Winnipeg Tribune Head is Found

I also mentioned in my previous blog that I was trying to identify the original artist. Well, I found out that all the grotesques were made at the American Terra Cotta and Ceramic Company factory near Chicago, Illinois. The artist may have been Kristian E. Schneider, a Norwegian immigrant who worked with American Terra Cotta from about 1906 to 1930. He was their lead sculptor and modeller and had early in his career worked very closely with Louis Sullivan, the famous architect of the “Chicago School”. Sullivan was instrumental in the development of the steel beam skyscraper, and his work also influenced the architect of the Winnipeg Tribune Building, John D.Atchison, who commissioned the grotesques. It seems that for a brief time at least, Winnipeg really was a Chicago of the North.

I was recently asked to attend a conference and weekend festival in Poland regarding historic landscapes in the Vistula River valley. One of the newer public interests in the area happens to be Mennonite history: Mennonites arrived in Poland in the mid-16th century from the Netherlands region and established thriving communities that existed until 1945, when they fled the Soviet advances at the end of World War II.

This last weekend The Manitoba Museum had a very special guest. Joseph Winzoski arrived on Saturday afternoon with family and friends to have a look at a special artifact his grandfather had made back in about 1910. Joseph’s grandfather, Juszef Wiazowski, was a master glass blower at the Manitoba Glass Works in Beausejour, and created this glass cane there. Referred to sometimes as “whimsies”, these kinds of decorative pieces could be made as gifts or for sale. Juszef was recruited in Poland by Josef Albert Keilbach to help start up the factory work in 1906.

Joseph Winsozki’s granddaughter has provided the museum with some of her detailed research of the family history:

“Juszef Wiazowski was a part owner of a Glass Company in Poland. This…was discovered in the Archives of Poland by a distant cousin in 2012.”

“It is my belief that [Josef] Albert Keilbach visited with Mr. Juszef Wiazowski at his glass manufacturing plant in Lodz, Poland and recruited him as a partner in the Manitoba Glassworks.”

Juszef’s son Adam was also a glass blower at the factory, and his son Joseph, our visitor, was born in 1916. Joseph never really knew his father. Both of Joseph’s parents died of the Spanish Flu, a world-wide epidemic, in 1918, and around the same time his grandfather Juszef was kicked by a horse and killed. Joseph had a difficult childhood: he and his siblings were forced by their step-family to work on farms all over Manitoba. Joseph later served in the Netherlands, fighting in the Liberation of Arnhem, and was later a guard for the war criminal Kurt Meyer in Aurich, Germany. As an orphan, Joseph was always interested in reconnecting to his father’s family history, and this glass cane, and the Winzoski’s of Beausejour, were a big part of that story. Thanks for the visit, Joe.

Slovakian textiles recently donated to The Manitoba Museum help tell the story of one family’s immigration to Manitoba in the late 1940s. These textiles were made in the tiny village of Lentvora, in a small valley in central Slovakia. The Karman family grew their own flax, which was then beaten, spun, dyed, and finally woven into these textile patterns. The donor of the textiles, Anne Anderson, was a child in the village in the early 1940s, and remembers her mother Anna and her mothers’ relatives gathering in the kitchen/dining room around a loom to do some weaving.

Mrs. Anderson held on to these textiles for years before donating them to museum this summer, because they told her mother’s story and they reminded her of life back in Slovakia, where the family worked together to produce what they needed. Now this story will endure at The Manitoba Museum.

Guest blog by Alexandra Kroeger, Practicum student from the University of Winnipeg

Lately I’ve been conducting an informal survey amongst family and friends on what they know about the Urban Gallery. On the bright side, most people do know what the Urban Gallery is. Even if they don’t know it by name, as soon as I explain it as, “You know. The street? With the theatre?” people know exactly what I’m talking about. If the person was around in the 70s, they’ll probably add, “didn’t they used to sell candy there?” (They did.)

Once I ask what the Urban Gallery represents, however, I start getting blank looks. For the record, those who answer “Winnipeg in the 1920s!” are absolutely correct. But even these perceptive individuals would be surprised to learn that originally, there was a lot more to the Urban Gallery.

The Bletcher and McDougall Pharmacy, where at one point visitors could buy candy.

When the gallery was being planned in the early 1970s, the people on the committee kept coming back to the idea of contrasts in cities. Winnipeg is particularly rich in contrasts, one of the more obvious being the sharp divide between the north and south ends of the city. This contrast was particularly stark in the 1920s. Wages hadn’t kept up with rising costs of living, leaving the poor (who generally lived on the north side of the CPR tracks) barely able to get by, while the rich (who generally lived south of the tracks) got richer and richer. These kinds of tensions, along with post-war economic conditions, led to the 1919 General Strike. The Urban Gallery is set the year after the Strike, but things haven’t quite changed yet. The railroad tracks still divide the south end from the north end. The south end has a theatre, high-end clothing store and lavishly-furnished parlour; the north end, a garment factory, Chinese laundry, and a cramped boarding house.

Another theme the planners wanted to explore was the past, present, and future of the city. The reconstructed buildings and businesses were supposed to represent the past, and then there were supposed to be two other components to the gallery. The Exhibition Hall by the All People’s Mission was originally an actual exhibition hall occupied by temporary exhibits on different aspects of our city’s history, and how they would affect the present. The third and last component of the gallery was “Cities of the Future,” which would have asked people to think about cities of the present and how they might develop. I haven’t figured out whether or not the Cities of the Future exhibit was actually built, but maybe a reader might have some insight.

I just want to close with a few of my favourite facts about the gallery.

Both the Bank of Montreal and the All People’s Mission were actual buildings in Winnipeg. The BMO building was built in the 1880s and torn down in the early 1970s – just in time to reuse some of the material from the building in the gallery. The All People’s Mission in the gallery might have been based off of the old building at Stella and Powers., though we’re not quite certain on that point.

In a particularly ironic case of contrast, the mannequin whose room overlooks the All People’s Mission in the gallery is more than just a fortune teller. Madame Taro tells fortunes, but she also provides “other services” – If you know what I mean.

There wasn’t actually a Proscenium Theatre in Winnipeg at any time in its history, but there were lots of others. Alexander Pantages used his Winnipeg theatre (which is right down the street from the museum) to test out acts for his vaudeville circuit; if it didn’t do well in Winnipeg, it didn’t make the cut. Winnipeg also drew some vaudeville greats, including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Stan Laurel. The story goes that Bob Hope even learned to play golf here!