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Manitobans Who Made a Difference

(Courtesy of the Archives of Manitoba)

Peter McArthur was representative of immigrants from Ontario who, seeking new economic opportunities, arrived in the Red River Settlement in the late 1860s. Over the course of five decades, McArthur became an important innovator in steamboat construction, a pioneer in steam navigation on Manitoba's waterways, a significant promoter of the commercial fishing industry, and, a lumberman with extensive operations, especially in central and western Manitoba.

McArthur was born in Nairnshire, Scotland, and immigrated to Canada in 1862. After working as a cabinet-maker in Canada West (now Ontario) and the United States, he came to Red River in 1869 and took a job working on the Dawson Road, a trail being built from the northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods to the Settlement. During the Red River Resistance, McArthur was present in John Christian Schultz's house when the "Canadian Party" surrendered to the forces of Louis Riel's Provisional Government. McArthur escaped his captors on January 10, 1870, but was recaptured shortly thereafter. After his release in March, 1870, he travelled by snowshoe to Minnesota with A.W. Graham and J. Latimer. Later that year, McArthur settled near the Brokenhead River and began a logging operation, although he was described occupationally as a cabinet-maker in 1872. In 1874, he located his sawmill near Fort Alexander, from which he provided Fort Garry with a flagstaff, and built the first steamboat constructed in Manitoba, the S.S. Prince Rupert. In 1881, McArthur, with other partners including the Hudson's Bay Company, formed the Northwest Navigation Company, which built the S.S. Marquette and the S.S. Northwest.

The timber in the Brokenhead region proved inadequate for McArthur's needs. McArthur, therefore, acquired berths near the Ebb and Flow First Nations community on the west side of Lake Manitoba, at Crane River, and in the area around Fairford. In 1881, he and his partners received a berth covering 193,343 hectares (477,760 acres) beside Lake Winnipegosis and the Waterhen River. Logs from these sites were floated to Totogan near the mouth of the Whitemud River at Lake Manitoba. Flooding, however, made Totogan unacceptable for McArthur's venture. As a result, he moved the landing site farther down the Whitemud River, near present-day Westbourne, to what became "McArthur's Landing", where he established a lumber mill and a freezer, for the fish he purchased from commercial fishermen and sold to the Booth Fish Company. McArthur also built the S.S. Saskatchewan, a $30,000 steamboat with a 33.5-metre (110-foot) hull. A Manitoba and North Western Railway spur line was built from Westbourne to McArthur's Landing, where in 1891, 500,000 board feet of lumber and 25,000 railway ties were transferred from boats. After fire destroyed his enterprise in 1897 and the Saskatchewan was sunk, in 1898 McArthur constructed a sawmill and a planing mill in Winnipegosis. The Standard Lumber Company operated for more than 30 years, producing spruce lumber for floors and siding and employing not only tree fellers and mill workers, but boat crews. After 1916, he also established a second mill at Graves Point, on Lake Winnipegosis, with a daily capacity of 22,000 board feet. McArthur's mills built much needed boats and fish boxes for the fishing industry. McArthur ran his lumber mills until the 1930s when he sold his interests to the Manitoba Pulp and Paper Company, which closed most of his operations. He died at his home in Winnipegosis.