St. Norbert, Manitoba
The emergence of a population at the mouth of the Sale River (also known as La Salle River) dates back to the beginning of the 19th century, the era of the fur trade.
In 1821, the union of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Northwest Company led to the closure of nearly half of the trading posts and the layoff of many Canadian employees. Among these men, there were several who, with their Metis families, came to increase the population of the Red River colony. A number chose to settle 14 kilometers south of the junction of the Red and the Assiniboine, at the confluence of the Red and the little Sale River.
Soon thereafter, it was at this site that the major part of the bison hunt was organized twice a year. At the end of the summer, the Metis hunters returned home to spend the winter on their wooded river lots. One of the oldest dwellings in Manitoba still in existence in 1950, the Charette house, dates back to those early years of a small settlement at Sale River.
By 1845, Msgr Provencher, first bishop of Saint-Boniface, recognized that this group of Metis was important enough to send a Grey Nun twice a week to the “Sale River mission” to teach religion to children. The construction of a church began in 1855 and two years later the mission was organized into a parish under the name of St. Norbert. It was the third Catholic parish in the Northwest, after St. Boniface and St. François Xavier along the Assiniboine River.
The population of this parish, which extended south to the Rat River, was growing rapidly.
In the early 1860s, there were almost 1,000 people there. The Grey Nuns looked after the children’s education and cared for the sick. The third parish priest of St. Norbert, Father Joseph-Noël Ritchot, became an ardent defender of the rights of his parishioners and the Metis of Red River upon his arrival in 1862. It was in his presbytery that the Metis intervention in the federal government’s plans to take possession of Rupert’s Land was organized in the fall of 1869.
Located on the Pembina Trail that connected Fort Garry to St. Paul, Minnesota, St. Norbert had long been the last stop for travelers from the south before arriving at their destination. The parish evolved; it underwent an economic and social transformation after 1870 when many Metis families sold or abandoned their lands in Manitoba to head for the western plains. Father Ritchot, anxious to preserve the French-speaking and Catholic character of his parish, sought to replace the Metis who left St. Norbert with new Canadian arrivals during the 1880s. The family of Benjamin Bohémier was among them.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, St. Norbert was a typical rural commercial centre that developed near the church and the convent. The parish had several religious institutions, including the Grey Nuns’ convent, an orphanage under the direction of the Sisters of Mercy called l’Asile Ritchot, and the first Trappist monastery in Western Canada, Notre-Dame-des- Prairies (Our Lady of the Prairies), established in 1892.
The urbanization process closely affected St. Norbert, as the city of Winnipeg began to expand more and more in a southerly direction. From 1912 the northern part of the parish of St. Norbert was included in the new rural municipality of Fort Garry. The Winnipeg Agricultural College moved to present-day Fort Garry, where it formed the nucleus of the new University of Manitoba campus a dozen years later. In addition, electricity and tram services went as far as St. Norbert.
The agricultural lands of St. Norbert, especially those north of the village, were gradually disappearing.
The construction of Winnipeg’s Perimeter Highway in 1960 created a physical barrier between the village of St. Norbert to the south and Fort Garry to the north, which would become a suburb of the City of Winnipeg in 1972. In St. Norbert, the need of more housing near the city was filled by the establishment of new residential areas, the first of which, Parc La Salle, opened in 1964.
St. Norbert has become a neighborhood in the suburbs of Winnipeg, where the French character is still present in the Catholic Church, the French school, École Noël-Ritchot and certain committees, despite the significant demographic growth of non-French speakers. It is a community that does not forget its origins, as evidenced by its many historical sites such as the Barrière and the Chapelle Notre-Dame du Bon Secours. At the mouth of the Sale River, St. Norbert Heritage Park provides visitors with the opportunity to witness the evolution of this early Franco-Manitoban parish through interpretive programs at three houses whose construction dates back to in the 19th century, namely the Delorme, Turenne and Bohémier houses.
The French version of this text was originally written in the early 2000s by the team responsible for the production of Au pays de Riel.
The translation in English and a revision of the text was done in 2022.
The full text and associated images and documents are available below in downloadable format.
Museums, historical sites, and societies:
– St. Norbert Provincial Heritage Park
Bibliography
Centenaire de la paroisse de Saint-Norbert, livre souvenir, 1857-1957.
CULTURE, PATRIMOINE ET CITOYENNETÉ MANITOBA, RESSOURCES HISTORIQUES. Saint-Norbert, 1996, texte anglais sous la même couverture.
DAUPHINAIS, Luc. Histoire de Saint-Boniface, À l’ombre des cathédrales, des origines de la colonie jusqu’en 1870, tome I, Saint-Boniface, Les Éditions du Blé, 1991.
DORGE, Lionel. Essai historique de St-Norbert, village manitobain, 1971.
DORGE, Lionel. Le Manitoba, reflets d’un passé, Saint-Boniface, Les Éditions du Blé, 1976.
« La Barrière de Saint-Norbert », La Liberté, 22 novembre 1916, p. 2, suite dans les numéros du 29 novembre 1916, p. 2 et du 6 décembre 1916, p. 7.
MANITOBA DIRECTION DES RESSOURCES HISTORIQUES. Parc du Patrimoine de Saint-Norbert, 1984.
PRUD’HOMME, L.-A. Monseigneur Noël-Joseph Ritchot, 1825-1905, Winnipeg, Canadian Publishers, 1928.
Souvenir Couvent de Saint-Norbert 1858-1958, 1958.
TELLIER, Corinne C. Revisiting St. Norbert A South Winnipeg Community, Winnipeg, The Fort Garry Historical Society Inc., 1996.
UN PÈRE TRAPPISTE. Une trappe dans un pays de missions: Notre-Dame des Prairies, St-Norbert, Manitoba, Canada. Cinquante ans de vie contemplative 1892-1942, 1943, 240 p.