Fort Ellice was a

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

trading post operated from 1794 to 1892. First established on the

Qu'Appelle River The Qu'Appelle River is a river in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba that flows east from Lake Diefenbaker in south-western Saskatchewan to join the Assiniboine River in Manitoba, just south of Lake of the Prairies, near t ...

, the post was rebuilt in 1817 on the south bank of the Assiniboine. Another iteration of the post was built near the first in 1862 and, in 1873, replaced Fort Pelly as the headquarters for the Swan River District. The fort was located in what is now west-central

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 ...

, Canada, just east of that province's border with

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...

. It was an important fort, as it was a major stopping point on the

Carlton Trail The Carlton Trail was the primary land transportation route in the Canadian Northwest for most of the 19th century, connecting Fort Carlton to Edmonton along a line of intermediate places. It was part of a trail network that stretched from the Red ...

, which ran from the

Red River Colony The Red River Colony (or Selkirk Settlement), also known as Assiniboia, Assinboia, was a colonization project set up in 1811 by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, on of land in British North America. This land was granted to Douglas by the Hud ...

Fort Edmonton Fort Edmonton (also named Edmonton House) was the name of a series of trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) from 1795 to 1914, all of which were located on the north banks of the North Saskatchewan River in what is now central Alberta, ...

. (The section leading from

Upper Fort Garry Fort Garry, also known as Upper Fort Garry, was a Hudson's Bay Company trading post at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in what is now downtown Winnipeg. It was established in 1822 on or near the site of the North West Company' ...

to this district was commonly known as the Fort Ellice Trail.) A second more elaborate structure was built in 1862 by the HBC but its economic life was short-lived as the Company relinquished control of Rupert's Land with the 1870 Deed of Surrender. This deed transferred many HBC rights to the new Canadian national government. The fort had one more important role to play in history; it acted as a staging point for part of the

North-West Mounted Police The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian para-military police force, established in 1873, to maintain order in the new Canadian North-West Territories (NWT) following the 1870 transfer of Rupert’s Land and North-Western Territory ...

(NWMP) force that started at

Fort Dufferin Fort Dufferin is a former Canadian government post near the Canada–United States border at Emerson, Manitoba. The fort was used during the 1870s as a base for the North American Boundary Commission and the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP), ...

and headed west in 1874 to establish law and order in the future provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The fort acted as an NWMP post beginning in 1875. The fort was named after Edward Ellice, a British merchant and an investor in the Hudson's Bay Company. Fort Ellice in turn gave its name to the

Rural Municipality of Ellice The Rural Municipality of Ellice is a former List of rural municipalities in Manitoba, rural municipality (RM) in the Canada, Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Manitoba. It was originally incorporated as a rural municipality ...

in west-central Manitoba and to Ellice Avenue, a major arterial road in Winnipeg. The property that supports both forts is currently owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

References

External links

*
''Manitoba Community Profiles''

''History in Winnipeg Street Names'' from the Manitoba Historical Society

* Google trekker - virtual hike of Fort Ellice property https://www.google.com/maps/@50.4027067,-101.2869901,3a,50.4y,283.13h,76.29t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUF2N0E_pMD23ln2H07fipw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ellice Forts in Manitoba Hudson's Bay Company forts North-West Mounted Police forts 1831 establishments in the British Empire