Rooster Town (Pakan Town)
Self-Guided Walking Tour
5 km | 1 hr, 15 min
Download and print the map and tour
or print the map and take the online tour below.
This area of Winnipeg was once known as Rooser Town (aka Pakan Town). The settlement of mostly Métis residents existed from about 1901-1961. Residents referred to it as Pakan Town, which is the Michif word for hazelnut, referring to bushes in the area.
(Pa-kän) Learn how to say Pakan
Start Here
Harrow United Church
955 Mulvey Ave.
While You Are Here
Explore our Healing Garden and Mural.
Step Back in Time
Turn and look around you. Imagine a landscape of bushes and prairie grass. No electricity, water or sewer services. Scattered amongst the bushes are families, mostly Métis. Popular perception at the time, driven by racist, colonial attitudes prevalent in the media, promoted negative stereotypes and false stories about residents of Rooster Town. The truth was that despite unfortunate circumstances (government duplicity and inaction, corruption and prejudice) residents formed a tight-knit and caring community that thrived for more than 50 years before the City of Winnipeg forced them out.
1 Mulvey to Wilton
The story of Rooster Town is the story of resilient families. People were constructing their own shelters, accessing labour opportunities in the city proper, and maintaining kin, language and cultural connections. As development in Fort Rouge expanded, Rooster Town was forced to move further west and south. Most homes were one or two rooms and often housed extended family members. Men found work as labourers and many women worked as domestics.
22 Households in 1901
According to the Canadian census, 22 households were living in Rooster Town by 1901. A cluster of families was near the Corydon and Hugo area. Five families were living right about where you are standing now, between Harrow and Guelph, on what is now Mulvey, Warsaw and Jessie.
Among these households was the household of Pierre Hogue and Julienne Henry. Pierre Hogue (aka Peter Hogg) was the grandson of Marguerite Taylor who had once been the country wife of Sir George Simpson of the Hudson’s Bay Company. When Simpson abandoned her, she married Amable Hogue, one of Simpson’s elite paddlers. Also living nearby was Pierre’s sister Julia who was married to Charles Logan. Charles was the great-grandson of Robert Logan, a prominent merchant in Winnipeg.
Pierre Hogue and Charles Logan were among the many men in Rooster Town who enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World Wars One or Two.
2. Corner of Mulvey & Wilton
Here, by 1920 Frank Pound operated a greenhouse and nursery. This business provided employment for many labourers in Rooster Town. Pound immigrated from England and was briefly married to Josephine Henry, who was Métis.
3. Left on Wilton then right on Fleet
4. Corner of Fleet & Rockwood
At Rockwood you will pass by Rockwood School. In 1952 school trustees complained about the threat of disease from students who lived without water and sewer services. Newspapers jumped on the story and ran articles with offensive headlines and unfair portrayals of Rooster Town residents. No reporters bothered to investigate why Rooster Town came to be or what residents’ lives were really like.
Hear Darrell Sais describe how families helped each other through hard times in Rooster Town
5. Continue straight to the corner of Fleet & Cambridge
Here, the family of Alexander Smith, a Métis family originally from St. James, had a large and successful teamster operation, which employed many Rooster Town residents. The Smiths had one of the larger homes. The land was in the family until at least 1937.
Royal Dairy was situated on Cambridge from the 1900s-1970s. It employed labourers from Rooster Town, as did the Cambridge Riding Club established in the 1930s.
Horse Team Riders & Stable Hands
Look closely at 1255 Fleet where the original footprint of the Cambridge riding stables remains, including eight intact saddle racks in the garage, the riders’ locker room inside the house, the basement bar where riders gathered for drinks and played cards, and the summer house where hired hands once slept. On this property, the owner has found keys and round numbered locker tags in the soil, pictures of riders and horses in the attic, and an empty safe buried in the wall of the original one-bedroom farmhouse, which was built in 1901 and added onto over the years.
Listen to the owner’s tour as you take the sidewalk around the house
6. Back on Fleet, then right on Thurso, right on Dudley Crescent, left on Nathaniel & left on Lorette
By 1926, Pierre Hogue’s wife Julienne owned a house that stood at 1141 Lorette. Newspapers of the time proclaimed that everyone in Rooster Town was a squatter who lived in a tar paper shack. That wasn’t true. As circumstances permitted, residents obtained permits, improved their homes and paid city taxes. Some residents rented out their homes. The Depression hit hard and families helped each other out as best they could.
These are original homes from the 1920s that have been renovated. 935 was owned by Roderick Morrissette and 937 by Philius Laramee.
7. Back on Lorette, then left on Harrow, right on Scotland & left on Wilton to Grant
Here was a water pipe where Rooster Town residents had to haul their own water, or have it delivered if they had the means.
8. Cross Grant toward Grant Park Shopping Centre
By 1946, the population of Rooster Town reached its peak, with 250 residents living in 59 households. Modern housing in Fort Rouge crowded around the area, and some residents moved from their original Rooster Town homes to edges of the community, where they had access to the City’s sewer and water services. The area of Fort Rouge, between Corydon and Grant and Pembina and Harrow, was almost fully developed.
By 1951, the majority of Rooster Town residents were clustered south of Grant Avenue. In 1956 the CNR’s Harte railway line, which ran down Grant Avenue, was removed. When the Canadian National Railway sold its land to the City of Winnipeg, plans were made for the construction of a new high school, a shopping mall, apartment blocks and new suburban housing. This was the beginning of the devastating end for Rooster Town.
9. Wilton
Near the clump of trees you see to your right was another water pipe that serviced the area.
10. Right on Hector then right on Nathaniel to Grant
The area where the shopping centre and high school now sit was the land where the remaining 14 Rooster Town households lived in 1959. The City offered them $75 to leave by the 1st of May, $50 to leave by the end of June, and if they did neither they would be forcibly evicted. The homes were torn down and burned. Most residents ended up in the poorest areas of town.
One resident refused to be evicted. Charles Sais had lived in Rooster Town since 1935 and owned the home and lot at 1501 Hector. The City of Winnipeg unlawfully sold his lot to the Winnipeg school board in December 1958. Charles and his wife Elise Arcand didn’t find out until June 1960 when they went to City Hall to pay their taxes! They were told they had to vacate by September of that year. The City was forced to buy back the lot from Charles.
Hear Frank and Darrell Sais talk about:
11. Left on Grant
Bill & Helen Norrie Library
15 Poseidon Bay
Have a look at the “Rooster Town” plaque on the library grounds. Visit the library to see displays on the history of Rooster Town.
12. Left on Cambridge to Ebby
This land belonged to the Van Wallenghem family, who operated Royal Dairy. They also raised pigeons for racing. The hobby continues as you can see the pigeon lofts to your left at 834 Cambridge!
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the United Church of Canada Foundation Seeds of Hope program in the development of the walking tour.
Images: Courtesy of The Rooster Town Online Archive, University of Manitoba Press.
Resources
Rooster Town: The History of an Urban Métis Community, 1901-1961 by Evelyn Peters, Matthew Stock and Adrian Werner
https://roostertown.lib.umanitoba.ca/
Rooster Town Info Guide from Winnipeg Public Library
CBC Podcast Muddied Water stories from Frank Sais who lived in Rooster Town
Rooster Town: Winnipeg’s Lost Métis Suburb, 1900–1960 by David G. Burley
An article of the journal Urban History Review / Revue d’histoire urbaine
Volume 42, Number 1, Fall 2013, available at: https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/uhr/2013-v42-n1-uhr01125/1022056ar/