A Diminished Roar nominated for Manitoba Day Award!

We’re pleased to announce that Jim Blanchard’s A Diminished Roar: Winnipeg in the 1920s was nominated for a 2020 Manitoba Day Award by the Association of Manitoba Archives!

“To celebrate Manitoba 150, the Association for Manitoba Archives would like to announce 11 different projects and initiatives worthy of praise. Each year the AMA presents the Manitoba Day Awards to individuals who, through the use of archives, complete original works of excellence which contribute to the understanding and celebration of Manitoba’s history. Typically, the winners are announced at our annual awards night, but this year the event and the announcement of winners has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event will be rescheduled once it is safe to gather and celebrate these achievements. Until then, the AMA still wishes to announce and celebrate all those nominated. The full list of nominees worthy of praise for their work utilizing and promoting different archival materials in Manitoba is available here to explore online from the comfort of home.”

The nominees for the 2020 Manitoba Day Awards include:

  • Jim Blanchard for his book A Diminished Roar: Winnipeg in the 1920s published by University of Manitoba Press.
  • Chris Rutkowski and Stan Michalak for their book When they Appeared, Falcon Lake 1967: The Inside Story of a Close Encounter (White Crow Books)
  • Christine Bone for her work on the MAIN-LCSH Working Group review of Indigenous Subject Headings. https://main.lib.umanitoba.ca/indigenous-subject-headings
  • Jean Teillet for her book The North-West Is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel’s People, The Métis Nation published by HarperCollins Canada.

About A Diminished Roar

The third instalment in Jim Blanchard’s popular history of early Winnipeg, A Diminished Roar presents a city in the midst of enormous change. Once the fastest growing city in Canada, by 1920 Winnipeg was losing its dominant position in western Canada. As the decade began, Winnipeggers were reeling from the chaos of the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But it was the divisions exposed by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike which left the deepest marks. As Winnipeg wrestled with its changing fortunes, its citizens looked for new ways to imagine the city’s future and identity.

Beginning with the opening of the magnificent new provincial legislature building in 1920, A Diminished Roar guides readers through this decade of political and social turmoil. At City Hall, two very different politicians dominated the scene. Winnipeg’s first Labour mayor, S.J. Farmer, pushed for more public services. His rival, Ralph Webb, would act as the city’s chief “booster” as mayor, encouraging U.S. tourists with the promise of“snowballs and highballs.” Meanwhile, promoters tried to rekindle the city’s spirits with plans for new public projects, such as a grand boulevard through the middle of the city, a new amusement park, and the start of professional horse racing. In the midst of the Jazz Age, Winnipeg’s teenagers grappled with “problems of the heart,” and social groups like the Gyro Club organized masked balls for the city’s elite.

About Jim Blanchard

Jim Blanchard is a retired academic librarian and Librarian Emeritus of the University of Manitoba. He is a former president of the Manitoba Historical Society and is the author of Winnipeg’s Great War: A City Comes of Age and Winnipeg 1912.