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Did you know that this quilt crossed the Atlantic during war-time only to find its way home over 70 years later?

When the weather turns cold, many of us reach for the warmth and comfort of a handcrafted quilt or afghan. During WWII, local volunteers gathered in Steep Rock, MB to create Red Cross quilts for civilian victims of the war. Across the Atlantic, at Dudley Road Hospital in Birmingham, England, a Matron passed their gift on to Cynthia (Betty) Craddock. Her husband Joe was serving in the army when their only son Anthony was born in 1945.

A quilt stitched of pastel pink, orange, and cream fabric with an accent portion in the middle in blues and greens.

Anthony’s earliest memories are “of this quilt being on my bed and keeping me warm when times were hard. With no central heating, frost would often appear on the inside of the window.” The young Anthony remembers reading the message on a tag on one corner of the quilt. Betty treasured the gift for many years until finally they decided that it was time for the quilt to be sent home.

You can see the quilt along with photos of Betty and Anthony Craddock in our Parklands Gallery.

This Winter Break, for a limited time only, the Manitoba Museum will be offering tours that give a rare look into the cargo hold of the Nonsuch. In light of this unique opportunity, I’d like to share some interesting tidbits about this replica ship and surrounding gallery.

The Nonsuch is a full-sized replica of a 17th century ketch that was constructed in the mid-20th century to celebrate Hudson’s Bay Company’s 300th anniversary. You may have noticed that there is no wheel to steer the ship; that’s because the original Nonsuch pre-dated the invention of the ship’s wheel! Instead, the ship is guided by the tiller, a lever that connects directly to the ship’s rudder. Imagine sailing this ship across the cold North Atlantic and into the icy waters of the Hudson Strait.

There’s no steering wheel on this ship – the Nonsuch was guided by a tiller. Image ©Manitoba Museum

Usually closed to the public, Nonsuch Hold Tours will be back for a limited time this December. ©Manitoba Museum/Ian McCausland

The hardy crew that sailed the Nonsuch along the St. Lawrence River. ©Gaby Demers.

I think it would have been pretty terrifying, and the chosen captain for the replica agreed. Captain Adrian Small advised that Nonsuch be towed across the Atlantic, and it began its sailing tour of North America along the St. Lawrence River. I’m often asked why the beds in the Captain’s quarters are so small, and it has nothing to do with stature. Sleeping somewhat upright, propped up with pillows, was very common during the 17th century to help with digestion and assist with breathing. Although people were a bit shorter in the past, the difference is not that great. The average height for British men in the late 1600s was 5’5”, while today the average is 5’8”.

As you wander the gallery, take note of the sights and sounds. Extensive research went in to every prop and sound in the gallery to ensure historical accuracy. All of the dishes in the tavern are replicas of actual ceramics and pewter that have been recovered archaeologically from Deptford, England that date to the late 1660s. Enjoy your visit to the Museum this Winter Break, and get ready to wow your friends and family with your newfound knowledge!

A wooden sailing vessel, the Nonsuch, with full sails and flags raised, sailing on open water. A number of people can be seen standing on the deck. — *The* Nonsuch *off the coast of BC, 1972. Photographer: A.M Sharp. HBCA 1987/363-N-18.5/13.*

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

Did you know there’s an “Easter egg” in the Ancient Seas exhibit of the Earth History Gallery? The animators told us that they hid a Coke can in the boulder field!

Close-up of underwater boulder field in Ancient Seas video exhibit.

Hidden features in video games and films are often called “Easter eggs.” Museum exhibits can also include secret elements, some of which are not even known by most museum staff! When we built the Parklands Gallery, the team hid some “entertainment” – you have likely seen the black bear hiding in the cave, but do you know about the place where two visitors can reach into narrow passages in the cave wall, until their fingers touch?

What “Easter eggs” have you found in the Museum?

I recently wrote a fun little article with some facts about Nonsuch for the local newspaper, but I thought we should take some time to dive a bit deeper into the darker history of Nonsuch. Don’t get me wrong, like many Winnipeggers I have a sentimental attachment to this ship, but sometimes we need to take a step back and critically reflect on history. The history of our beloved Nonsuch is no different.

The original Nonsuch voyage in 1668 was a scouting mission to see if a northern fur trade route through Hudson Bay would work. This voyage was funded by a group of wealthy investors, including Prince Rupert, the cousin of England’s King Charles II. The return of Nonsuch in 1669 with a hold full of furs proved it a worthy investment, and led to the establishment of what we now call the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670.

