705 Fisher Street - Fisher Park

  © Christian Cassidy, 2025

Fisher Park in 2023 by C. Cassidy

Place: Pembina Park / Fisher Park*
Address: 705 Fisher Street
Constructed: 1912 - 13

October and December 1903, Winnipeg Tribune

The origins of Fisher Park date back to the launch of the Riverview Realty Company's proposed Riverview subdivision in 1903. A greenspace is indicated at this location in their original site plan for the neighbourhood.

Riverview Realty Co. donated 2.96 acres at Florence Avenue and Fisher Street and another 2.16 acres elsewhere in the community, (likely what is now the Arnold Street Tot Lot), to be converted into parks.

The fact that the company did not develop the land itself could mean that it was swampy, which made it unsuitable for home building and too expensive for Riverview to make into a park. Some of the city's other residential parks, like Central Park and Notre Dame Park, (now Jacob Penner Park), started off as land developers rejected.

August 24, 1928 Winnipeg Tribune

* The park has gone by various names over the years.

At the December 1909 parks board meeting, before work began to convert the land into a  park, the Winnipeg Tribune reported that "Park View will henceforth be known as 'Pembina Park', this name having been submitted by T. Wilson." That is the name the park was known by for many decades.

It was an unusual choice for a name as the parks board had a pretty strict policy of naming smaller parks for the street they were on, (Cornish Park, Notre Dame Park, Logan Park, etc.) and bigger parks for the district they were in, (St. John's Park, St. James Park,  Assiniboine Park, Kildonan Park, etc.)  At the time, the south end of Osborne Street was called Pembina Street, so it was close by but still an anomaly.

In a September 1946 Winnipeg Tribune column called "It used to run between farms – now we call it Baltimore Road” by Lillian Gibbons, she spoke to an area resident at the park who told her that it is was known as Fisher Park or Florence Park, but a schoolgirl came up to them to let them know that its official name was Pembina Park!

In 1992, an inquiry to the city by the Winnipeg Free Free Press' "Answers" columnist about a land-related question in Riverview it was noted that the park went by either Pembina Park or Fisher Park.

The city's 2019 Report on Parks and Open Space Assets lists this address as Fisher Park. When the name changed, or if it was ever officially renamed, is not clear.

Parks board inspection of park, August 1938
City of Winnipeg Archives

Work began on converting the land into a park space in June 1912 when the land was graded, seeded, and the outline for a unique circular sunken garden was dug. The garden feature was completed the following year.

Why a sunken circular garden? 

At a 1923 public parks board tour of the park for media and VIPs, a Winnipeg Tribune reporter noted: "The sunken garden at Pembina Park was perhaps the beauty spot of the whole trip and amazement was expressed when it was explained that the garden had been formed to save the filling in of an old sewer."  (The sewer was likely a drainage feature for surrounding land as there would not have been a sanitary sewer here before this development.)

The park was also fenced during this time with 1,550 linear feet of wrought iron fencing and gates. This was fairly common for residential parks at the time as Central Park, St. James Park (now Vimy Ridge), and Notre Dame Park (now Jacob Penner) all started out as fenced.

For more about the development of this part of Riverview, see my West End Dumplings post.