MANITOBA

province of Canada, one of the Prairie Provinces, lying midway between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Of its more than 38,500 lakes, Lake Winnipeg is the 13th largest in the world. More than two-fifths of its land area is forested. The province is bounded on the north by Nunavut territory, on the northeast by Hudson Bay, on the east by Ontario, on the south by the U.S. states of Minnesota and North Dakota, and on the west by Saskatchewan. Winnipeg, the seventh largest Canadian city, is the capital. The province's name comes from an Indian word meaning the god who speaks. Manitoba became the fifth province of Canada when it was admitted to the confederation in 1870. It straddles the boundary between the prairie and central Canada and has a large agricultural sector and a topography similiar to those of the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. It also has a mixed economy, an urban orientation, and a multiethnic character, all of which resemble Ontario's. While other areas of the Canadian west have experienced economic cycles of boom and bust, Manitoba has maintained a steadier pace. Similarly, the province's political and cultural life has largely avoided the extremes that tend to characterize western Canadian society. Area 250,947 square miles (649,950 square km), of which 39,224 square miles (101,590 square km) are inland water. Pop. (1991) 1,091,942; (1996) 1,145,200. most easterly of the three Prairie Provinces, central Canada. Manitoba was admitted to the Canadian Confederation in 1870 as the fifth province. It is bounded on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the northeast by Hudson Bay, on the east by Ontario, on the west by Saskatchewan, and on the south by Minnesota and North Dakota in the United States. Manitoba covers a total area of 250,947 square miles (649,950 square km). The provincial capital is Winnipeg. The province was first inhabited by Cree, Assiniboin, and Ojibwa Indians and along the Hudson Bay by Inuit (Eskimos). Europeans arrived in the 17th century, with Sir Thomas Button from England coming in 1612 and a Danish expedition in 1619. The Hudson's Bay Company, established in London in 1670, was responsible for the opening of Manitoba to European influence. The chief trading post of the company was the York Factory at the mouth of the Nelson, from which in 1691 Henry Kelsey explored southward to the region of The Pas and the prairies. In the 18th century there were clashes between British and French traders. From 1783, with Canada under the British flag, a fur trade war went on until 1821 between the Montreal-based North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, ending with the merger of the two companies. The first European settlement in 1812 was opposed on economic grounds by the mtis, a people derived from French-Indian intermarriage. The mtis resisted under the leadership of Louis Riel and refused to let government officials enter the territory until the officials made concessions in the Manitoba Act of 1870, which made Manitoba a province. In the mid- and late 19th century, steamboat and rail transportation opened the province to settlers from Europe and the United States. Provincial boundaries were extended westward in 1881, eastward in 1884, and northward in 1912 to give Manitoba its final dimensions. The westward expansion led to the Great Prairie grain fields, the northward expansion to the development of minerals and electric power. Three-fifths of Manitoba's territory is covered by the ancient Canadian Shield, an area of rocks, forests, and rivers. It is drained by the Nelson and Churchill rivers into Hudson Bay. To the south of the area is the Manitoba Lowland, a former glacial basin and land of lakes. Extreme southern Manitoba is part of the fertile Saskatchewan plain. Manitoba's highest point is Baldy Mountain, at 2,730 feet (832 m). The climate is moderately dry with sharp seasonal temperature changes. Most of the precipitation occurs between May and September. About half of Manitoba's land area is heavily forested, and a seventh of its surface consists of rivers and lakes, including Lake Winnipeg, the 13th largest lake in the world. The province abounds in big game in the north and upland game birds and animals in the rest of the area. Government and private organizations cooperate in wildlife surveys and nature management programs. Manitoba's ethnic composition is diverse, with large groups of Scots-Irish, German, Scandinavian, Ukrainian, and Polish descent; the largest French-Canadian community in all of Canada outside of Quebec is in the town of St. Boniface. Members of various American Indian and Inuit groups are also present. Manitoba's cultural life reflects the diversity of its people and their various traditional art forms. Its capital is the home of the renowned Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and the Manitoba Theatre Centre. The city also boasts a downtown centennial complex that includes concert and museum facilities. Manitoba continues to draw most of its wealth from the exploitation and processing of the products of its primary industriesfarming, lumbering, mining, and fishingthough Winnipeg is the focus of rapidly expanding manufacturing industries (foods and beverages, clothing, fabricated metal goods, chemicals, computers, and electrical equipment). The southern farmlands are a main resource. Wheat is the main crop, with barley, rapeseed (canola), flaxseed, rye, and vegetables also cultivated. The Canadian Shield area has about four-fifths of the mineral production in Manitoba. The major minerals are nickel, copper, gold, lead, silver, cadmium, and zinc. More than one-fourth of Manitoba's landmass supports valuable timber, although there has been some devastation from forest fires. The provincial government is moving into some areas of private industry. In the early 1970s it implemented a compulsory government-operated automobile insurance program. The government's Manitoba Development Corporation acquired an interest in several businesses, including the forest complex in The Pas. Manitoba derives its authority from two British statutes, the British North America Acts of 1867 and 1871, and one Canadian statute, the Manitoba Act of 1870. The provincial government consists of a unicameral legislative assembly, elected by universal adult suffrage to five-year terms; and an executive branch, consisting of the premier (who is the leader of the majority political party in the assembly and who chooses the executive council from the assembly) and the lieutenant governor, appointed by the Canadian governor-general to represent the British Crown. The judiciary is divided into two superior courts, the Court of Appeal and the Court of the Queen's Bench, and lower-level county, surrogate, provincial, small-debt, family, and juvenile courts. The province supervises medical and hospital insurance programs and provides all Manitobans with free medical insurance. The province also provides welfare, public health, care for the aged, and other services for the disadvantaged. Policing is done by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police together with municipal police forces. Compulsory primary and secondary education to grade 12 as well as optional kindergarten are provided free. Private, mainly religious, schools have an insignificant portion of the primary enrollment and are government-subsidized. There has been considerable debate about the language of instruction. French-speaking Manitobans fought for their linguistic rights, and the availability of French as a language of instruction has been reinstated. The federal government provides schooling for the American Indian population. Vocational schools are based in Winnipeg, Brandon, and The Pas. The University of Manitoba (Winnipeg), the University of Winnipeg, and Brandon University provide higher and postgraduate education. Pop. (1991) 1,091,942. Additional reading W.L. Morton, Manitoba: A History, 2nd ed. (1967), remains the standard historical work. Ken Coates and Fred McGuinness, Manitoba: The Province & the People (1987); and Jennifer S.H. Brown, Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country (1980), are also useful. Works on early settlement include C.A. Dawson and Eva R. Younge, Pioneering in the Prairie Provinces: The Social Side of the Settlement Process (1940, reprinted 1974); John Langton Tyman, By Section, Township, and Range: Studies in Prairie Settlement (1972); and Pierre Berton, The Promised Land: Settling the West 18961914 (1984). The province's economic history is discussed in David Jay Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg: Labour, Industrial Relations, and the General Strike (1974). Political developments are the centre of discussion in such histories as William L. Morton (ed.), Manitoba: The Birth of a Province (1965, reprinted 1984); Murray S. Donnelly, The Government of Manitoba (1963); and Nelson Wiseman, Social Democracy in Manitoba: A History of the CCF-NDP (1983). Ken S. Coates