If French speakers were going to have a large voice in the affairs of Canada, they needed to move beyond Quebec. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Todays stamp shows the front gate of an historic fort. In showing it as Manitoba’s representative in a series of historic place stamps, Canada tips it’s hand as to which side it was on in the conflict the fort represents. The Quebec issue of this series buttresses that point by showing a governor’s mansion built for French governors but the used by mainly British ones.
The stamp today is issue A91, a 20 cent stamp issued by Canada in 1938. The stamp displays the gatehouse of Upper Fort Garry in Winnipeg, Manitoba. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 45 cents used. An imperforate pair of this stamp is worth $500 mint.
Fort Garry was built by the Hudson Bay Company as part of it’s network of fur trading posts in the northern and western parts of Canada. The areas were thinly populated and much of the population was first nation Indians. In the mid 19th century Hudson Bay Company was transitioning itself to retail stores and no longer wished to maintain it’s large land holdings. After rejecting a higher offer from the USA, the land was sold to Britain which passed it on to the new Dominion of Canada.
Quebec could sense the Francophones were needed out west if Quebec was to retain any political power in the new nation. They had not yet come upon the near foolproof method of having a Quebecois represent the left party. Louis Riel presented himself as speaking for his fellow French, Catholic, and First Nation residents of Manitoba and petitioned to form the province of Manitoba. English speakers felt the area was being stolen from them and their leader was quickly put to death by Riel’s provisional government. The central government of Canada thought Riel had overstepped his authority and tried him in absentia on charges of treason. Riel went into exile in Montana.
10 years later a similar coalition in Saskatchewan sought Riel’s help to present their grievances to the Canadian government. Instead he organized a military rebellion that was quickly put down by the Canadian Army. Riel fell into Canadian hands and the death warrant he faced from his earlier treason conviction was carried out. This aroused much bitterness in Quebec because it meant that the development of the west would be in English and not French hands.
Some view Riel as a rebel against Canada and a religious fanatic, while others view him as a unique for his time multicultural figure that worked for inclusion. Both views have much basis in fact and the latter is probably more held today. Admittedly not by me. The disdain for the Hudson Bay history of the area is shown by how the gatehouse on the stamp looks today. The encroachment of modern development shows the lack of respect for the past. Another large apartment building was recently very nearly built inside the fort walls.
Well my drink is empty so I will pour another to toast the traders of the Hudson Bay Company that did so much for Canada taming the wild west. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.