Fort Garry National Historic Site

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settlement.

In later years Lower Fort Garry was used successively as a training camp for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a prison, a mental institution, and a company headquarters, before eventually being leased to the Manitoba Motor & Country Club in 1911. It was handed over to the Crown by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1951. In 1964 Parks Canada began a program of restoration.

Fort Garry National Historic Park has been equipped with period furniture, crockery, pictures, etc. painstakingly gathered together over a period of years not only from within Canada but also from Britain and the USA.

Costumed Parks Canada employees act out the roles of the fort's earlier inhabitants, e.g. smiths, laborers, servants and "voyageurs" (i.e. traders who traveled by canoe bringing back pelts from the territories further north). Visitors are able to talk to the "Governor" and his wife and to various employees and domestic staff, as well as enjoying oatmeal biscuits in the basement kitchen. The result is a vivid impression of the complexities of life in a fur trading community.

Displayed in the building where the furs were stored are samples of pelts of every kind - lynx, fox, beaver, raccoon, mink and wolf. On the ground floor, a Hudson's Bay Company shop has been re-created, stocked with everything from clothing and household goods to beads, horse bells, traps, brooms, boots and blankets. The settlers were entirely dependent upon such shops to keep their needs supplied.

Standing beside the storehouse is an example of a "York Boat". Hundreds of these solidly built craft (capable of carrying up to 2 tons/tons) plied the lakes and rivers all the way from Hudson Bay to the Rocky Mountains and from Red River to the Arctic.

An audio-visual presentation on the history of Fort Garry National Historic Park greets visitors arriving at the Reception Center (opened in 1980) which also has excellent displays on the fur trade and the lives of the early settlers, illustrated with the aid of a variety of artifacts, pictures and models.

After visiting the Fort continue on Highway 9 via Petersfield to Netley Marsh.