© 2026, Christian Cassidy
Place: King's Park
Address: 198 King's Drive (Map)
Opened: 1987
A subdivision called "King's Park", named for King Edward VII who died in 1910, was established in the R.M. of Fort Garry in 1912, but the nearby park called King's Park came about decades later.
It's is a little difficult to research the history of the park due to the subdivision and eventually a community club with the same name. Around 95 percent of the hits you get from newspaper searches relate to one of those!
Here's a first-hand account of someone moving to the subdivision in 1938.
It was in the 1950s that this land began its long journey to becoming a formal park.
In A City at Leisure, Catharine Macdonald notes that during that decade, "The Metropolitan Parks and Protection Division ... acquired the peninsula then known as Washington's Point, today King's Park." Further land was added to the site in the 1960s, and the current size is about 40 hectares.
It is possible that Metro bought the land from a man named George Baldry, as the 1956 annual report of the Metropolitan Planning Commission of Greater Winnipeg describes i its Fort Garry section:
"A development plan for the King's Park-Cloutier Drive area was prepared during the year by Mr. George Baldry who owns a substantial part of the area. The area was bounded by the University, Cloutier Drive, Pembina Highway and Kilkenny Street. Preliminary sketches prepared by Mr. Baldry were discussed with the owners and the local planning commission, as well as the municipal engineer. Provision was made for school sites, churches, parks, one large and several smaller commercial areas."
George Baldry was a local engineer whose firm, Baldry Engineering and Construction, worked on many large buildings and public works projects throughout the Winnipeg region. Though he lived in Wolseley for most of his life, he had interests south of the city.
Baldry was an early executive member of the Southwood Golf Club, and a 1954 biographical article in the Winnipeg Tribune noted that his retirement hobby was "a herd of 100 registered Holstein cattle on land just past the university." This land might be what we currently know as King's Park!
The purchase of the land did not mean immediate development into a park. The 1964 "possible park" map above shows the land being used as market gardens, so it was rented out to people to grow flowers and vegetables commercially.
The creation of Unicity in 1972 meant that the City of Winnipeg inherited dozens of suburban parks on top of its own extensive collection. A King's Park was on the books but had to wait in line with small improvements made to the site over several years.
It wasn't until the summer of 1987 that King's Park formally opened. Macdonald described it as having an "oriental feel ... with its small pagoda, arched bridge and stylized waterfall." The pagoda was originally located in Assiniboine Park.
Winnipeg Free Press columnist Val Werier walked the park with a friend soon after it opened. He called in "an absolute gem" and goes into detail about some of the work that was done there.
No comments:
Post a Comment