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Tipis in St. James
1900



Credits:
Image courtesy of: Archives of Manitoba

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The Bourke family that lived down on Ferry Road, and where the (St. James) Collegiate is now, and the community club, they have that, ah…nest of houses now…I forget the…

the Bourkevale Community Club?

the Bourke…yeah…

and there's condominiums down there.

Yeah-condominiums. That was all a golf course. That was--they were Indians. They lived in tipis, they had three tipis, for a number of years, and then they got houses, they built houses-in fact, my dad helped them build. And, um, they were very nice people-really lovely people. And my mom used to bake for them, or make soup or whatever, because Mrs. Bourke wasn't very good at baking, cause she hadn't learnt to bake, like my mom had learnt to bake. They just had Trent, just the wee boy, he was about maybe ten years older than I was. And it was just him and the mom and dad and they lived there.

In three tipis?

Well they had people come, they used to have visitors come, so they had to have tents, They didn't have a garden or anything so Dad and Mom had the garden. So it…things went to them out of the garden and-baking as I say. They're very nice people and Mom loved her. Mom really loved her, she thought she was really nice person, because she helped Mom do things and Mom helped her do things, you know. The sewing, she learned to sew…

So she would give you clothes and things like that?

Yeah, Mrs. Bourke-she was a real sewer.