How did Prince Rupert and this group of investors amass their wealth to invest in such a risky mission? Through their involvement with the Atlantic slave trade. There is significant overlap in the investors, Directors, and Governors of two early British companies (both with very wordy names). The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, which would later become the Royal African Company (RAC), and the Governor and Company of Adventurers Trading to Hudson Bay, later, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). The RAC had secured a monopoly in the West African slave trade, and for awhile, HBC had secured a monopoly in the North American fur trade. The connections between the two companies run deep. There are 81 years out of 129, for the period between 1670 and 1799, where the governor of HBC had direct and visible ties to businesses involved in some way with slavery (Lindsay 2021).

Note the entrance to the HBC Gallery, the old sign retains part of the lengthy old Company name. Image credit: Ian McCausland/Manitoba Museum

Wander the town of Deptford in 1669, while thinking about the history of this little ship and its connection to global colonialism. Image credit: Ian McCausland/Manitoba Museum

When people think of colonialism in Canada they often ignore this early period of European “exploration” and the fur trade, focusing more on the events after Confederation. But it’s important to look at the long-term history of colonialism, and Nonsuch is part of that. Does that mean we can’t still love boarding the ship and immersing ourselves in 1669 Deptford during visits to the Museum? I don’t think so. I find balance between my personal nostalgia for the ship with a respectful understanding of the role it played in the ongoing colonial process.

So come and visit the ship and embrace the memories and joy you may have for it, but also take time to acknowledge its darker history.

References Cited & Additional Reading

This inspiration for this blog post came from the wonderful dissertation of Dr. Anne Lindsay, who did immense archival research to bring these connections to light. The reference for her dissertation is below, but also a recent article from the University of Manitoba on the broad impact of her work as it relates to slavery in Canada.

Lindsay, Anne 2021 “especially in this free Country”: Webs of Empire, Slavery, and the Fur Trade, unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Department of History, University of Manitoba.

Slavery as part of Canadian history

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…

During the current pandemic, we have all become used to the idea of virtual connections and well aware of opportunities to serve communities at home and even around the world. This is nothing new for scientific research at the Manitoba Museum – it has been reaching global audiences since we opened in 1970.

Image below: Museum exhibitions, like the new Prairies Gallery, are the result of scientific research and collaborations which provide both the specimens and their interpretation that visitors see when they visit. © Manitoba Museum/Ian McCausland

The Global Reach of Museum Science

The natural world isn’t bound by provincial and national borders, so scientific discoveries at the Manitoba Museum, made available in international publications, inform scientists, conservationists, and policy-makers here in Manitoba and abroad. Expertise in the Natural History section extends to animals and plants, both living and fossil, that occur around the world.

Book cover featuring a school of yellow and white fish swimming downwards in a group. Title reads, “Volumes 1-5 / Coastal Fishes of the Western Indian Ocean”.

Fishes on the other side of the World

The Museum has recently collaborated on a comprehensive guide to the coastal fishes of the western Indian Ocean, an area including the Red Sea, east coast of Africa, and Madagascar to the southern tip of India. This project, spear-headed by the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, involved over 100 contributors from 20 countries, including the Manitoba Museum.

The five volumes include descriptions of 3500 species of fishes and their distributions over the largest area of ocean ever to be covered by a publication of this kind. Because it is available online for free, it is a valuable resource for local fishermen, educators, conservationists, and governments – regardless of economic status – providing baseline data to understand and conserve ecosystems and manage fisheries resources.

Image above: Known from only four specimens in museum collections, Winterbottom’s goby (Callogobius winterbottomi Delventhal & Mooi) was first recognized during detailed study at the Manitoba Museum. ©Manitoba Museum

Museum Science – Collaboration and Community Impact

These kinds of partnerships are a direct result of the expertise that the Manitoba Museum brings to the scientific community through original research. In turn, these scientific contributions shape how society understands and responsibly engages with the environment. The work of Manitoba Museum scientists and their national and international collaborators not only helps to understand and conserve the natural ecosystems at home, but makes an impact around the world.

Dr. Randy Mooi wearing green rubber boots and waterproof pants crouching in a boggy area looking at something near the ground. It is night and he is holding a small flashlight.

