333 Main Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 3V6
Canada
Company Perspectives:
MTS is Manitoba's preeminent, full-service telecommunications company. Seamlessly blending innovative solutions and world class technology, MTS connects its customers to the world.
History of Manitoba Telecom Services, Inc.
Manitoba Telecom Services, Inc. (MTS) is the leading telecommunications company in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The company handles local telephone service throughout Manitoba, and also offers cellular communication, paging, and group communication networks. The company also offers long-distance service throughout the province. The company's MTS Media subsidiary produces advertising and information directories, especially through the Internet. Another subsidiary, Qunara, Inc., is a leading information technology company. It provides consulting services on information security, web management, and information management. Its clients are primarily businesses in the financial services, information, healthcare, and energy industries, and it has many government clients as well. MTS also owns a 40 percent share in Bell West Inc., a local and long-distance communications carrier. MTS was formerly known as the Manitoba Telephone System, a public utility owned and managed by the province of Manitoba. The utility became a public for-profit company in 1996.
Early Years in Canada with Bell
The Manitoba Telephone System emerged out of a patchwork of private telephone systems that spread across Canada soon after the invention of the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was of Scottish descent and eventually became a citizen of the United States. But his family lived in Canada, and Bell did much of his seminal work in his parents' home in Brantford, Ontario. Bell moved to Boston in 1871 to work as a teacher for the deaf. In his spare time, he tinkered in an electrical shop, and in 1875 he made his first workable "harmonic telegraph," the device that became the telephone. Bell patented his telephone in the United States in 1876 and in Canada in 1877. It was several years before Bell did anything but lose money on his invention. He assigned Canadian rights to the telephone to his father, Alexander Melville Bell, and the elder Bell did much to promote the new device. Melville Bell tried to sell a percentage of his patent rights to several businesses, including the Toronto Globe and the Toronto Dominion Telegraph Company. Yet no one was interested in what seemed at the time to be only an expensive and curious toy.
In 1880 Bell's backers hired Charles Fleetford Sise, an insurance executive and retired sea captain, to put together a business that would sell telephones and telephone service across Canada. Sise organized the Bell Telephone Company of Canada. The telephone was beginning to catch on as a communications device, and already Bell Canada faced a flurry of small regional competitors. Bell bought them out in many cases. The telephone industry had made it as far west as Winnipeg by 1878, when an agent for the territory managed to sell one pair of phones. In 1881 Winnipeg received its first switchboard, which was operated by a boy with a powerful voice. According to E.B. Ogle's history of the telephone industry in Canada, Long Distance Please, the young Winnipeg switchboard operator "... kept the window in the exchange open, presumably so that he could reach his customers with a good shout if any of his connections failed." By 1882, the Winnipeg telephone exchange had 110 customers.
However, Manitoba and its neighboring Prairie provinces Alberta and Saskatchewan resisted the encroachment of Bell Canada. The predominant phone company was trying to link up the entire country, but the sparsely populated Prairie regions presented difficulties. It was not entirely economical to run telephone wires out to scattered farms in the rural West. By the late 1880s, Bell Canada had grown into a powerful entity, at times resented for the way it handled right-of-way issues when stringing wires. Though Bell had a significant operation in Winnipeg by the early 1900s, local sentiment turned toward a publicly owned phone company. Manitoba held a referendum in 1906, and the majority voted to form a government-owned telephone utility. Manitoba's premier then began negotiating with Charles Sise to buy out Bell Canada. Eventually the provincial government bought out Bell's interest for $3.3 million and formed Manitoba Government Telephones. The new utility, founded in 1908, already had 17,000 subscribers and 700 employees. The other Prairie provinces came to similar arrangements with Bell, forming Alberta Government Telephones and Saskatchewan Government Telephones.
