The Lesser Known

Manitoba's history is one of being carved. Ice sculpted the land before nomadic first people pressed trails across it. Southern First Nations dug into the earth to grow corn and potatoes while those in the north mined it for quartz used in arrowheads. Fur traders arrived, expanding on Indigenous trading networks and shaping new ones. Then came settlers who chiselled the terrain with villages, towns, and cities. 

But there is failure and suffering etched into the history. In Winnipeg, slums emerged as the city's population boomed. There were more workers than jobs and the pay was paltry. Immigrants and First Nations were treated as second-class, shunted to the fringes. Rebellions and strikes, political scandals and natural disasters occurred as the people molded Manitoba.

In The Lesser Known, Darren Bernhardt shares odd tales lost in time paired with archival images, such as The Tin Can Cathedral, the first independent Ukrainian church in North America; the jail cell hidden beneath a Winnipeg theatre; the bear pit of Confusion Corner; gardening competitions between fur trading forts and more.
Once deemed important enough to be documented, these stories are now buried. It's time to carve away at them once again.

DETAILS

7" x 9"

120 Pages

Softcover

ABOUT

Born-and-raised in Winnipeg, Darren Bernhardt has been writing as long as he can remember. He would scribble looping lines on a page and ask his mom what it said. When the skill was somewhat more refined, he filled pages of Hilroy notebooks with text and illustrations about weekend family outings and adventures with friends. Naturally, he became a journalist. He spent the first dozen years of his career working for newspapers in Saskatchewan before moving back to Winnipeg where he now lives with his wife, two kids and a dog in a 108-year-old house. He has been writing online for CBC Manitoba since 2009, specializing in offbeat and local history stories. He is the co-author of the 2005 JackPine Press chapbook, To Kerouac and Back and co-author of the play, Alison’s Leather Couch.