Most Manitoba Museum scientific research is focused on Manitoba, including spring frog surveys by Curator of Zoology Randy Mooi that examine possible distribution changes due to climate change. Many discoveries, though, have applications well beyond our provincial borders. (Pictured. © P. Taylor)

Dr. Randall Mooi

Curator of Zoology

Dr. Mooi received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Toronto working on the evolutionary history of coral reef fishes. Following a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Fishes of the Smithsonian Institution…

Meet Dr. Randall Mooi

This Month’s Total Lunar Eclipse

This November, all of Manitoba is treated to a total lunar eclipse. Totally safe to view, this event allows you to feel the motion of the solar system happen in real time. Here’s what happens, and how and when to see it yourself.

A simulation of the November 7-8, 2022 lunar eclipse. UTC, or Universal Time, is 6 hours ahead of Manitoba’s Central Standard Time. [Video courtesy NASA Goddard Spaceflight Centre’s Scientific Visualization Studio]

What Is Going On?

A lunar eclipse occurs because the Moon is just a big rock in space, and space is dark. The only reason we can see the Moon is that there is a nearby star – the Sun – that is shining on it, lighting up one half of the rock. It’s the same with our planet,- the Earth – half of the planet is lit but the sun’s light (the daytime side), and half of the earth is dark (the nighttime side) because the sun can’t get to it. Since the Moon orbits around our planet, sometimes we see the daytime side side of the Moon, and sometimes we see the nighttime side of the Moon, but most of the time we see some combination of the two. This is what causes the regular phases of the Moon, from New Moon to First Quarter to Full to Last Quarter.

A lunar eclipse occurs when something blocks the sunlight from being able to light up the Moon. There’s only one thing that can do that – our planet, the Earth. During a lunar eclipse, the Moon moves into the shadow that the Earth casts. As the Moon moves in its orbit, we can see the Earth’s curved shadow creep across the face of the Moon over the course of an hour or so, and finally covering it completely.

Why Does It Turn Red?

If the Earth was just a rock in space, the Moon would totally disappear during a lunar eclipse. Luckily for us, the Earth isn’t just rock, but also has an atmosphere – a layer of gasses like oxygen that surrounds the planet. Besides providing us air to breath, the atmosphere can often do interesting things with light. The atmosphere can make haloes around the Sun or the Moon, it can make rainbows when it’s full of water or mirages when it’s hot, and it can make sunrises and sunsets turn red.

An illustration of the effect of an eclipse on the wavelengths of light reaching the Moon from the Sun around the Earth.

During a lunar eclipse, Earth’s atmosphere scatters sunlight. The blue light from the Sun scatters away, and longer-wavelength red, orange, and yellow light pass through, turning our Moon red. *This image is not to scale.

[Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio]

During a lunar eclipse, most of the light from the sun is blocked by the Earth, but a little bit goes through the layer of atmosphere and is bent slightly into a rainbow. This means that the edge of Earth’s shadow is quite “fuzzy” and sort of “fades in” from nothing to dark. The outer, fuzzier shadow is called the penumbra, and the inner, darker shadow is called the umbra. It also means that even when the Moon is in the umbra, the bending effect of the atmosphere allows the red and orange part of the sunlight to sneak into the earth’s shadow and still reach the moon. It’s like all of the world’s sunsets and sunrises are shining on the moon at the same time and letting that deep red-orange glow light it up. So, the moon often turns reddish-orange during the total phase of the eclipse.

BUT… the atmosphere isn’t just perfectly clear gas. There can be clouds of water vapour, there can be smoke from forest fires, there can even be ash from volcanic eruptions, and all of those can change who the light bends and how much of it gets to the Moon during the eclipse. Sometimes the Moon gets very dark, almost brown, while other eclipses the moon is a bright copper-orange colour. Each eclipse is different.

Check out this description from NASA Goddard Spaceflight Centre’s Scientific Visualization Studio for details.

How Do I See It?

If you live in most of North America, you can see the eclipse just by going outside at the right time and looking at the Moon. This link will let you choose your location and do all of the time zone conversions for you so you know what time the eclipse phases start and end for where you live. For this eclipse, the western half of North America sees the whole thing, with people farther east only seeing part of the eclipse before the Moon sets for them. Manitobans see essentially the entire interesting part before moonset occurs.

