in
Elm Park sheltered evacuees during the
1950 Red River Flood. It is still in use as an ambulance station and as a museum. The community was established by
francophone settlers in 1822, and is the second-oldest permanent settlement in Manitoba after
Kildonan. This community was named
St. Vital by
Archbishop Taché in 1860, in honour of the
patron saint of his colleague, Father
Vital-Justin Grandin. The community became established in 1880 as a
rural municipality, called the Rural Municipality of St. Boniface. After the
Town of Saint Boniface was formed in 1883, the RM continued operating as its own government, and was renamed to the Rural Municipality of St. Vital in 1903 to avoid confusion. The parish was home to many French-speaking settlers, particularly
Métis. St. Vital remained a strongly francophone community in the early decades after
Manitoba's incorporation as a Canadian province in 1870, with every
reeve and councillor being of a francophone background until 1910. The anglophone population grew throughout this period, however: in 1912, Richard Wilson was elected as St. Vital's first anglophone reeve, and after 1913, Council business was conducted in English. The municipal government became more pro-business after this period, and supported municipal expansion. From 1920 to 1958, St. Vital was part of the provincial
electoral division of
St. Boniface. In 1923, St. Vital adopted the
single transferable voting system for its municipal elections, using this system until 1972. Between 1925 and 1927, the municipality lost its mandate to govern, when the Winnipeg Suburban Municipal Board stepped in due to financial difficulties. In 1950, the district was seriously affected by the
Red River flood, with the entire developed area of St. Vital being under water at one point. The neighbourhoods of Kingston Crescent and
Elm Park were the hardest hit. The fire hall in Elm Park was protected with sandbags and sheltered dozens of evacuees, as shown in a photo published in the 1 May 1950 edition of
Life magazine. In 1960, St. Vital became part of the
Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg, achieving
city status soon after on 9 June 1962 with the passing of
An Act to provide a Charter for the City of St. Vital. In 1972, the City of St. Vital and several other municipalities merged with
Winnipeg as part of the
Unicity project laid out in the 1971
City of Winnipeg Act, whereupon it became a ward of the city and moved to
first-past-the-post voting.
Former reeves and mayors Prior to its amalgamation into Winnipeg in 1972, St. Vital was led by a
reeve or
mayor. ==Demographics==