Public Utility Through the 1970s
The new Manitoba Government Telephones kept on most of the people who had previously worked for the Bell company in the area. The company quickly set about expanding service, stringing almost 1,500 miles of new long-distance line in its first year. Immigration was swelling the population, and by 1912 the number of subscribers in Manitoba had more than doubled, to 40,000. The company as a whole subsidized the cost of building rural lines. In 1912 Manitoba swallowed the territory previously called Rupert's Land, giving it many more square miles to cover. Bringing the telephone to rural areas was part of the mandate of the new government company, and Manitoba Government Telephones did this regardless of the cost. As a result, the utility lost a spectacular amount of money in its first few years. In 1912 the government initiated a Public Utility Commission to regulate rates, weed out government corruption and influence, and hold the company to its mission. The company worked to balance the needs of rural customers for efficient service and of urban customers for livable rates.
The company seemed to do well in the 1920s, a time of booming economic and technological expansion across Canada. The company changed its name in 1921 to Manitoba Telephone System (MTS). At that time, the company was still run as a department of the provincial government. MTS made Winnipeg one of the first Canadian cities with a totally automatic dial service (eliminating the need to ask the operator for a line) in 1926. The company improved its long-distance service to Saskatchewan and Alberta, though calls to the East and West coasts still had to go through other exchanges. The Depression years of the 1930s brought a vast slow-down to MTS, which began losing money again and was forced to lay off workers. In 1933 the utility changed its governance, as required by the passage of the Manitoba Telephone Act of 1933. After that point, MTS was no longer a department of the provincial government. The law asked for up to three commissioners to run the telephone utility. This regulation was revised several times, providing for the appointment of five and then up to seven commissioners.
During the Depression, many Manitoba customers gave up their telephone service. It was not until 1938 that the utility again began installing more phones than it removed. The years of World War II were also difficult for MTS, as much of the labor force went off to war. But the postwar years saw a boom in telephone installation. The number of phones installed in the years between 1945 and 1955 exceeded the number installed in all the company's preceding years put together. MTS flourished, despite some obstacles. In the spring of 1950, flooding along Manitoba's Red River reached record highs. Yet MTS telephone operators reported to work, in one instance climbing over sandbag barricades to enter the exchange building through a window. Flood waters stood ten feet deep in the town of Morris, and MTS workers had to be evacuated by boat. At the worst point in the flooding, one-tenth of Winnipeg was under water, and 8,500 customers temporarily lost their phone service.
While MTS had a government mandate to extend phone service to all parts of the province, some areas nevertheless ran their own independent telephone exchanges. Small groups of rural customers got together to provide neighbor-to-neighbor phone service. These independent telephone services were usually not even legally incorporated. Informal telephone exchanges dotted Manitoba during MTS's early years. By 1969, the last of these municipal phone companies had closed, and Manitoba Telephone provided service in all corners of its large territory.
Changing Competitive Environment in the 1980s and 1990s
Manitoba Telephone continued to provide convenient phone service across Manitoba through the 1970s. The company was considered a technological leader, keeping pace with developments in communications equipment in Canada and the rest of the world. In the 1980s, though, the telecommunications industry in North America went through upheavals that left MTS rethinking its strategy. In 1984, a court order in the United States demanded the breakup of the monopoly phone company Alexander Graham Bell and his backers had founded in the 19th century. The huge company colloquially known as "Ma Bell" was broken into regional "Baby Bells." New companies also entered the telecommunications industry.
In Canada, telephone service had not been controlled by a monolithic corporation but instead regulated by a hodgepodge of government entities. The three Prairie provinces ran their own phone companies, the Maritime provinces had a similar set-up, and the federal government in Ottawa controlled phone utilities in Ontario, Quebec, the Northwest Territories, and British Columbia. The rapid development of new technologies, such as digital and data transmission, made it expensive for telephone utilities to keep up. In 1989, a new communications bill transferred authority over Canadian telecommunications to the federal government, with the expectation that unified regulation would make the industry more adaptable. However, the 1989 ruling exempted the Prairie provinces.