The only catch is that you need a clear sky without clouds to be able to see it. If it happens to be cloudy at your location, you can look for one of several live streams that will be going on from around the country. The Dome@Home team will be live-streaming the eclipse on the Manitoba Museum’s Facebook page and YouTube channel beginning about 2:30 am Central Time on November 8 (weather permitting). If our stream is clouded out, we’ll add links here to other events as we hear about them.

When does it happen?

The lunar eclipse occurs after midnight on Monday night, November 7, 2022, in the morning hours of Tuesday, November 8, 2022. The event technically begins at 2:02 am Central time, but it lasts nearly six hours and not all parts are equally interesting. If you just want to catch the highlights and see the colour, watching for an hour between 3:45 am and 4:45 am Central should give you a good view. Of course, this may be affected by clouds, so make sure you check the weather forecast to make sure it will be clear when you plan to observe.

Technically the eclipse begins at 2:02 am Central Time on November 8, 2022, as the Moon enters the faint and fuzzy outer shadow of the Earth (called the penumbra). The penumbra doesn’t darken the moon much at first, but the shadow gets darker towards the middle and so you might not notice it until 2:30 am or so.

Beginning at 3:09 am Central time, the Moon starts to move into the dark central shadow of the Earth – the umbra. The umbra is dark enough that you can see it as a curved dark “bite” out of the left edge of the moon. Over the next hour, it will look like the shadow is moving over the Moon and covering more of it, but it’s actually the Moon moving into the shadow.

During the early partial phase, the umbra looks dark grey, but that’s because the lit-up part of the Moon right next to it dazzles the eyes. As the shadow covers more of the Moon, it will be easier to see that the umbra is actually a dark reddish colour.

At 4:17 am Central time, the Moon moves completely inside the umbra, and the eclipse is total. Now, with none of the Moon lit directly, the colour becomes much easier to see. The colour changes slowly as the Moon moves through the Earth’s shadow, and the right side will eventually brighten. The Moon begins to leave the umbra at 5:42 am Central time, with the left edge of the Moon emerging first. For southern Manitoba, the Moon sets at 7:44 am Central, just before fully emerging from the umbral shadow. Folks farther west will get to see the final penumbral stages of the eclipse, which last until 8:50 am Central (5:50 am Pacific).

To get the exact times of each stage of the eclipse in your local time zone, visit timeandate.com’s awesome eclipse page, here.

Scott Young

Planetarium Astronomer

Scott is the Planetarium Astronomer at the Manitoba Museum, developing astronomy and science programs. He has been an informal science educator for thirty years, working in the planetarium and science centre field both at The Manitoba Museum and also at the Alice G. Wallace Planetarium in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Scott is an active amateur astronomer and a past-President of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

Manitoba Stories: In the Sky

Astronomy

Friday October 4, 2024

To celebrate Islamic History Month, I thought I would share this recent beautiful donation we have received at the Museum. This Persian carpet was made in the city of Naeen, Iran, likely in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Naeen workshops are known for making intricately designed carpets that feature a light-coloured background, often using blue as a contrasting colour. The carpets are woven and knotted on a cotton thread foundation with wool fibres, highlighted with light silk accents.

Photograph taken from above. The large Persian carpet has been laid out. Along the lower right edge the Museum conservator kneels, carefully vacuuming a section of carpet through a mesh screen.

The Museum conservator carefully vacuums the carpet. The carpet is very large (16 x 10.5 feet) and has many floral and bird motifs placed in symmetrical positions around a luxurious central medallion. At a count of 224 knots per square inch, the carpet has about 5,419,000 knots in total! H9-40-33

A close-up on the wool of the woven Persian carpet. A metal object is used to push some of the carpet aside, showing the white fibres amongst the wool fibres.

The shining white silk fibres stand out from the surrounding colourful wool.

Persian carpets have a long history of excellence spanning centuries, and town manufacturers in particular are famous for perfectionism. The Naeen carpet industry began in the 1940s, and designers there were influenced by historic patterns from Isfahan, 150 km to the west. Isfahan flourished artistically during the Safavid dynasty (1501 to 1722).

Islamic cultures from around the world are incredibly diverse, with long histories that have influenced many parts of the globe. Winnipeg is home for many people who continue to honour and celebrate these histories. This carpet was donated by Zahra Sahhafnia, who moved to Winnipeg in 2015. The carpet was an important part of her family’s legacy and inheritance, and now it is also part of Manitoba’s history.

Thank you Zahra!

