Established in 1906, the North American Lumber and Supply Company expanded across the prairies to become a cornerstone of Western Canada’s building industry. After acquiring Captain William Robinson’s Selkirk interests in 1926, the Manitoba Avenue branch grew into the company’s largest rural hub, later introducing the region’s first Chieftain Hardware store and serving generations of local builders and homeowners.
The Selkirk Museum celebrates the Royal Canadian Legion’s history through The Forty-Second Branch, a book written by Malcolm Macfarlane in 1977. Macfarlane faced challenges in researching the Legion’s first fifty years due to incomplete records, relying on colorful memories from its members. The book captures the Legion’s formation, successes, struggles, and contributions to Selkirk.
Pointing directly toward the Great Lakes, Superior Avenue was born from Selkirk’s absolute certainty that it was destined to become the “Chicago of the North.” This exhibit explores the wild 1870s land boom when speculators watched property prices skyrocket, betting everything on a Transcontinental Railway bridge that would instead cross the Red River elsewhere and change Manitoba’s history forever.