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Past Articles....

• Storing Silver Artifacts - Vol.16 No.3 October, 1997
• Back to the Future... - Vol.17 No.1 February, 1998

The History of Keewatin

The True Pioneers.....

The lumber industry triggered Keewatin's early beginnings. In November of 1872, a Hamilton based company owned by a man named Fuller, applied to the Dominion Government for cutting rights on certain islands and mainland areas on the Lake of the Woods. In July 1875, Approval of Lease was granted by the Minister of the Interior. On December 28, 1878, Fuller filed an Assignment of Lease with the Surveyor-General to transfer his lease to John Mather and others of the Ottawa area. By July 18, 1879, the company known as the Keewatin Lumbering and Manufacturing Company Limited was incorporated. The original site selected for the construction of this new mill was Steep Rock Island (now known as Tunnel Island). As the transportation barriers posed by this site proved too difficult to overcome, Mather opted to develop a 200 acre site in Portage Bay (Keewatin). Twelve months later, the first finished product rolled off the line, providing lumber and timbers for the Canadian Pacific Railway construction, well underway in the area.

Supplies required to build the new mill were brought in by way of St. Paul, Minnesota to Fort Garry, Manitoba by boat, then by wagon via the Dawson Trail to Northwest Angle and finally by barge and boat to Keewatin. Equipment was brought in during the winter months by sleigh and horse teams from Cross Lake MB, some 37 miles to the west. The CPR had constructed track, east from Fort Garry to Cross Lake. Over 160,000 pounds of freight was shipped across frozen muskeg swamps and lakes to the mill site.

John Mather

While John Mather did not take up formal residence in the town he founded, he maintained a summer residence on the island in Keewatin Bay. His son, David, manager of the mill operations, built the historic Mather-Walls House on Ottawa Street in 1879, a veritable mansion in the wilderness. A second son, Robert, arrived in 1884, building an identical house to David's at the east end of Ottawa Street. Over the next fifteen years, capital investments were made each winter to modernize the equipment, thereby improving production and versatility of the mill to meet the constantly growing demand. Almost the entire production of the first few years was sold to the railway for construction purposes. Once its construction was completed, Keewatin Lumber expanded into Winnipeg with large retail lumber yards. In October 1905, fire destroyed the sawmill. Production had peaked in 1903 at 18,758,554 board ft of lumber produced. 1903 as saw the construction of a tie mill on the east end of Keewatin Bay by the Keewatin Lumber and Manufacturing Company to produce sawn ties, rather than the hewn ties used by the CPR. In 1906, the property and tie mill were purchased by the Bachus Brooks Company and eventually to the new Keewatin Lumber Company.

The crew of builders brought by John Mather to construct his mill was predominantly French. Many homes in Keewatin still bear the "french touch" of these early carpenters with the French Mansard roof lines that are so prominent in town. The old frieze patterns and gingerbread figured patterns still remind us of the skills of the wood workers who lived here almost one hundred years ago. The descendants of many of these early pioneers can still be found in the area.