The St-Georges Ferry

February 28, 2022

This article was done with the assistance of the Winnipeg River Heritage Museum. It appeared in the February 24, 2022 edition of the Lac du Bonnet Clipper. 

Ferries and barges transported people and freight across the Winnipeg River for decades before bridges and roads improved travel limitations. The St-Georges ferry, the longest running transport on the Winnipeg River, provided a lifeline to the people on the east side of the river for seventy-three years.

The first wooden ferry was built in 1903, the same year the community of St-Georges officially became a parish and twenty-one years after the arrival of the area’s first settlers. It served not only St-Georges, but the communities that would become Pine Falls and Great Falls, along with the surrounding areas. Crossing between two points of land owned by Ephrem Dupont and Zothique Chevrefils on the narrowest stretch of river, the ferry was operated by occupants pulling on a rope, and transported people, supplies, crops and livestock to either side of the river.

By 1928, the ferry’s piers had moved 800 metres north, to what is now the base of Chateauguay Road in St-Georges. Operator, Albert Cure, used a motor boat to move the ferry. He was paid by the Allard School District for transporting children across the river to St-Georges. In 1931, Arthur Clement built a new ferry out of local lumber. The next year, with financial grant assistance from Robert Hoey, the MLA for St. Clements and the Minister of Education, steel cables and a motor were installed on the ferry. 1932 was also the first year that fees were charged: five cents one way for a passenger, fifteen cents one way for a horse team.

The road between Lac du Bonnet and Pine Falls was gravelled in 1936, creating a reliable transportation route which ended the isolation St-Georges had endured from the beginning. Though since there was no bridge over this section of the Winnipeg River, the ferry remained essential to those living on the eastern side of the river. Another new ferry was constructed in 1937 by Elzear Boulet and Edgar Vincent.

In 1946, treated fir lumber was shipped from British Columbia for construction of another new ferry that was forty feet long, twenty feet wide and had a depth of three feet from deck to keel and was equipped with a gasoline-powered engine. The cost of these upgrades was shared between the Dupont and Allard School Districts, the Manitoba Paper Company, and the provincial and federal governments. Rising waters from construction of the Pine Falls generating station in 1950 flooded the piers and the ferry was moved back to its original crossing. Fees were increased to fifty cents each way for an average-sized vehicle.

In 1974, after nearly thirty years in operation, the 1946 ferry was retired from service and sold to the St-Georges Historical Society. The Hecla Island ferry was brought in as a replacement, but its design made it unsuited for hauling agricultural equipment. After one year, the ferry moved back to Lake Winnipeg and the St-Georges ferry ceased to exist. Even if the ferry shortened time and distance travelled for some residents on the east side, the bridge across the Pine Falls hydro station eliminated its need.

The fully-restored 1946 ferry remains a premier exhibit at the Winnipeg River Heritage Museum in St-Georges.

References:

From the Beaches to the Falls: A Winnipeg River – Lake Winnipeg Heritage (Winnipeg, MB: Inter-Collegiate Press of Canada, 1989), 98, 110-112.