Fort Garry

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Fort Garry , formerly also Upper Fort Garry , originally Fort Gibraltar , is a municipality of Winnipeg , the capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba . Fort Garry was initially a trading post of the North West Company (NWC), merged with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 1821 , and in 1870 became the capital of the Manitoba Province, newly established with the Manitoba Act . In 1874 it became part of the new city of Winnipeg. The designation Upper Fort Garry served until then to differentiate it from Lower Fort Garry .

history

Upper Fort Garry in the early 1870s
Main entrance to Fort Garry 2007

Fort Garry was built in 1809 by the NWC as a trading post under the name Fort Gibraltar at the confluence of the Assiniboine and the Red River ( The Forks ). In 1816 it was destroyed in the Pemmican War and rebuilt in 1817. After the merger of NWC and HBC in 1821, it was renamed Fort Garry in 1822 after the HBC's Vice Governor Nicholas Garry .

Fort Garry served as the center of the fur trade in the Red River District , but was destroyed by a flood in 1826. As a replacement, Lower Fort Garry was built in a safe location 30 km downstream in 1831. However, the location of the new fort made it unsuitable for the administration of the settlements that were mostly concentrated around The Forks . Consequently, Fort Garry was rebuilt in 1836, was subsequently called Upper Fort Garry for differentiation and was the seat of the Council of Assiniboia .

In 1869 the Canadian Dominion , the forerunner of what is now Canada, acquired the HBC territory. Land surveyors were sent to the Red River District to prepare land allocation to new settlers. The Métis, who mainly settled there, and other population groups, were concerned about their legal status, especially their land rights, and the Red River Rebellion under Louis Riel broke out .

In the course of this, Fort Garry was occupied by Riels rebels in the winter of 1869/1870 and became the seat of the Provisional Government of Manitoba under John Bruce . The newly appointed Governor William McDougall of the Canadian Dominion was denied access. With the Manitoba Act of 1870, many demands of the Provisional Government were recognized, but their protagonists were driven from Fort Garry with the Red River Expedition under Garnet Joseph Wolseley in the same year and never recognized.

Fort Garry became provincial capital through the Manitoba Act and at the same time the administrative seat of the Northwest Territories , i.e. the endless areas of the HBC that did not become part of Manitoba. From the Northwest Territories, the provinces and territories of Alberta , Saskatchewan , Yukon and Nunavut and extensions of Manitoba were split off in the following decades . Today, the remainder of the Northwest Territories are administered by Yellowknife .

In 1874 Fort Garry and the surrounding settlements officially became a city, and from then on it was called Winnipeg. The actual fort was largely destroyed in the 1880s to make way for the new center of Winnipeg. Today only the former entrance gate still exists.

Web links

Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′  N , 96 ° 56 ′  W