December 2015 - Manitoba Museum

Posted on: Wednesday December 23, 2015

Yes, I still have York Factory on the brain. I have many more photos and stories from our trip to share but those shall have to wait until the new year. Instead I thought I’d share some of my recent thoughts on Christmases past, what was Christmas like during the fur trade?

A beautifully written journal page of the "York Fort America 1714" Featuring short entries for each of the days from December 19 to 28, 1714

Fortunately for me the HBC Archives has started digitizing some of the post journals, saving me a long trek through the snowy streets of Winnipeg to go and explore early journals from York Factory. I found this gem on their website, written by James Knight in 1714, and you can see that Christmas day is just one little notation along with all the others.

A closer look, and a good squint to read his beautiful handwriting, reveals a rather nice message on the 25th:

I gave the men a hogshead of strong beer and some provisions extraordinary to enjoy themselves with this Christmas…prayers today and was celebrated with the [two words I can’t decipher!]

Although I can’t figure out those final two words, I think celebrating with a hogshead (a large cask, roughly 238 litres) of strong beer sounds like a pretty good way to spend the day!

UPDATE! Thanks to my boss (Adele Hempel) and good friend and colleague (Amanda Crompton) I now know what those last two words are:

I gave the men a hogshead of strong beer and some provisions extraordinary to enjoy themselves with this Christmas…prayers today and was celebrated with the usual solemnity.

For more on Christmas during the fur trade check out this article from Canada’s History, originally published in The Beaver in 1941.

Happy Holidays dear readers, and all the best in 2016!

Dr. Amelia Fay

Curator of Anthropology & the HBC Museum Collection

Amelia Fay is Curator of Anthropology and the HBC Museum Collection at the Manitoba Museum. She received her BA in Anthropology from the University of Manitoba (2004), an MA in Archaeology…

Meet Dr. Amelia Fay

Museum Stories: HBC Museum Collection

HBC Museum Collection

Friday April 25, 2025

Posted on: Thursday December 3, 2015

One of the goals for our new exhibit “Nice Women Don’t Want the Vote”, about the 100^th anniversary of the right to vote for women in Manitoba, was to elicit visitors’ opinions about the vote for women and women’s rights today, and display these opinions in the exhibit itself. In just over three weeks we’ve put up over 150 comment cards on the exhibit wall. We asked visitors to respond to their choice of three statements and here are some results:

The “Nice Women Don’t Want the Vote” exhibit.

If you could say one thing to a Suffragist from 100 years ago, what would it be?

What is one issue facing Canadian women today that has yet to be resolved?

What is one issue facing women today that has yet to be resolved?

I want to vote because…

Dr. Roland Sawatzky

Curator of History

Roland Sawatzky joined The Manitoba Museum in 2011. He received his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Winnipeg, M.A. in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina, and Ph.D. in Archaeology…

Meet Dr. Roland Sawatzky

Museum Stories: History

History

Friday February 14, 2025

The New Hurtig Furrier Exhibit

The A. and M. Hurtig Furriers shop is a new exhibit in the Winnipeg 1920 Cityscape at the Manitoba Museum, featuring authentic fur accessories and furrier tools from the early 20th century. The exhibit includes…

History

Tuesday July 30, 2024

Chinese-Canadian History at the Manitoba Museum

The Museum has a rich collection of Chinese-Canadian artifacts that have been donated over many decades.

History

Wednesday August 9, 2023

The Devin Tri-Color Camera

The Manitoba Museum is no stranger to cameras in our collection. We care for 103 of them, to be exact…

Posted on: Tuesday December 1, 2015

Members of the public sometimes bring dead birds to the Museum, which we incorporate into our collection to learn more about their habitat and biology. Our preparator Debbie Thompson recently came to me with a mystery: a dead Bohemian Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus). Careful examination of the bird and its stomach contents, along with access to a great collection of preserved plants here at the Museum, helped us piece together the last few hours of its life.

A Bohemian Waxwing.

Study skin of a Bohemian Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus). TMM Z-1-2-5512.

Our first piece of evidence was a broken beak. This suggests that the animal ran into something, hard. Could it have been a car, a tree, a window? And why would this normally agile bird have run into something?

Our second clue was the intestinal contents of the bird. Debbie reported finding lots of ground up flesh inside the birds’ crop along with several large seeds. I examined the contents closely under my microscope. The fruits were large-larger than most of our native species of shrubs. A thick wall surrounded the seeds and reminded me of the firm flesh around apple seeds. Lastly, what appeared to be a stem with thick sepals around it was found. After comparing this material to herbarium specimens of dried fruits and seeds, I was positive that the bird had been feeding on a species of crab apple (Pyrus sp.) before it died.

Image: A preserved herbarium specimen of crab apple (Malus sp.) in flower. TMM B-27846.

Close up on the end of a Mountain ash branch with green berries.

Not much later she was preparing yet another Waxwing with a broken beak. This one had lots of ground up orange-coloured flesh inside the crop. The colour of the fruit made me think about an incident that happened long ago. One winter day I came across a huge flock of Waxwings gently pipping in a tree. I paused to admire them and was puzzled to hear an unusual plunking sound. I looked at the snow under the tree and saw that it was covered with orange-coloured poop from the mountain ash (Sorbus sp.) berries the Waxwings were eating. The plunking sound was that of bird poop landing in the snow. Furthermore, I was standing directly in the line of fire! Admiration quickly turned to panic and I dashed out of target range. A quick examination of dried mountain ash berries in our collection helped me confirm my educated guess.

Image: Mountain ash (Sorbus sp.) tree with green fruits. The fruits turn bright orange when ripe.

But why did they crash? The collection dates were in winter so the fruits they were eating were not fresh-they had been hanging on the tree for many months, a long enough period of time in fact to result in partial fermentation. I had the answer! They were drunk on the natural, potent cider from fermenting fruit. The intoxicated birds likely flew right into a window or other hard stationary object, breaking their beaks and causing serious enough brain trauma to kill them.

So as it turns out humans are not the only ones guilty of “driving drunk”, or in this case “flying drunk”. However, drunken Waxwings only kill themselves while drunken humans tend to kill others. So remember to drive safe this holiday season!

Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson

Curator of Botany

Dr. Bizecki Robson obtained a Master’s Degree in Plant Ecology at the University of Saskatchewan studying rare plants of the mixed grass prairies. After working as an environmental consultant and sessional lecturer…

Meet Dr. Bizecki Robson