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

Gargoyles once roosted above the streets of historic Winnipeg, and if you look closely a few might still linger, jeering at passersby. The best set of Winnipeg gargoyles, or in this case “grotesques,” were found on the old Winnipeg Tribune Newspaper building, and the Manitoba Museum is now home to four of them.

The six-storey Tribune building was designed by Chicago architect John D. Atchison for the successful Winnipeg Tribune newspaper, completed in 1914. It was remodelled in 1969 to look more modern, and the grotesques were removed and given to various employees. The Tribune closed in 1980, after which the building was demolished.

Most of the grotesques are still in private hands and have moved around the country, but two of the original terra cotta figures can be seen in the Winnipeg Gallery. We have also added four replicas to one of our buildings in the Winnipeg 1920 cityscape.

The Winnipeg Tribune Building, 1914, built at 257 Smith St. Fourteen grotesques lined the top of the building, while fourteen heads stared down from the top of the first storey. Image: University of Manitoba Libraries

In his design, Atchison sketched in grotesque figures leaning off the top of the building. The final grotesques were made with terra cotta, a type of ceramic, in the American Terra Cotta and Ceramic Co. factory in Illinois. Image: Archives of Manitoba

The heads were located at the bottom of exterior columns. Atchison included neo-Gothic elements in some of his designs, and such grotesques completed the look. Image: Archives of Manitoba

Grotesques and gargoyles were originally found on medieval cathedrals, but here we see them on a business in downtown Winnipeg in 1914. Why? There were six original figures on the Tribune that repeated, making a total of fourteen.

Beige-coloured terra-cotta figure sitting perched on something, holding scissors in one hand and a sheet of paper in another.

Each of the six figures was representative of a newspaper job:

City Editor, complete with scissors (pictured. MM H9-37-581)
The Printer, holding an ancient printing press
The Fish Story Teller, holding a huge fish.
This likely represented a keen member of the public embellishing a story for a reporter.
The Contributor (reporter)
The Proof Reader
Newsboy

Oddly, the grotesques were all wearing medieval clothing, complete with cloaks and pointy shoes! In other words, it was a whimsical affair – a modern office building with a gothic flair. There was even a legend that the figures resembled the actual people working at the paper.

Frightening Fact!

A gargoyle is a stone figure that also acts as a waterspout to carry rainwater away from the building – the water is usually funneled out of the mouth of the figure. The word gargoyle comes from the Old French gargouille, meaning “throat.” Other decorative figures on buildings are known as grotesques.

Dr. Roland Sawatzky

Curator of History

Meet Dr. Roland Sawatzky

Last year the Rempel-Ong family donated the “Head Tax” Certificate of Yee Chung Yen, a distant relative. The family and Museum staff have been able to piece together some parts of his personal history.

Yee Chung Yen (1895-1982), later known as Henry Yee, was born in Longgang, Shenzhen District, China, and immigrated to Canada in 1917. He was forced to pay a $500 “Head Tax” to enter the country, part of a racist Canadian policy to restrict Chinese immigration. By the time the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed back in 1885, over 15,000 Chinese labourers had come to Canada to work on this difficult, nation-building project. After the work was done, restrictions were put in place to severely limit Chinese immigration. The “Head Tax” was implemented from 1885 until 1923, and was then replaced by the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred all Chinese immigration until 1947. In 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for these discriminatory laws and the hardship they created for Chinese Canadians.

Despite the burdens of the Head Tax and Chinese Exclusion Act, Yee Chung Yen persevered. By 1923 he was working at the Subway Café at 250 Osborne St in Winnipeg, which was managed by a Mr. Yee Too. Yee Chung Yen later owned Yee’s Café in Portage la Prairie in the 1950s. The Chinese Exclusion Act had severe consequences on his personal life. Yee Chung Yen was married in China before he arrived in Canada in 1917, and the couple had two children, but Yen would never see his family again. From 1923 to 1947 his wife and children were barred from entering the country because of the Exclusion Act, Yen was never able to return to China, and they didn’t reunite afterwards.

Photograph of a Head Tax Certificate. Along the top reads, “Dominion of Canada / Immigration Branch – Department of the Interior”, and in the bottom right corner is a identifiaction photo of a serious-looking young man wearing a dark suit.

Head Tax Certificate of Yee Chung Yen, 1917.

