New signs to tell Selkirk’s history

 

RECORD PHOTO BY MICHELLE BALHARRY

Selkirk Heritage Committee chair Doreen Olive,  City of Selkirk CAO Duane Nicol with marketing and communications co-ordinator Vanessa Figus, and Heritage Committee member Peter Hall.

By Austin Grabish, The Selkirk Record 

The City of Selkirk and the Selkirk Municipal Heritage Advisory Committee are hoping new signs at Selkirk’s Waterfront will teach folks a lesson or two about the City’s rich history.

Three stories are now on display on permanent plaques at the Waterfront, and each plaque tells a story that is considered pivotal to Selkirk’s history.

The stories are about boats, the old fishing industry, and politics surrounding Selkirk’s famous lift bridge.

“We threw around some ideas, different stories within the City that we thought would be of importance,” said City of Selkirk marketing and communications co-ordinator Vanessa Figus.

Figus said the signs were placed strategically at the Waterfront so people can see what the area used to look like.

She said the Waterfront had great stories to tell, because it was booming with the fishing and boating industries, and credited both with making Selkirk what it is today.

“That was sort of the main hub, and that’s what built Selkirk,” Figus said.

Doreen Oliver, chair of the Heritage Committee, said she believes the signs will bring people back in time to the Waterfront’s earlier days, a press release said.  

Figus agreed.

“The signs take you back in history, because that particular area of Selkirk was a different time years ago. It was very busy, it was a hustle and bustle, there were hundreds of people working in the fisheries, logging, working on the boats, doing all kinds of things,” Figus said.

But University of Manitoba native studies Prof. Niigaan Sinclair said there’s much more to Selkirk’s history, and it’s problematic to give a history lesson about a place without acknowledging the land’s original inhabitants.

“To erase that is to completely ignore the true history of the area,” Sinclair said.

He said aboriginal people used land in and around what is now Selkirk for hundreds, if not thousands of years, before any commercial fishing or boating industries were started.

“There is no history in Selkirk without aboriginal people,” Sinclair said.

He said the community of St. Peters, which was in the Selkirk area, was a thriving place used for hunting and fishing, and it was also top-notch agriculture territory long before any European settlers arrived.  

“The area now known as Selkirk was a landing space for dozens of First Nations communities throughout the north from Norway House to Oxford House to Sagkeeng,” Sinclair said.

He noted the aboriginal peoples living around Selkirk were booted off their land in 1907 and sent to Peguis to live on scrubland that has continued to flood regularly.

The illegal eviction was settled in 2010 resulting in $118-million going to the Peguis band as compensation.

The historic settlement is one of Canada’s largest single land claims.

Figus said the City doesn’t have immediate plans in place to include a fourth display on any kind of aboriginal history, but noted the goal is to eventually have more displays around Selkirk that will tell other stories.   

 -- First published in the Selkirk Record print edition May 14 2015 p.7