Nevertheless, Alberta's phone company, Alberta Government Telephones, announced in 1990 that it would become a private company. It restructured and broke into several interrelated subsidiaries. Saskatchewan's phone utility, then called SaskTel, declared at the same time that it had no intention of changing its governance, though the prevailing wisdom was that privatizing would make the Prairie companies more competitive. Caught between these two, MTS announced in 1990 that it was considering following Alberta's route. Government ministers felt that Manitoba businesses were being held back from investments in data processing and other communications industries by the current regulatory restrictions. MTS began to move slowly toward privatization.
In 1991 Manitoba's Public Utility Board gave up its control of MTS, ceding its regulatory power to the federal Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. This put Manitoba in line with the other provinces that had come under federal control as a result of the 1989 regulation. Yet changes in the competitive landscape threatened the economic health of MTS in the early 1990s. Revenue for 1991 was $560 million. The company finished 1992 with $800 million in debt. During 1993, the company saw its net income drop by half. Not only was the Canadian economy in a slump, but MTS lost out on long-distance fees that were going to new competitors.
Business began to pick up the next year, but MTS was still in trouble. By 1995, the company had run through three chief executives in five years. Bill Fraser, who took over the top job in 1995, protested to Manitoba Business (October 1995) that "... We're not a dying industry; we're a growth industry." But it was difficult to turn the company around. Fraser hoped to cut down the enormous debt, now 80 percent of equity, and to lay off employees in order to get MTS back into shape. Critics sniped that Fraser should simply put a "For Sale" sign on the company. In 1996 MTS did become officially for sale, with its high debt and the need to invest $500 million in new equipment cited as the pressing reason.
The transition came with much political bickering and contradictory sets of statistics. One poll showed that 70 to 80 percent of Manitobans opposed the privatization. Despite much turmoil, MTS became a publicly-owned for-profit company in late 1996. In 1997 the company was renamed Manitoba Telecom Services.
New Ventures in the Late 1990s and Early 2000s
The new company moved quickly to form joint ventures and to invest in new markets. In 1999 MTS entered a joint venture with the larger telecommunications firm BCE to expand into the business services market in Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver. In 2000, MTS began spending some $300 million on high-speed Internet technology, deploying thousands of kilometers of new fiber optic cable to carry the advanced connection. The company hoped to put 85 percent of Manitobans within reach of high-speed Internet access. The company already held 60 percent of the Internet access market in Manitoba, with the great bulk of customers using the slower dial-up service. MTS hoped to lay the groundwork for other broadband services, such as video on demand, over the next few years. MTS applied to the federal telecommunications governing board in 2001 for a residential phone rate increase, as the company now had to pay income tax since it had become a for-profit company. The increase still gave Manitoba customers relatively low phone rates compared to the rest of the country. In addition, MTS was upgrading and improving its services. The company had also cut costs, reducing staff by over 40 percent between 1990 and 2000, and reorganizing some of its marketing ventures to gain efficiency.
By 2003, the company had emerged on much sounder financial footing than in its last years as a public utility. Though the telecommunications industry in Canada was in something of a doldrums in the early 2000s, Manitoba Telecom stood out. According to Canadian Business (June 9, 2003), MTS was "... the belle of the telco ball." MTS did well in part because, though it was now a for-profit, competitive company, it still had much of Manitoba to itself. It still provided 98 percent of local phone service in the province, and 77 percent of long-distance service. Though wireless and Internet services were new markets for it, MTS also controlled close to 70 percent of the Manitoba wireless market by 2003, and almost 60 percent of the Internet services sector. With a strong stance in its traditional market area, the company also risked expanding into new projects. It began offering a digital television product, MTS-TV, in 2003. This service, which was first available only in portions of Winnipeg, gave customers access to 200 television channels, plus radio, and an interactive feature that let users search for information. While MTS President Bill Fraser characterized the company as conservative and "sticking to its knitting," MTS had nevertheless reached out for new technology and market sectors, so far very successfully.
Principal Subsidiaries: AAA Alarm Systems Ltd.; MTS Media Inc.; Qunara, Inc.; Bell West Inc. (40%).