Surviving certificates are extremely rare today, and they help tell the story of resilient Chinese immigrants from the early 20th Century who were subjected to discriminatory Canadian policies and attitudes. H9-39-967

Photograph of the backside of a piece of paper. In the centre is stamped, “IMPORTANT / It is necessary that this certificate be carefully preserved as it is of calue as a means of identification”. In the bottom left corner is a registration number and certification stamp, date, and signature.

Head Tax Certificate, 1917 (reverse).

On the back of the certificate is the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act (or Chinese Exclusion Act) registration stamp. It indicates that Yee Chung Yen was registered and under observation by Canadian authorities. The Act came into effect on July 1. Though other Canadians celebrated Dominion Day at that time, Chinese Canadians called it “Humiliation Day.”

Like other Chinese immigrants, he was not allowed to bring family to live with him in Canada, and his movement outside of the country was strictly regulated. This system was in use for all Chinese Canadians until 1947. H9-39-967

Yen was instrumental in helping Mr. Don Wing Ong settle in Portage la Prairie in the 1950s. Refugees from mainland Communist China, Don and his wife Kwan (Anne) and their son Bill made it to Hong Kong, and would eventually all live and work in Winnipeg. Bill graduated from medical school at the University of Manitoba and became a well-respected doctor in the city. When Yee Chung Yen became ill and then died in 1982, Don paid some of the medical bills and the funeral expenses. Don quietly visited the grave of Yee Chung Yen at Brookside Cemetery every year until Don’s own passing in 2019.

Six historical photographs documenting the life of Yee Chung Yen from childhood to adulthood.

These photographs document the life of Yee Chung Yen (1895-1982).

Clockwise from top left:
1. Circa 1900. Yee Chung Yen with mother in China. H9-40-10
2. 1920 in Victoria, BC. H9-39-988
3. 1923, working at the Subway Café on Osborne St., Winnipeg, MB. H9-39-984
4. 1930s. H9-39-994
5. Circa 1952, at Yee’s Cafe, Portage la Prairie, MB. H9-39-981
6. 1970s, Winnipeg. H9-40-3

Photogragh of a citizenship card with identifiaction details and a photograph of an older man wearing a suit and bow tie.

Certificate of Canadian Citizenship, 1960.

Yee Chung Yen (Henry) received full Canadian citizenship in 1960, 43 years after arriving in Canada. H9-39-968

The story and images of Yen Chung Yee will soon be featured in the Winnipeg Gallery digital kiosk.

Along with pictures and documents related to Yen, the Rempel-Ong donation includes many items that recount the story of the Ong family as they immigrated and settled in Canada.

We hope to feature their story on video soon.

Dr. Roland Sawatzky

Curator of History

Meet Dr. Roland Sawatzky

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

The Deep History of the Churchill Quartzite

As we pass through life we accumulate scars, each of which tells a story about an event that affected us. This white line on my hand shows where I fell hard on a tree stump in Nova Scotia when I was 19 years old. That pain in my ankle reminds me of an injury from another fall 30 years later, on an oil-slicked seashore. The older we get, the more of these old scars and injuries we will accumulate.

It is the same in the natural world. Very old natural things, whether they are living or inanimate, carry many sorts of evidence with them. In the case of rocks, this evidence can tell us the stories of all the events that affected a rock between the time it was formed and the present day.

Manitoba is home to many very old rocks; at least 2/3 of our province has bedrock that is about 1.7 to 3.5 billion years old, dating from the mid part of Precambrian time. Many of these rocks are beautiful and memorable – consider examples such as the granites and schists of the Whiteshell, east of Winnipeg – but to my eye the most memorable is the Churchill quartzite. This is the blue-grey to dove grey stone that forms the sculptural, sinuous “whaleback” ridges on both sides of the mouth of the Churchill River near Hudson Bay, so often seen as the backdrops in photos of polar bears.

A wide-angle view of a rocky landscape along a shoreline. Many large, scupltural ridges of light-coloured Churchill quartzite.

The Churchill quartzite has long been remarked upon by visitors to the Churchill area. It was first described and named by the Geological Survey of Canada geologist Robert Bell in 1880, and though the name “Churchill quartzite” was assigned so long ago, it has never received a formal scientific description, so the word ”quartzite” is not capitalized.

The first waypoint of Churchill quartzite’s time travel was its formation. Although it is a “youngster” in comparison with some of the Precambrian rocks east of Lake Winnipeg, it is still deeply old. Somewhere around 1.8 billion years ago, what is now the Churchill area was covered by large rivers that flowed from newly rising mountains nearby. Since the riverbeds were steeply sloped, the rivers carried an abundance of coarse sediment: quartz grains, dark minerals such as mica and magnetite, and fragments of various rocks (some of which could be quite large).

