Sifton is an unincorporated community located in the

Rural Municipality of Dauphin Dauphin is a rural municipality in the Parkland Region of Manitoba, Canada. The municipality surrounds the separately administered city of Dauphin, and lies just north of Riding Mountain National Park, part of which extends into the RM. Commun ...

in the

Canadian province Within the geographical areas of Canada, the ten provinces and three territories are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North ...

Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...

. The community is approximately 20 km north of Dauphin in the Parkland area.

History

Large influxes of

Ukrainians Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian language, Ukrainian. The majority ...

settled this region in the mid-1890s, part of a mass immigration undertaken by the federal government. Sifton is named after

Minister of the Interior An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergency ...

Clifford Sifton Sir Clifford Sifton, (March 10, 1861 – April 17, 1929), was a Canadian lawyer and a long-time Liberal politician, best known for being Minister of the Interior under Sir Wilfrid Laurier. He was responsible for encouraging the massive amount o ...

, who viewed farmers from Eastern Europe as ideal for settling and opening the Canadian West. About 250 families both in town and in the surrounding countryside today call Sifton, Manitoba their home. A spinning wheel mounted on a cairn in town is the only visible reminder today that Sifton is also the birthplace of Canada's iconic fashion item of the 1950s, the

Mary Maxim Mary Maxim is the largest privately held craft and needlework mail-order company in North America. It has offices in Port Huron, Michigan, and Paris, Ontario, as well as a retail location in London, Ontario. It specializes in selling crafts, knit ...

sweater. Sifton was once a hub of woolen milling in Manitoba. Local residents still speak of the village blacksmith, John Weselowski, in the early 1930s, going broke trying to shoe horses for a living, who, with his brother George started manufacturing spinning wheels instead. It was a stroke of business genius and it sparked a major industry for Sifton, even during the Depression. It led to the construction of Spin-Well Mfg. Co. here and its eventual expansion into producing woollen products, including heavy yarn for sweaters and socks. The blacksmith, John Weselowski, eventually partnered with Willard McPhedrain, a community promoter and CN agent at the time, who had the idea of creating knitting patterns with Canadian symbols. It was McPhedrain who founded the Mary Maxim Co., bestowing on his company a name derived from the shortened version of a domestic in his household: a local girl named Mary Maximchuk. Sifton was, during those years, also a centre of other industry, including flour milling. It had several mills, plus elevators, numerous stores, cafés, a lumberyard. The town's fortunes began to reverse in the late 1950s. Mary Maxim Co. eventually left Sifton, and relocated, first to Dauphin, MB and then to

Paris, Ontario Paris (2021 population, 14,956) is a community located in the County of Brant, Ontario, Canada. It lies just northwest from the city of Brantford at the spot where the Nith River empties into the Grand River. Paris was voted "the Prettiest Littl ...

. One by one the town's flour mills disappeared. A terrible fire in 1949 destroyed several businesses on Main Street. Railways were abandoned. Farms got larger and people more mobile. Children from Sifton's large families left for education and fortune elsewhere, frequently Dauphin, which became the major economic centre of the Parklands.

Transportation

Sifton was served by the

Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company (LMR) was a historic rail line in Manitoba, Canada, between Gladstone in the south and Winnipegosis to its north. History Proposal In 1889, the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company (LMR) received a fede ...

, which later became part of the

Canadian Northern Railway The Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway. At its 1923 merger into the Canadian National Railway , the CNoR owned a main line between Quebec City and Vancouver via Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. Mani ...

Geography

*Area: 768.27 km² (296.65 mi²) *Location:

Southwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

*Area Code: +1- 204

References

External links

Unincorporated communities in Manitoba {{Manitoba-geo-stub