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© 2025, Christian Cassidy
When I was doing research for a tree walk of Elmwood Cemetery earlier this year, I came across this non-military headstone marker for an RCAF pilot who died during the Second World War.
I thought I would find out more about his story and why there is no military headstone next to it.
It turns out this is a memorial to, not the actual grave of, John Roderick McPherson, and it tells the story of four men who lost their lives.
The jury's verdict on the reason for the accident was "Unknown. None of the evidence throws any light on the loss of the aircraft".
The four airmen remained "Missing - Presumed Dead" until December 9, 1942, when the families were informed that they had been declared "Presumed Dead".
It is unclear what happened to Maeve McPherson. She was originally from Toronto and her parents still resided there. It is possible that she never returned to Winnipeg.
© 2025, Christian Cassidy
There are at least a couple of large residential developments slated for West Broadway.
One is a four-storey, 21-unit, mixed-use building approved for the site of Howell Court at Broadway and Furby Street, (see the end of this post for more details), and a much more substantial building could be coming to the parking lot of the Sherbrook Inn.
The city's Committee on Property and Development will be asked at its October 9, 2025 meeting to approve a plan that would change the zoning on the Westminster Avenue lot to allow for a six-storey building with 86 residential units and one ground-floor commercial unit.
If approved, the project could begin construction as early as January 2026.
The building is designed by Cibinel Architecture, whose recent projects include the WAG's Qaumajuq Inuit Art Gallery (2021) and the Transcona Library (2018).
The developer is Lotus Holdings Winnipeg Ltd. which has developed several buildings in partnership with Cibinel, including Solara Flats for the University of Winnipeg.
Here's Cibinel's FAQ about the proposed development.
The 1965 directory, which would have been compiled in 1964 when construction began on the Westminster Motor Inn, as it was called back then, shows all nine houses are missing.
A few years back, I wrote a history of the Sherbrook Inn and in a preview article about the development in the June 27, 1964 edition of the Winnipeg Free Press, the architect's drawings shows development on that Westminster Street lot. It was described in the article as a multi-storey open parkade with a walkway connection to the hotel, which obviously never materialised.
Related:
A history of the Sherbrook Inn at my Winnipeg Places blog
© 2025, Christian Cassidy
During their time on Bloor Street, the Galloways had three children: a son who died in infancy and daughters Muriel, born in 1897, and Ivadele, born in 1898.
The family initially settled at 187 Balmoral Street and in 1907, rented the former A. E. Ham residence at 661 Broadway that they would go on to purchase in 1913.
The living arrangements were similar to Bloor Street with the house being both a family home and medical clinic. It was initially known as the Galloway Clinic and after a couple of extensions it became the Galloway - Gibson Clinic and eventually the Winnipeg Orthopedic Clinic. A separate building on Furby Street was the clinic's private hospital.
By 1918, the clinic had grown large enough that the family moved to 638 Wellington Crescent.
The organization was formed in 1908 to help establish and fund the provincial sanatorium at Ninette. After its construction in 1909, the society concerned itself with funding auxiliary items for patients, such as equipment and clothing.
One project Mrs. Galloway pushed for was the introduction of milk goats to the sanatorium. Goats took up less space than cows and would ensure the institution had a regular supply of nutritious milk. To prove that goats were well behaved and could be easily kept, she took two of them with her to the cottage in the summer of 1922 to look after.
In November 1922, the board agreed with her motion and goats were bought or the sanatorium.
There was also the 5,000 name petition submitted to the federal justice minister seeking to exonerate Jennie Hawkes. The Alberta woman shot to death a woman she believed was having an affair with her husband and was sentenced to hang in November 1915. The council argued that a man in the same situation would likely not face any punishment.
In the end, Jennie's sentence was commuted to ten years in prison, which was disappointing for the group, but they did help save her life.
The years 1922 and 1923 were ones of great change for the Galloways.
According to the Winnipeg Tribune, Mrs. Galloway had a stay in General Hospital in March 1922 but was soon "making a rapid recovery at her Wellington Crescent home."
In April 1922, the couple traded their house on Wellington Crescent with that of J. L. Bathgate, of the Scott Bathgate Company, at 34 Carlton Street. This was a smaller house with a much smaller property and signified he semi-retirement of Dr. Galloway and the declining health of Mrs. Galloway.
At the Anti Tuberculosis Society's January 1923 annual meeting, Mrs. Galloway announced that she was stepping down as president of the organisation after six years. In April, she stepped away from the executive of the Council of Women.