Principal Competitors: Shaw Communications, Inc.; Allstream Inc.; Rogers Wireless Communications Inc.
Related information about Manitoba
pop (2000e) 1 223 000; area
649 950 km²/250 945 sq mi. Province in W
Canada; boundaries include Hudson Bay (NE) and USA (S); known as
the ‘land of 100 000 lakes’, the result of glaciation, notably
Lakes Winnipeg, Winnipegosis, Manitoba; drained by several rivers
flowing into L Winnipeg or Hudson Bay; land gradually rises in W
and S to 832 m/2730 ft at Mt Baldy; capital, Winnipeg;
major town, Brandon; cereals (especially wheat), livestock,
vegetables, fishing, timber, hydroelectric power, food processing,
mining (oil, gold, nickel, silver, copper, zinc), machinery,
tourism; aboriginal population includes Cree, Ojibwa, Assiniboine,
and Chippewyan; trading rights given to Hudson's Bay Co, 1670;
several forts established because of English–French conflict,
including Fort Rouge, 1738 (site of Winnipeg); French claims in the
N ceded to the British under the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and, in
the S, the Treaty of Paris (1763); settlement on the Red R from
1812, with many Scottish and Irish settlers; purchased from
Hudson's Bay Company by Canada in 1869, provoking insurrection
under Riel; joined confederation in 1870; boundaries extended, 1881
and 1912; major development of area after railway reached Winnipeg
in the 1880s; governed by a lieutenant-governor and an elected
57-member Legislative Assembly.
otheruses
Manitoba is one of Canada's provinces. It was officially recognized by the Federal
Government in 1870 as
separate from the Northwest Territories, and became the first province
created from the Territories. It is the easternmost of the three
Prairie
provinces.
Its capital and largest city (containing over one half the
provincial population) is Winnipeg. Other important cities and towns include
Brandon,
Thompson,
Dauphin,
Swan
River, Churchill, The Pas, Selkirk, Portage la Prairie, Gimli, Flin Flon, Steinbach, Morden, and Winkler.
A person from Manitoba is called a Manitoban.
Geography
Manitoba is located in the longitudinal centre of Canada,
although it is considered part of Western Canada. It borders Saskatchewan to the west,
Ontario to the east,
Nunavut and the Hudson Bay to the north, and
the American
states of North
Dakota and Minnesota to the south.
The province has a coast along Hudson Bay, and contains the tenth-largest fresh water
lake in the world, Lake Winnipeg, along with other very large lakes:
Lake Manitoba, and
Lake
Winnipegosis. Lake Winnipeg is the largest lake within the
borders of southern Canada, and is one of the last remote lake areas with
intact watersheds left in the world.
Important watercourses include the Red, Assiniboine, Nelson, Winnipeg, Hayes and Churchill
Rivers.
Most of Manitoba's inhabited south, near or in Winnipeg, lies within the
prehistoric bed of Glacial Lake Agassiz. Other upland areas include
Riding
Mountain, the Pembina Hills, Sandilands
Provincial Forest, and the Canadian Shield regions. Much of the province's
sparsely-inhabited north and east lie within the irregular granite
landscape of the Canadian Shield, including Whiteshell
Provincial Park, Atikaki Provincial Park, and Nopiming Provincial
Park. Birds Hill Provincial Park was originally an island in
Lake Agassiz after
the melting of glaciers.
The climate in Manitoba is typical of its mid continent location
and northerly latitude. In the summer months the climate is often
influenced by low pressure air masses originating in the Gulf of Mexico resulting
in hot and humid conditions and frequent thunderstorms with a few
tornadoes each year. Manitoba is one of the sunniest places in
Canada and North
America.
