"Coming as adult women with children to help make farm homes in the new west were two women now living in Winnipeg (1923), Mrs. Henry McQuade and Mrs. Mark Graham.  Mrs. Graham came by the Dawson road, the most difficult route of all. Mrs. McQuade made the trip in the more usual way by Duluth and on to Moorhead and down the Red river in a surveyor’s boat.  The McQuade family pitched their tents on Water street, where they spent their first summer.  The husband took up a homestead at Prairie Grove, paying ten dollars for his patent to land which thirty-six years later he sold for $10,000.  During those thirty-six years, Mrs. McQuade had nine children, and no doctor ever entered her farm home.  Their postmaster for all that time was a French-Canadian farmer from Quebec, Desautels by name."

W.J. Healy, author Women of Red River 1923

Source:  Healy, W.J. (1923, 1967, 1987). Women of Red River (p.254-55). Peguis Publishers. Retrieved from Manitoba Historical Society June 3, 2020, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/books/womenofredriver.pdf

Winnipeg - Winnipeg Digital Public History. (2020). “Settlers arriving in camp, Manitoba (pre-1909)”.  “Past Forward,” The Rob McInnes Postcard Collection. Retrieved June 4, 2020 from http://pastforward.winnipeg.ca/digital/collection/robmcinnes/id/6588/rec/11

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