‘It was about putting it in the right place’: Atlas from 1910 donated to Heritage Winnipeg

Heritage Winnipeg has taken possession of a vintage Winnipeg atlas, giving people a link to the past. Daniel Halmarson reports.

A new donation to Heritage Winnipeg is offering a look at our city, street by street, from more than 100 years ago.

The leather-bound atlas, which was published around 1910, is a collection of hand-drawn maps that show different areas, neighbourhoods and streets—right down to the house numbers.

It was donated by Winnipeg’s Dan Saidman, who discovered the book while rifling through boxes in the basement of his family home.

He told CTV News it likely belonged to his great-grandmother Jean Eyden, an acclaimed artist, or his grandfather, who owned the Sam the Camera Man photography store.

“As soon as I started flipping through it, I realized that I had something really special,” Saidman said. “It’s cool to see where we started—that’s what this is. This is near the beginning of what we kind of know as modern Winnipeg.”

Saidman decided to donate the atlas to Heritage Winnipeg’s archives because he believes preserving the city’s past is important.

“Putting things where they need to be, where they belong,” he explained. “This could be, to somebody, just a book, but to someone like Greg [Agnew], this is an archive and has real, real value. So it was about putting it in the right place.”

Heritage Winnipeg President Greg Agnew said the maps were designed by the McPhillips Bros., a land surveying company, and they were used as a reference tool by insurance companies at the time.

“It’s very detailed as to where all the houses are, where all the streets are, and in a lot of instances where the water supply is,” Agnew told CTV News.

He said these types of discoveries are a good reminder to comb through old boxes carefully and to not just throw things away.

“If it’s gone, it’s gone. You can’t replace it.”

He said the atlas will join other historic documents and books in Heritage Winnipeg’s archives.