Only the southern parts of the province support extensive agriculture. The eastern,
southeastern, and northern reaches of the province range through
coniferous forests, muskeg, Canadian Shield, and up to tundra in the far north. The forests generally
consist of pines, spruces, tamarack, cedar, poplars, and birch trees. The first exposed land was the Turtle Mountain area,
where large numbers of petroforms and medicine wheels can be found. The first humans in
southern Manitoba left behind pottery shards, spear and arrow heads, copper,
petroforms, pictographs, fish and animal
bones, and signs of agriculture along the Red River near
Lockport. Eventually
there were the aboriginal settlements of Ojibwa, Cree, Dene,
Sioux, Mandan, and Assiniboine peoples, along
with other tribes that entered the area to trade. The Whiteshell
Provincial Park region along the Winnipeg River has many
old petroforms and
may have been a trading centre, or even a place of learning and
sharing of knowledge for over 2000 years. The cowry shells and copper are proof
of what was traded as a part of a large trading network to the
oceans, and to the larger southern native civilizations along the
Mississippi and in the south and southwest.
Henry Hudson in
1611 was one of the first Europeans to sail into what is now known
as Hudson Bay. The
Nonsuch ship that sailed
into Hudson Bay in 1668-1669 was the first trading voyage that led
to the formation of the Hudson's Bay Company. This watershed was
named Rupert's
Land, after Prince Rupert who helped to form the Hudson's Bay
Company. Other traders and explorers from the British Isles eventually
came to the Hudson's Bay shores and went south along many northern
Manitoba Rivers.
The first European to reach present-day central and southern
Manitoba was Sir Thomas Button, who travelled upstream along the Nelson River and Lake Winnipeg in 1612 and
may have reached somewhere along the edge of the prairies where he
reported of seeing a bison. Pierre Gaultier
de Varennes, Sieur de la Vérendrye, visited the Red River
Valley in the 1730s as part of opening the area for French
exploration and exploitation. Many other French and Metis explorers
came from the east and the south by going down the Winnipeg River and down
the Red
River. An important French-Canadian population (Franco-Manitobains)
still lives in Manitoba, especially in the Saint-Boniface district of eastern Winnipeg. One is the
Assiniboine words
"Mini" and "tobow" meaning "Lake of the Prairie". The other more
likely source is the Cree
word "maniotwapow" meaning "the strait of the spirit or manitobau".
This noise is linked to the superstition among the Assiniboine of the "manitou"
(or Spirit) beating a drum to create the noiseGeonames - Manitoba name.
Another story refers to "Manitou" and "abah" or the Spirit which
sits or is located somewhere in southern Manitoba.
The territory was won by the Kingdom of Great
Britain in 1763 as part of the French and Indian
War, and this was a part of Rupert's Land, the immense trading monopoly
territory of the Hudson's Bay Company that was the entire watershed that
flows into Hudson's Bay. The Hudson Bay Archives is located within Winnipeg, Manitoba, and
preserves the rich history of the fur trading era that occurred
along the major water routes of the Rupert's Land area.
The founding of the first agricultural community and settlements in
1811 by Lord Selkirk, north of the area which is now
downtown Winnipeg, resulted in conflict between the British
colonists and the Métis who lived and traded near there. Twenty
colonists, including the governor, were killed by the Métis in the
Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816.
When Rupert's Land was ceded to Canada in 1869 and incorporated
into the Northwest Territories, a lack of attention to Métis
concerns led their leader Louis Riel to establish a provisional government as part
of The Red
River Rebellion. However Louis Riel was pursued by Garnet Wolseley because
of the rebellion, and he fled into exile. He was eventually hanged
after being captured in Saskatchewan. Presently there are still land claim
issues because the proper amount of land that was promised to the
native peoples was not given in all cases.
The Manitoba Schools Question showed the deep divergence of
cultural values in the territory. however the Orange Order and other
anti-Catholic forces mobilized nationwide. The Conservatives
proposed remedial legislation to over-ride Manitoba's legislation
but they in turn were blocked by Liberals, led by Wilfrid Laurier who
opposed the remedial legislation on the basis of provincial rights.
Winnipeg eventually fell behind in growth when other major cities
in Canada began to boom ahead, such as Calgary today.
