March 3, 2020

This is an excerpt from a longer work on the history of George Lake.

When beginning my research into the history of George Lake in late 2015, I came across a name that I hadn’t heard before: Keizer. No first name, he’d just been called “old man Keizer.” What surprised me the most, Keizer was supposed to be the first homesteader in the lake, even before Borthwicks and Phayers, and yet no one had heard of him. I was intrigued.

Over the course of many months, I did countless newspaper searches, dug through musty files in the Manitoba Archives, spent hours looking through internet records. With each article, paper and digital record, the pieces slowly started coming together. This man was a visionary. He saw potential for development and progress years before anyone else. And yet, he is a man history forgot, passed over time and time again by men with more wealth or more powerful friends. The same came to be true with George Lake.

David Anthony (D.A) Keizer, from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, first travelled through southeastern Manitoba in 1881 as the assistant to Dominion Land Surveyor, Thomas Drummond. In the years that followed, the Winnipeg based civil engineer speculated the possibilities of the Winnipeg River’s water power capabilities as early as 1889, a decade before the first hydro electric generating station was built on the Pinawa Channel. He was also a key motivator in forming the Lac du Bonnet Mining, Developing, and Manufacturing Company in 1898, leading a “voyage of discovery” through the area, then convincing Winnipeg businessmen that the area was worthy of investment. However, his grand ideas for the future meant he was soon at odds with the others and was excluded from the company.

By 1904, Keizer and other investors created the Manitoba Water Power Electrical Company. He petitioned the City of Winnipeg, as company engineer, to construct the next hydro electric generating station at Silver Falls on the Winnipeg River, which, by his assessment, was the best set of falls for power generation. His plan was passed over for a location at Pointe du Bois, where construction started in 1906.

D.A Keizer’s arrival at George Lake came in 1910, when he supervised the construction of the newly incorporated Manitoba Hunting and Fishing Club. The massive log building, designed by Keizer, was an exclusive getaway for Winnipeg aldermen (councillors) and influential businessmen connected to the Pointe du Bois generating project. That same year, Keizer cut a horse trail from the Winnipeg River to the lodge.

An indigenous man, J. Baptiste Kent, who worked on the clubhouse, described the land at the south end of the lake to Keizer, who paid him ten dollars to take him there. At Tie Creek, Keizer was reminded of his home in Lunenburg, which led him to construct a small pole house near the mouth of the creek.

Keizer, aged fifty-three, had a plan for the area. For the last two decades, he had watched civilization advance eastwards, starting with Lac du Bonnet, then Pinawa and Pointe du Bois. The next logical path lay through George Lake, at least according to Keizer.

Over the next few years, he cut section lines around his quarter and ran a line from the south end of the lake to Whitemouth, twenty-five miles to the southwest. The first homesteader arrived in 1912, but didn’t stay. It wasn’t until November 1914 when Arthur Bagguley and Joseph Beck, friends from Carnforth, Lancashire, England, became Keizer’s first neighbours.

Throughout 1915, seventeen prospective homesteaders applied for land near Keizer, around the south basin of the lake. Despite Keizer’s persistence that his Colonization Road was on its way from Whitemouth, not a single one of them stayed, citing no access and poor crop land as reasons for cancelling. Undeterred, Keizer officially applied to own his land in 1917, claiming squatter’s rights.

The end of World War I saw a second surge of homesteaders. The Phayer and Borthwick families were the first, choosing land near Keizer. Six returning soldiers took up sections throughout the lake. These men stayed, and Keizer returned each summer.

In 1924, D.A Keizer’s homestead application was denied by the Department of the Interior. Despite having spent summers on the land from 1910, Keizer failed to spend the required twelve consecutive months on the land, clear the necessary acres and plant a crop. Keizer sent many letters appealing the decision, to no avail.

He watched homesteaders come and go. Devised a plan for a store and sawmill on the Whiteshell River, to shorten the supply run from the south end of the lake to Whitemouth by ten miles. Saw the Manitoba Hunting and Fishing Club destroyed by a forest fire in the late 1920s. Yet, still he stayed.

In 1929, he was among those proposing the route for the Emerson to Churchill railway to pass through Slave Falls, three miles from his land on the lake. Despite being unsuccessful yet again, Keizer continued petitioning the Department of the Interior to grant him title to his land.

D.A Keizer died in June 1942 at the age of eighty-six. He may have been called simply “old man Keizer” by the soldier settlers, but he was also a man with an unwavering vision for the future.