Close-up of a section of Churchill quartzite that has a rounded white peice of another stone in the middle. From the left edge, a hand holds a size scale into frame. Orange lichen is growing on the surface of the quartzite.

The Churchill quartzite is a metagreywacke, a metamorphosed “dirty sandstone” that can contain large rock fragments such as the rounded white piece in the middle of this photo.

Where the flow of those rivers slowed, they deposited sediment. The Churchill quartzite contains evidence that it was deposited by flowing water, and that the flow was variable: features known as cross beds were formed as the sediment was laid down on angled or curved surfaces, in places such as river sandbars. Over long intervals of time, this deposited material was buried in more sediment, and pressure from the weight of that sediment turned it to stone. The sand, varied minerals, and rock fragments formed a dirty sandstone, known geologically as a greywacke.

Close-up of a section of Churchill quartzite with dark scratch-like lines on the surface. Orange and light-green lichen grows long parts of the quartzite. In the upper right corner a size scale is laid on the rock’s surface.

Beautiful trough cross beds can be seen in the Churchill quartzite at Sloop Cove. The dark lines show where grains of heavy minerals such as magnetite were the first to fall out of the water as river flow slowed.

Through yet more geological time, this greywacke was buried ever deeper, where it was subjected to heat and pressure from the ongoing geological activity in this region. This welded the sediment grains together, giving the rock the remarkable toughness for which it is prized today by people building railways and airports. The greywacke had been metamorphosed and became a metamorphic (changed) rock, the metagreywacke that we call the Churchill quartzite.

Close-up of the surface of a smooth section of grey Churchill quartzite with a thick twisted quartz vein visible in white.

Twisted quartz veins in the Churchill quartzite show that it was subjected to great heat and pressure.

As time continued to pass, the nearby mountains were worn flat by erosion, and the tough, deeply buried Churchill quartzite was slowly uplifted until it was again exposed at the Earth’s surface. For many millions of years, this bedrock was subject to the forces of erosion in a desert-like landscape; the rock surfaces were smoothed and weathered, and large boulder fields developed at the bases of quartzite slopes.

Landscape photo of a rocky shoreline with a incline going up to boulders on the left edge from the waterline on the right edge.

Dolostone from the Ordovician Period was deposited around an ancient boulder field, at the foot of a scarp of Churchill quartzite. The old quartzite island was to the left in this photo, and the Ordovician sea was to the right. This is the site depicted in the Museum’s Ancient Seas exhibit.

More than a billion years after the Churchill quartzite was formed, another waypoint was added to its time journey. The Churchill region was now near the equator, and a warm sea flowed in and covered the area. Water extended to the horizon in all directions, but the tough ridges of quartzite stood up above the water, so that they formed an archipelago of islands in that tropical sea.

The ridges of Churchill quartzite (brown areas on this map of modern Churchill) formed islands in the Ordovician tropical sea.

These fossil corals show how tropical marine life proliferated against the quartzite shores.

A crevice in the quartzite scarp is filled with Ordovician dolostone, which is itself full of pieces of weathered quartzite!

Around these islands, abundant sea life lived: creatures such as trilobites and giant cephalopods swam in the water, while corals proliferated in front of and against the quartzite shores. We see evidence of this sea life in Ordovician and Silurian age dolostones (rocks similar to limestones) and sandstones that date from about 450 to 440 million years ago; in some remarkable instances the fossil-rich rocks fill crevices in the quartzite surfaces!

The sea became deeper, and during the Silurian and the subsequent Devonian Period, it is likely that the sculpted ridges of Churchill quartzite were again buried, with hundreds of metres of sedimentary rock laid down above them. An immense length of time passed, hundreds of millions of years, the sea was gone, and the thick sedimentary rocks above the quartzite were slowly eroded away by water and wind.

About two and a half million years ago, a different erosional force arrived in the region. The Ice Age, also known as the Pleistocene glaciation, began, and large continental glaciers began to expand southward from the Arctic. These glaciers eventually covered much of North America, and in places they were two to four kilometres thick! The immense weight of this great thickness of ice gave it immense erosional power, and as it moved slowly southward across the land surface it deeply eroded and scoured the bedrock surfaces.

