“In 1918 the Manitoba Government established the first provincial prison farm at East Braintree, called “Manitoba Industrial Farm”. It operated from 1918 to 1930 and once housed low-risk inmates, including six leaders of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 (George Armstrong, Roger Bray, William Ivens, Richard Johns, William Pritchard, and John Queen, were convicted of “seditious conspiracy”).
"Located 65 miles east of Winnipeg, south of the present-day Trans-Canada Highway between the communities of East Braintree and McMunn, the jail location met the remoteness criterion perfectly. While the site is easily accessible today, the only reliable way to get there before the highway was constructed in 1953, was by railway aboard the GWWD train that ran to Shoal Lake (the nearby Dawson Road being passable only when dry). The government bought 2,350 acres of land from local homesteaders to develop a farm at the site. Farm buildings, most made out of localled cut logs, included three prisoner bunkhouses, farm implement shed, blacksmith shop, kitchen and dining room, root cellar, and administrative offices. Three other buildings were built more robustly from an eclectic mixture of stone, bricks, and wooden timbers: a large barn for hogs and cattle, four-cell jailhouse, and residence for the farm’s superintendent that featured 26-inch stone walls.”
Gordon Goldborough, local historian and author
Source: Goldsborough, G. (2018). More Abandoned Manitoba: Rivers, Rails, and Ruins (p. 149-157).
The East Braintree Provincial Prison Farm was a stone barn built of granite quarried by prisoners nearby (1989). Credit: Lorna Annell
The brick jailhouse, built in 1921 had a flat roof. The peaked roof was added by the private owner of the building, Carl Feilberg. Photo taken in 1989. Credit: Lorna Annell
Inside the old Provincial Prison Farm jail cells at East Braintree that operated until 1930, circa 1989. Four cells inside the jailhouse (September 2016) Source: Gordon Goldsborough
A man holding a pistol with the inscription “HANDS UP” inside one of the jail cells (September 2016) Source: Gordon Goldsborough. Retrieved June 25, 2020 from http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/sites/prisonfarm.shtml
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