Early building methods in Manitoba.

Yesterday while visiting Fort Garry we went into one of the bastions where there was a display of the different building methods used in the early days of The Red River Settlement. I snapped away not really thinking a lot of it, today we visited the Cathedral and Convent of The Grey Nuns in St. Boniface and got another look at these different building methods. Maybe a strange and different subject for a travel blog - here we move from the early First Nation dwellings of bent sticks with birch bark covering to Tipi's which were an amazing piece of technology at the time, to European style building.

The wall boards in the bastion telling the story of the building history of early Manitoba.

This is the bastion, back in the fort days it was a store room, the walls built of limestone where to make an impression only, they were  built by Scottish masons shipped over by The Hudsons Bay Company.

Inside the bastion, look at the thickness of the walls.

This is a model of St. Boniface Cathedral No.5 built in 1905. The first 2 churches were too small the Third burnt down, the forth again too small, followed by No.5 that burnt down in 1968 leaving us with No.6 hopefully this will live to an older age because its quite magnificent.

Part of the facade of No.5 and inside the walls or whats left of them after the fire, the No.6  Church.

Looking at the Cathedral from the street, you can see how they have blended the old with the new.

We now move on to this form of construction, Red River Frame, mortice & tenon

This photo is taken on the top floor of the Grey Nuns Convent now The St. Boniface Museum, they have exposed one corner of the outside walls to highlight this type of construction, the vertical posts have a mortice groove cut in them, the horizontal pieces have a tenon and they all slot together. Below the other side of the corner showing the finished job, lime mortar used to fill in the joints and then a coat of lime (white) wash to finish off.

This is an inside wall using the same method of mortice & tenon.

The Farm managers house at Lower Fort Garry was built using this method.

The Colombage System.  This type of construction or offshoots of it you see everywhere. In The Alsace in France and parts of the southwest, Southern Germany and Austria.  All those cheesy pictures of cute English Cottages are either completely Colombard or have stone walls to window height or just  and then colombard framing above, Chester, Stratford-on-Avon all have this type of construction.  I was expecting to see lots of it, maybe tucked away on the many old streets of Winnipeg there will be some Colombard houses.  I can only show you two, these pics taken from google, because I didn't have my act together when we were at Fort Garry yesterday.

This is the annexe to the big house, added on to the house at a later date.

The Mens House, next to the stone built store and furloft.

A more modern form of construction, looking across the Red River from St. Boniface to downtown Winnipeg, The Provencher Bridge and in the centre The Canadian Museum of Human Rights.