By 1916, in wartime, national unity was at stake. Out of a
population of 500,000, there were 30,000 French speakers and
100,000 speakers of German, Ukrainian, Polish and other immigrant tongues.
Morton p 352
In the 1917 election in the midst of the conscription
crisis, the Liberals were split in half and the new Union party
carried all but one seat. The most dramatic episode was the
Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 which shut down most
activity for six weeks, starting May 15 until the strike collapsed on June 25 1919 as the workers were gradually returning to
their jobs and the Central Strike Committee decided to end the
strike.
Government of Manitoba
Founding of the Legislative Assembly
The Legislative Assembly of Manitoba was established on
July 14 1870. At that time Manitoba
attained full fledged rights and responsibilities of
self-government as the first Canadian province carved out of the
Northwest Territories, control over which had been passed by
Britain to the
Government of Canada in
1869. Saskatchewan
and Alberta went through
a long period of apprenticeship as part of the Northwest
Territories until their creation as provinces in 1905.
The decision to make Manitoba a full-fledged province in 1870 came
as the result of three things.
- A misunderstanding on the part of the Canadian
authorities.
- The rise of nationalism of the Metis.
- Fears of manifest destiny sentiments in the United States ignoring
Americans denials of any such goals.
Initially, the subject of provincial status did not come up
during the negotiations between Canada, the United Kingdom and the
Hudson's Bay Company. Riel's proposal to Donald Smith, emissary for
the government of Canada, was rejected by the government of
John A. Macdonald
introduced the Manitoba Act in the Canadian House of
Commons and pretended that the question of province or
territory was of no significance. However, parliamentary government
and the Province that was created in 1870 prevailed.
Winnipeg became the
Capital City and grew rapidly to become a major city in Canada. The present Manitoba
Legislature was eventually built with neoclassical designs, and to
accomodate Winnipeg's
quickly growing population in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The
Legislature was built to democratically represent about 3 million
citizens, which was the population that was expected
eventually.
Official Language
English and French are official languages of the legislature and
courts of Manitoba, according to the Manitoba Act, 1870 (which
forms part of the Canadian constitution):
Either the English or the French language may be used by any
person in the debates of the Houses of the Legislature and both
those languages shall be used in the respective Records and
Journals of those Houses; However, in 1985 the Supreme Court of
Canada ruled in the Reference re Manitoba Language Rights that §23 still
applied, and that legislation published only in English was
invalid (although, so that Manitoba did not descend into a state
of lawlessness, unilingual legislation was declared valid for a
temporary period, to give the government of Manitoba time to
issue translations.)
Although French is required to be an official language for the
purposes of the legislature, legislation, and the courts, the
Manitoba Act (as interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada) does
not require it to be an official language for the purpose of the
executive branch of government (except when the executive branch
is performing legislative or judicial functions.) In 1992 1
S.C.R. 221-222 www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/1992/vol1/html/1992scr1_0212.html,
the Supreme Court rejected the contentions of the Société franco-manitobaine that s. Hence, Manitoba's
government is not completely bilingual, and as reflected in the
Canadian Constitution Act, 1982, the only bilingual province is
New
Brunswick.
The Manitoba French language Services Policy of 1999 is intended
to provide a comparable level of provincial government services
in both official languages.www.gov.mb.ca/fls-slf/03flspolicy.html Services to the
public, including public utilities and health services, official
documents such as parking tickets and court summonses, court and
commission hearings, and government web sites are accessible in
both English and French.
