- Government and society
- Cultural life
Manitoba, province of Canada, one of the Prairie Provinces, lying midway between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. The province is bounded to the north by Nunavut territory, to the northeast by Hudson Bay, to the east by Ontario, to the south by the U.S. states of Minnesota and North Dakota, and to the west by Saskatchewan. Manitoba contains more than 38,500 lakes, including Lake Winnipeg, one of the world’s largest inland bodies of fresh water. More than two-fifths of the province’s land area is forested. Winnipeg, Manitoba’s largest city, is the capital. The province’s name comes from an Indian word meaning “the god who speaks.”
Manitoba became Canada’s fifth province when the area that had been the Red River Settlement was admitted to the confederation in 1870. The present-day province straddles the boundary between the Prairie and Central Canada, and it has both a large agricultural sector and a topography similar to those of the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. It also has a mixed economy, an urban orientation, and a multiethnic character, all of which are more like Ontario than the Prairie West. While other areas of the Canadian West have experienced economic cycles of boom and bust, Manitoba has maintained a steadier pace. Similarly, the province’s political and cultural life has largely avoided the extremes that tend to characterize western Canadian society. Area 250,116 square miles (647,797 square km), of which about one-sixth is inland water. Pop. (2011) 1,208,268.
Relief, drainage, and soils
Extreme southern Manitoba is part of the Saskatchewan plain, a land of rich, level prairies and rolling pastures. The Manitoba Lowland to the north is the basin that once held glacial Lake Agassiz, remnants of which include Lake Winnipeg (9,416 square miles [24,387 square km]), Lake Winnipegosis (2,075 square miles [5,374 square km]), and Lake Manitoba (1,785 square miles [4,623 square km]). Upland plateaus, wooded river valleys, limestone outcrops, forests, and swamps mark the area that is drained by the Red River of the North and the Assiniboine River into Lake Winnipeg. Much of this river region is a natural floodplain, which has often been inundated. Modern flood-control measures (particularly the Red River Floodway and the Portage Diversion) have mitigated the problem.
To the north and east of the lowland is the geologically ancient Canadian Shield, an area of rocks, forests, and rivers. It covers about three-fifths of the province and is drained by the Nelson and Churchill rivers into Hudson Bay. The Hudson Bay Lowland extends roughly 100 miles (160 km) inland as a flat plain of tundra and boglike muskeg. Manitoba’s Western Upland is on the Saskatchewan border. The Riding, Duck, and Porcupine mountains form the Manitoba Escarpment, the highest point of which is Baldy Mountain at 2,727 feet (831 metres). Soil conditions change from south to north. In the fertile zone, south and west of Lake Winnipeg, black soils suitable for farming dominate, although there are occasional large sandy areas. North of this region, lower-quality black soil and gray wooded soils are found. Soil in the shield, generally not suitable for agriculture, is characterized as gray wooded, podzol, and peat.
Manitoba has a moderately dry climate with sharp seasonal temperature changes. Winter temperatures of -40 °F (-40 °C) are not uncommon in any part of the province; summer days of 100 °F (38 °C) are not unusual in the southern regions. Average daily temperatures in Winnipeg range from 9 °F (−13 °C) in January to 80 °F (27 °C) in July. Average lows vary from -9 °F (-23 °C) in January to 57 °F (14 °C) in July. Annual precipitation varies from 14 inches (360 mm) in the north to 22 inches (560 mm) in the southeast, with about two-thirds of it falling between May and September. Snow typically covers the ground from November to April in the south and even longer in the north.
Plant and animal life
The southern part of the province was once covered by open grasslands, most of which have been converted into farmland. The southern plains are relatively treeless, except for the river valleys, where stands of aspen, oak, willow, and poplar are common. Manitoba’s more than 148,000 square miles (383,000 square km) of forest include open parklands of ash, Manitoba maple, elm, and oak in the south, becoming a mixed broad-leaved and coniferous forest to the north and west and a true northern coniferous forest in the higher elevations. Trees in the north include white and black spruce, jack pine, aspen, white birch, and tamarack. The Hudson Bay lowlands have willow and spruce, as well as moss, lichens, and sedges.
Caribou, Arctic foxes, martens, wolves, otters, lynx, red squirrels, and mink live in the northern forests; deer, moose, cougars, elk, black bears, beavers, weasels, raccoons, red foxes, coyotes, and muskrats inhabit the more southerly areas. Polar bears roam along Hudson Bay. Grouse, prairie chickens, and other game birds live in the uplands, and millions of geese and ducks breed in Manitoba’s sloughs and ponds. Fish include bass, pickerel, sauger, pike, trout, and whitefish. Beluga whales inhabit Hudson Bay.
Manitoba is home to a number of North American aboriginal groups, including the Assiniboin and Ojibwa Indians (First Nations) in the south, the Cree and Chipewyan Indians in the north, and the Inuit (aboriginal Arctic people of Canada, called Eskimo in the United States) on the Hudson Bay coast. The aboriginal peoples have occupied the region for thousands of years, although historically there has been considerable population movement. In addition, their numbers were greatly reduced as a result of exposure to European diseases, particularly smallpox. In the early 19th century the Métis (people of mixed Indian and European ancestry, whom the Canadian government granted legal recognition as a native group at the beginning of the 21st century) developed a unique plains culture. The early agricultural Red River Settlement attracted a number of Scottish farmers, and improvements to river and rail transportation led to the rapid growth of European settlement between 1870 and 1900. Most early settlers were from elsewhere in Canada, but Icelanders and German-speaking Mennonites also arrived beginning in the 1870s. After 1896 immigration from eastern Europe began in considerable numbers. Manitoba’s population declined during the Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II but grew steadily thereafter, largely through natural increase.
Manitoba is noted for its ethnic diversity. There are many ethnic enclaves within the city of Winnipeg. Notably, the north end of the city retains a strong eastern European character, and the St. Boniface district has one of the largest Francophone communities outside Quebec. Francophones established a number of communities south of Winnipeg; Germans settled in south-central Manitoba; and a sizable Icelandic settlement developed around Gimli, on the shores of Lake Winnipeg. Although more than two-fifths of the current population is of British descent, significant ethnic minorities include Germans, Ukrainians, French, South Asians, Italians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, and Poles. Roman Catholicism and the United Church of Canada are the largest religious denominations, although there are substantial numbers of Anglicans, Lutherans, Mennonites, and adherents to Eastern Orthodoxy and the Ukrainian Catholic (Eastern rite) church, plus many smaller groups. Winnipeg’s Jewish community is the largest in the Prairie Provinces.