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Manitobans Who Made a Difference

(Courtesy of the Archives of Manitoba)

As the first individual to undertake railway construction in Manitoba, Joseph Whitehead became a pioneer in the opening of the West. Responsible for importing the first steam locomotive, the Countess of Dufferin, into Manitoba, he and his family played a major role in the development of the eastern part of the province.

Whitehead was born in Darlington, England. He was a fireman on George Stephenson's historic run in 1825 in Yorkshire, England, of the first steam railway engine, "The Rocket". Whitehead then served as a fireman and engineer on early British railways before becoming a railway builder. He helped to construct the Caledonian Railway in Scotland. After his arrival in Canada in 1850, Whitehead built the Buffalo and Goderich Railway, part of the Grand Trunk Railway. In 1867, he was elected as a Liberal to Canada's first Parliament, representing the constituency of Huron North until 1872.

In 1877, Whitehead was awarded a contract to construct a railway line between Cross Lake and Kenora as part of the Canadian transcontinental railway, being built as a public work according to available revenue by the federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie. The same year, Whitehead was also given responsibility for building the Pembina Branch line of the transcontinental railway, later part of the Canadian Pacific Railway, from Emerson to St. Boniface. When completed in 1878, direct rail service was inaugurated between St. Paul, Minnesota, and Winnipeg. Realizing that he would need large amounts of timber, Whitehead and his son-in-law, David Ross, established a small mill in St. Boniface and shipped lumber to the construction site. The building of the line proved to be an economic boom for Winnipeg, as men and supplies flowed into the city. On October 9, 1877, Whitehead imported by barge on the Red River, Manitoba's first steam engine locomotive, the Countess of Dufferin. In 1880, as a result of over-expenditures and a change in the federal government to the Conservatives under Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald (1878), he was forced to give up his contract for the transcontinental railway.

Whitehead, nevertheless, decided to stay in Manitoba to take advantage of its plentiful timber. In 1881, he obtained a 61,440 acre timber berth along the Whitemouth River. Two years later, he transferred his berths to Ross, and retired to Clinton, Ontario, where he later died. Charlotte Ross, Whitehead's daughter, became a prominent doctor in the Whitemouth area. Whitehead's original mill in the Whitemouth Valley, operated by Ross and his sons until Ross' death in 1912, continued operations until the 1930s, thereby helping to clear the land for settlement and providing jobs for the local inhabitants.