Dr. Maureen Matthews staning at the right edge of the frame on a large flat rock in the ground with scratch or scrape-like markings along it.

Striations on a polished quartzite surface show the direction(s) of glacial ice movement. Here, Dr. Maureen Matthews demonstrates striations east of Churchill Airport.

As was the case during earlier erosion intervals, the immense toughness of the Churchill quartzite meant that it fared better than the other rocks around it. The dolostones that overlaid and abutted the quartzite were heavily ground down, to the extent that they can be observed in only a few select places in the Churchill area. The quartzite ridges themselves, in spite of their hardness, show considerable evidence of glacial erosion: in most places their surfaces were polished by the ice and show striations, lines and grooves that demonstrate the varied directions of ice flow as the rock fragments stuck into the bottom of the glacier scraped the top of the bedrock.

An individual standing at the top of a tall rocky rise from the sand.

East of Halfway Point, the quartzite ridge along the shore has the features of a roche moutonée: it is curved and polished on the north side (left), while the south side (right) shows many places where pieces of the rock were plucked and carried away by the flowing glacier.

In some locations you can see other features characteristic of glacial erosion: a roche moutonnée, or sheepback, shows where a large chunk was plucked out of the downstream side of a quartzite ridge, while the upstream side of the same ridge was smoothly polished. Chatter marks are smaller features, crescent-shaped gouges that show evidence of chipping by rock fragments on the base of the glacier; these are typically at right angles to the direction of ice flow (which is itself demonstrated by the striations, or lines on the bedrock surface).

In southern Canada the Ice Age began to end roughly 12,000 years ago, and by 8,000 years ago the ice in northern Manitoba had melted to the extent that the Tyrrell Sea had formed – this forerunner of Hudson Bay was a huge body of water that covered the low-lying land that had been pushed down by the weight of the glaciers. Our ridges of Churchill quartzite were now again under deep salt water; old beach ridges show that the Tyrrell Sea extended many tens of kilometres south and west of Churchill.

At Sloop Cove, near the 18th century British graffiti, glacial chatter marks are outlined by the growth of orange lichens.

Near Fort Prince of Wales, old beach ridges are far above the modern sea level.

In the 21st century, there is no way we could overwinter a ship in Sloop Cove.

This region has been rising ever since, and even today the Churchill area continues to rise at a rate of almost a metre a century! This continued uplift is shown by the relationship between some human structures and the quartzite ridges. For example, old mooring rings at Sloop Cove, near the Churchill River, show where people were able to haul sloops (small ships) out of the river in the 18th century, to protect them from ice during the long northern winter. The cove has risen so much in the past 300 years that there is no way a ship could be hauled out in the same place today!

Sloop Cove is one piece of the final chapter in the saga of the Churchill quartzite. The sinuous ridges have actually been associated with humanity for several millennia, ever since Pre-Dorset Inuit people living some 3500 years ago hunted marine mammals from what was then an archipelago of quartzite islands in the Tyrrell Sea. More recently, the men of the Hudson’s Bay Company quarried large blocks of this tough stone for construction of the impressive 18th century Fort Prince of Wales and Cape Merry Battery, which flank either side of the mouth of the Churchill River. Those men also carved the names of many men and ships into the cross-bedded quartzite at Sloop Cove.

Eighteenth century graffiti at Sloop Cove.

In 2022 a huge amount of Churchill quartzite was being crushed at Airport Cove, to provide ballast stone for improvements to the Hudson Bay Railway.

Some human usage of Churchill quartzite has been quite whimsical. This structure at Churchill, which looks like an ancient castle ruin, represents a never-completed stone hotel. The walls, built directly onto quartzite bedrock, include cobbles and boulders of many different kinds of stone.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, Churchill quartzite has been put to many uses by enterprising humans: it makes superb ballast stone for the Hudson Bay Railway, it has been used to construct the large weir that controls flow of the Churchill River, it underlies the runways of Churchill Airport, and it appears as a backdrop in all those wonderful photos and videos of polar bears in their natural habitat!

What does the future hold, I wonder, for such a remarkable and robust geological formation? In any case, it will be here for many millennia to come.

This post draws on images and observations from our very successful August, 2022, Museum research trip to the Churchill area, which allowed our group to develop many ideas for new exhibit collaborations. A few of the photos are from earlier paleontological fieldwork in the Churchill area over the past 26 years.