Demographics
(col-begin)
(col-break|width=30%)
Population of Manitoba since 1871
Year
|
Population
|
Five Year
% change
|
Ten Year
% change
|
Rank Among
Provinces
|
| 1871 |
25,228 |
n/a |
n/a |
8
|
| 1881 |
62,260 |
n/a |
146.8 |
6
|
| 1891 |
152,506 |
n/a |
145 |
5
|
| 1901 |
255,211 |
n/a |
67.3 |
5
|
| 1911 |
461,394 |
n/a |
80.8 |
5
|
| 1921 |
610,118 |
n/a |
32.2 |
4
|
| 1931 |
700,139 |
n/a |
14.8 |
5
|
| 1941 |
729,744 |
n/a |
4.2 |
6
|
| 1951 |
776,541 |
n/a |
6.4 |
6
|
| 1956 |
850,040 |
9.5 |
n/a |
6
|
| 1961 |
921,686 |
8.4 |
18.7 |
6
|
| 1966 |
963,066 |
4.5 |
13.3 |
5
|
| 1971 |
988,245 |
2.3 |
7.2 |
5
|
| 1976 |
1,021,505 |
3.4 |
6.1 |
5
|
| 1981 |
1,026,241 |
0.4 |
3.8 |
5
|
| 1986 |
1,063,015 |
3.6 |
4.1 |
5
|
| 1991 |
1,091,942 |
2.7 |
6.4 |
5
|
| 1996 |
1,113,898 |
2.0 |
4.8 |
5
|
| 2001 |
1,119,583 |
0.5 |
2.5 |
5
|
-
Source: Statistics Canada Statcan - Manitoba Population
trend
(col-break|width=30%)
Ethnic origin
-
Note: the percentages do not necessarily add up
to 100% as multiple responses are allowed. Ethnic origins with
less than 3% of the responses are not listedStatcan - Manitoba Ethnic
Origin.
- 22.8% Canadian
- 22.0% English
- 18.1% German
- 17.7% Scottish
- 14.2% Ukrainian
- 13.0% Irish
- 12.6% French
- 9.9% North American Indian
- 6.6% Polish
- 5.1% Métis
Manitoba is home to the largest Icelandic population outside of IcelandMaitoba Icelandic
Population. About 35% of the Icelandic-Canadian population
lives in ManitobaStatcan -
Icelandic Canadians living in Manitoba.
(col-break|width=30%)
Religious groups
- 43.0% Protestant
- 29.3% Roman
Catholic
- 4.0% Christian
not included elsewhere
- 1.4% Christian Orthodox
- 1.1% Jewish
- 18.6% No religious affiliation
-
Religions that make up less than 1% are not
listedStatcan - Manitoba Religious
groups.
(col-end)
Economy
Pre-Confederation
Manitoba's early economy was one that
depended on mobility and living off the land. A number of native
tribes that included the Cree, Ojibwa, Dene,
Sioux and Assiniboine followed herds
of bison and congregated
to trade among themselves at key meeting places throughout the
province.
The first fur traders entering the province in
the 17th century changed the dynamics of the economy of Manitoba
forever. The natural rivers, creeks, and lakes were the most
important routes for trade and travel.
The first major diversification of the economy came when Lord Selkirk brought the
first agricultural settlers to an area just north of present day
Winnipeg in 1811. The
lack of reliable transportation and an ongoing dispute between
the Hudson Bay
Company, the North West Company and the Métis impeded growth.
The eventual triumph of the Hudson Bay Company over its competitors ensured
the primacy of the fur trade over widespread agricultural
colonization. Any trade not sanctioned by the HBC was frowned upon.
It took many years for the Red River Colony to develop under HBC rule. It
was only when independent traders such as James Sinclair and
Andrew
McDermot (Dermott) started competing in trade that
improvements to the community started to happen.
By 1849, the HBC faced even greater threats to its monopoly. A
Métis fur trader
named Pierre Guillaume Sayer was charged with illegal trade by the
Hudson Bay Company. Sayer had been trading with Norman Kittson who
resided just beyond the HBC's reach in Pembina, North
Dakota. The court found Sayer guilty but the judge levied no
fine or punishment.
In 1853, A second agricultural community started in Portage la
Prairie.
The courts could no longer be used by the HBC to enforce its
monopoly. The result was a weakening of HBC rule over the region
and laid the foundations of provincehood for Manitoba.
-
See also: Corporations based in Manitoba
-
See also: List of
hospitals in Manitoba
Transportation
Transportation & Warehousing
contributes approximately $2.2 billion to Manitoba?s GDP.