Mrs. Galloway, along with her husband and daughter Muriel, went on a tour to southern California and Hawaii in February 1923 and returned in early April.
The final official act of Mrs. Galloway appears to have been her attendance at a meeting of the Council of Women in late April 1923 to discuss "the liquor question". She did not speak but had a seat at the head table as past president.
Charlotte Galloway died at the family home on Carlton Street on Sunday, July 8, 1923 at the age of 56.
A small funeral was held at the home two days later presided over by Reverend L. F. Dimmitt, pastor of Broadway Methodist Church, and a memorial service in her honour was held at the church the following week.
Galloway is buried in Elmwood Cemetery.
© 2025, Christian Cassidy
I have come across many Icelandic immigrants who got into the local building trade, such as Vopni, Clemens, and Oddson after arriving in Manitoba. Whilst looking into the history of a house history on McGee Street, I came across carpenter Loftur Jorundson who certainly left his mark on the West End during its formative years.
Researching Jorundson was a bit of a challenge because of his name. Icelandic names are notoriously misspelled in English language sources like street directories, newspaper articles and even census records. For instance, his last name is spelled four different ways in street directories from 1895 to 1901. Icelandic sources use Loptur Jorundsson.
Here is what I could find about Loftur Jorundson:
Census records indicate that both Loftur and JónÃna came to Canada ca. 1888, so they married quite soon after arriving. According to this community history, JónÃna came to the Lundar region with her parents and siblings. It is unclear if the two knew each other in Iceland, met on the passage, or had a very quick courtship in Canada.
Coming to the West End
The earliest sign I can find of the Jorundsons in Winnipeg comes in the 1895 street directory, the data for which would have been compiled in 1894. Loftur is listed as a carpenter living at 625 Ness Avenue. By 1897, the growing family had relocated to Simcoe Street.
At the time, the West End beyond Maryland Street would not have been formally subdivided by the city into proper streets, sidewalks, and boulevards. Streets like Simcoe would have been little more than country lanes serving the pasture land, dairy operations, and horse stables that operated in the area.
When the family first arrived on Simcoe, it contained ten houses on it from Portage Avenue to Notre Dame, none with street addresses. By the time they got a street address in 1903, the Jorundsons were at number 372 (now demolished), and there were just 15 houses on the street.
The Jorundson family moved to 339 McGee Street in 1904, a house that Jorundson built himself. In 1907, he built another at 351 McGee and this became the family home for years to come.
The home building permits end in 1906 for a time. Jorundson may have worked as a subcontractor for a developer of larger structures as he returns to building in 1908 with several much more ambitious building permits to his name.
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Jorundson's largest project was likely the 29-unit Quo Vadis Apartments on Qu’Appelle Avenue at Kennedy, just off Central Park. He took out the $56,000 building permit for the block which, was designed by architect David W Bellhouse, in May 1908. The three-storey plus full basement building measured 50 x 120 feet and was built of red brick with concrete trim.
This building was a bit of trailblazer as it was amongst the first wave of middle-class apartments built in the city. Prior to this, apartments were for the most part considered tenements, a place where poor people lived packed together to save on costs.
It was thanks to large group of Icelandic builders, developers, and architects, such as Paul Clemens and Thorstein Oddson, that the "three-storey walk-up" became respectable places to live and they built hundreds of them around the city. The Warwick Block, located a block from the Quo Vadis and constructed the following year, is often considered the first upscale apartment block in the city featuring balconies, fireplaces, a glassed-in courtyard, ad servants' entrances.
Wartime
The First World War would have been a stressful time for the family as their three eldest would have been old enough to volunteer. None of them did.
Newspaper records show that a “J. Jorundson” of 351 McGee Street applied for an exemption from the draft. It didn’t work as 24-year-old John (Jerundar), a carpenter like his father, was drafted and assigned to the #10 Engineers Depot.
It appears that John served his time in Canada and was dismissed in March 1919 as being “medically unfit” for service. He suffered from ongoing bouts of abdominal pain and injured his wrist whilst winding equipment which required him to wear a splint. (By 1919, the war was over so the bar for getting a medical discharge from service was much lower than it would have been a couple of years earlier!)
You can read John’s full war record here.
Another son, Sigtrigur, was drafted in June 1918 towards the end of the war. He was discharged weeks later after his medical examination found him unfit for service. He got his hand caught in a planing machine in 1912 (perhaps working with his father?) that left him with “impaired function of his right hand”.
You can read Sigtrigur Jorundson’s war record here.
Post War
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© 2025, Christian Cassidy
