Indigenous societies and European settlement Modern-day Manitoba was inhabited by the
First Nations people shortly after the
last ice age glaciers retreated in the southwest about 10,000 years ago; the first exposed land was the
Turtle Mountain area. The
Ojibwe,
Cree,
Dene,
Sioux,
Mandan, and
Assiniboine peoples founded settlements, and other tribes entered the area to trade. In Northern Manitoba,
quartz was mined to make
arrowheads. The first farming in Manitoba was along the Red River, where
corn and other seed crops were planted before contact with Europeans. In 1611,
Henry Hudson was one of the first Europeans to sail into what is now known as Hudson Bay, where he and some loyal crewmembers were marooned by
mutineers.
Thomas Button travelled this area in 1612 in an unsuccessful attempt to find and rescue Hudson. When the British ship
Nonsuch sailed into Hudson Bay in 1668–1669, she became the first trading vessel to reach the area; that voyage led to the formation of the Hudson's Bay Company, to which the British government gave absolute control of the entire Hudson Bay watershed. This watershed was named Rupert's Land, after
Prince Rupert, who helped to subsidize the Hudson's Bay Company.
York Factory was founded in 1684 after the original fort of the Hudson's Bay Company, Fort Nelson (built in 1682), was destroyed by rival French traders.
Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, visited the Red River Valley in the 1730s to help open the area for French exploration and trade. As French explorers entered the area, a
Montreal-based company, the
North West Company, began trading with the local Indigenous people. Both the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company built fur-trading forts; the two companies competed in southern Manitoba, occasionally resulting in violence, until they merged in 1821 (the
Hudson's Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg preserve the history of this era). Twenty colonists, including the governor, and one Métis were killed in the
Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816.
Confederation Rupert's Land was ceded to Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1869 and incorporated into the Northwest Territories; a lack of attention to Métis concerns caused Métis leader
Louis Riel to establish a local provisional government which formed into the Convention of Forty and the subsequent elected
Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia on 9 March 1870. This assembly subsequently sent three delegates to
Ottawa to negotiate with the
Canadian government. This resulted in the
Manitoba Act and that province's entry into
Confederation. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald introduced the
Manitoba Act in the
House of Commons of Canada, the bill was given
Royal Assent and Manitoba was brought into Canada as a province in 1870. Louis Riel was pursued by British army officer
Garnet Wolseley because of the rebellion, and Riel fled into exile. The Canadian government blocked the Métis' attempts to obtain land promised to them as part of Manitoba's entry into confederation. Facing racism from the new flood of white settlers from Ontario, large numbers of Métis moved to what would become
Saskatchewan and
Alberta. The prescribed amount of land promised to the native peoples was not always given; this led Indigenous groups to assert rights to the land through
land claims, many of which are still ongoing. The original province of Manitoba was a square one-eighteenth of its current size, and was known colloquially as the "postage stamp province". Its borders were expanded in 1881, taking land from the Northwest Territories and the
District of Keewatin, but Ontario claimed a large portion of the land; the disputed portion was awarded to Ontario in 1889. Manitoba grew to its current size in 1912, absorbing land from the Northwest Territories to reach 60°N, uniform with the northern reach of its western neighbours Saskatchewan, Alberta and
British Columbia. The French Catholic minority asked the federal government for support; however, the
Orange Order and other anti-Catholic forces mobilized nationwide to oppose them. The federal
Conservatives proposed remedial legislation to override Manitoba, but they were blocked by the
Liberals, led by
Wilfrid Laurier. A boomtown, it grew quickly around the start of the 20th century, with outside investors and immigrants contributing to its success. The drop in growth in the second half of the decade was a result of the opening of the
Panama Canal in 1914, which reduced reliance on
transcontinental railways for trade, as well as a decrease in immigration due to the outbreak of the
First World War. Over 18,000 Manitoba residents enlisted in the first year of the war; by the end of the war, 14 Manitobans had received the
Victoria Cross. During the First World War,
Nellie McClung started the campaign for women's votes. On January 28, 1916, the vote for women was legalized. Manitoba was the first province to allow women to vote in provincial elections. This was two years before Canada as a country granted women the right to vote. After the First World War ended, severe discontent among farmers (over wheat prices) and union members (over wage rates) resulted in an upsurge of
radicalism, coupled with a polarization over the rise of
Bolshevism in
Russia. The most dramatic result was the
Winnipeg general strike of 1919. It began on 15 May and collapsed on 25 June 1919; as the workers gradually returned to their jobs, the Central Strike Committee decided to end the movement. Government efforts to violently crush the strike, including a
Royal North-West Mounted Police charge into a crowd of protesters that resulted in multiple casualties and one death, had led to the arrest of the movement's leaders. The
Great Depression (1929 – ) hit especially hard in
Western Canada, including Manitoba. The collapse of the world market combined with a steep drop in agricultural production due to drought led to economic diversification, moving away from a reliance on wheat production. The
Manitoba Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, forerunner to the
New Democratic Party of Manitoba (NDP), was founded in 1932. Canada entered the
Second World War in 1939. Winnipeg was one of the major commands for the
British Commonwealth Air Training Plan to train fighter pilots, and there were air training schools throughout Manitoba. Several Manitoba-based regiments were deployed overseas, including
Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. In an effort to raise money for the war effort, the
Victory Loan campaign organized "
If Day" in 1942. The event featured a simulated
Nazi invasion and occupation of Manitoba, and eventually raised over
C$65 million. Winnipeg was inundated during the
1950 Red River Flood and had to be partially evacuated. In that year, the Red River reached its highest level since 1861 and flooded most of the Red River Valley. The damage caused by the flood led then-Premier
Duff Roblin to advocate for the construction of the
Red River Floodway; it was completed in 1968 after six years of excavation. Permanent dikes were erected in eight towns south of Winnipeg, and clay dikes and diversion dams were built in the Winnipeg area. In 1997, the "
Flood of the Century" caused over in damages in Manitoba, but the floodway prevented Winnipeg from flooding. In 1990, Prime Minister
Brian Mulroney attempted to pass the
Meech Lake Accord, a series of constitutional amendments to persuade
Quebec to endorse the
Canada Act 1982. Unanimous support in the legislature was needed to bypass public consultation. Cree politician
Elijah Harper opposed because he did not believe First Nations had been adequately involved in the Accord's process, and thus the Accord failed.
Glen Murray, elected in Winnipeg in 1998, became the first openly
gay mayor of a large North American city. The province was impacted by major flooding in
2009 and
2011. In 2004, Manitoba became the first province in Canada to ban indoor smoking in public places. In 2013, Manitoba was the second province to introduce accessibility legislation, protecting the rights of persons with disabilities. == Geography ==