Trucking
- The TransCanada Highway was built in the early 1900's,
and to this day is still being upgraded. This highway is the
major and only highway in Canada that links the east to the west for trade,
travel, tourism, and trucking.
- Over 350 for-hire motor carriers with 4 or more vehicles
are headquartered in Manitoba. They are CN and
Canadian Pacific Railway. Winnipeg is
centrally located on the main lines of both of these
continental carriers and both companies maintain large
intermodal terminals in the city. The first railway through
Manitoba was the CP Railway, and the tracks were diverted south
to make Winnipeg as
the capital and centre, and not Selkirk, which is located further
north.
- There are a number of small regional and shortlines
railways. They are the Hudson Bay Railway, the Southern
Manitoba Railway, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Manitoba, Greater Winnipeg Water District Railway, and
Central
Manitoba Railway. Together, they operate approximately
1,775 kilometres of track within the province.
Air
- Winnipeg International Airport is one of only a few
24 hour, unrestricted airports in Canada. The airport handles approximately
140,000 tonnes of cargo annually.
- 11 regional passenger carriers, plus 9 smaller/charter
carriers operate out of the airport.
- 11 air cargo carriers operate out of the
airport.
- 7 freight forwarders operate out of the airport.
- Winnipeg is a major sorting facility for both FedEx and Purolator. It also
receives daily transborder service from UPS. Air Canada Cargo and
Cargojet
Airways use the airport as a major hub for national
traffic.
Marine
- The Port
of Churchill, owned by OmniTRAX is Manitoba's window to the Arctic and to the sea. The
port is linked by the Hudson Bay Railway (also owned by
OmniTrax).
- Grain represented 90% of the Port?s traffic in the 2004
shipping season. Before adding a person to this list consider
if they are notable enough to be on this page or just on the
larger list of Manitobans located at List of
Manitobans. -->
-
See also: List of Manitobans
- Randy
Bachman, musician, (The Guess Who) & Bachman-Turner Overdrive (BTO)
- Cam
Barker, hockey player, Chicago
Blackhawks draft pick (3rd overall 2004).
- Ed
Belfour, NHL
goalie
- David
Bergen, novelist
- Tom
Cochrane, musician
- Burton
Cummings, musician (The Guess Who)
- Len
Cariou, actor
- Tommy
Douglas, politician, voted the Greatest
Canadian
- Deanna
Durbin, actress
- Terry Fox,
cancer activist
and national hero
- Monty
Hall, TV
celebrity, television game show host
- Doug
Henning, magician
- Gerard
Kennedy, politician
- Chantal Kreviazuk, musician & actress
- Margaret Laurence, author
- Todd
MacCulloch, basketball player
- Guy
Maddin, director
- Marshall McLuhan, media guru
- Arthur
Meighen, Prime Minister of Canada
- Bob Nolan,
musician
- Anna
Paquin, actress
- Fred
Penner, children's
entertainer, musician
- Frank
Pickersgill, SOE
agent in World
War II executed by the Nazis
- Louis
Riel, politician
- Gabrielle
Roy, author
- John K.
Samson, singer-songwriter (The
Weakerthans)
- Terry
Sawchuk, NHL
goalie
- Sir
William Stephenson (aka Intrepid), spy, man on whom the
character of James Bond is based
- Miriam
Toews, novelist
- Doug
Walton, Professor of logic at University of Winnipeg,
wrote many widely translated books
- Neil
Young, musician
- Nia
Vardalos, actress and
writer
- J.S.
Woodsworth, politician
- Clara
Hughes, Olympic medalist (summer and winter
games)
- Cindy
Klassen, Olympic medalist (5 medals in Torino
2006)
- Chris
Jericho, WWE player (wrestler)
- Frank
Manning, M.D., (Perinatologist)
- Alexander Steen, NHL hockey player (Toronto
Maple Leafs)
- Tina
Keeper, Actress, politician
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