in Lost Chicago, a book about lost landmarks in that city, “I could not save them in their concrete form, but I was determined that somehow I would preserve their spirit.” Echoing Lowe’s sentiment, I hope that this virtual tour will, in some small way, preserve the spirit of spaces and places that have vanished at the University of Manitoba.

Browser tips for viewing: It is recommended to use the Google Chrome browser to view the tour. Firefox, Microsoft Edge, or Opera browsers will work, but will display the message, “You are currently running an experimental version of Earth,” which should be dismissed before proceeding. The Safari browser is not supported by the web version of Google Earth. 

Visit Lost Campus: A Virtual Tour of Forgotten Spaces and Places at the University of Manitoba

Wayne Chan [BSc/93, BA/00] is a research computer analyst with the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba. He holds degrees in computer science and geography, and has an avid interest in local history. He is also an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in local and national publications. In 2016, he published Manitoba at Christmas: Holiday Memories in the Keystone Province.

For more on campus history, visit the University of Manitoba Archives website , their University of Manitoba History page, and view digitized records on UM Digital Collections.  

Do you remember any places or spaces on campus that are not included in this tour? Please contact the archives directly: archives@umanitoba.ca. We would love to hear from you!