The drill hall on Gaddy Street

By Les Green
Source: portagedailygraphic.com


From 1910 till 1954, it was a really impressive big building. (Les Green/Submitted photo)

It has gone from the scene for 60 years now, but the memories of that huge brick building on Gaddy Street North still lingers on for many folk and for a variety of reasons. We will refer to the history books for some of the story and personal memories, such as they are, for the rest.

Around 1910

Portage la Prairie had just become a city some four years before, and was becoming an important distribution point for the prospering prairies. No less than five railway companies came through or to Portage; the Waterloo had just built its western Canadian assembly plant here, and other implement companies were soon seeing the advantages of locating here.

So it was that the Hart Parr Company, manufacturer of huge tractors, built its distribution plant on the east side of Gaddy Street, not far from the red brick Union Depot of the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Great Northern railways (which in time became the home of Canadian National and now is our Bus Depot). Soon, the Dominion Armouries was built, just across the road.

Hart Part operated there for 10 years, and then sold to another implement company, Altman Taylor, and then the Oliver Plow Company made it its home. By the late 1920s, the Manitoba Cordage Co., or “The Hemp Factory” as we knew it, set up shop in the building. Hemp was deemed to be the wonder crop of the age, and their main product was locally-made binder twine, always in great demand for prairie farmers on their binders.

Came the 1930s

Then, as the story goes, word got out that hemp contained marijuana, and the synthetic fabric manufacturers in the U.S. used it as an excuse to have the growing of hemp outlawed. That, along with the Depression Years, and perhaps the coming of the combine that did not use binder twine, saw the plant closed and the building sitting vacant. But the week-end soldiers at the adjacent Armouries made good use of it as a drill hall.

100th Basic Training Centre

When The Boys Home (Agassiz) was taken over by the Army in 1940, young men were “called up” for a month's training. When they got off the train, they entered the Drill Hall on Gaddy Street where they were interviewed, checked by a doctor and dentist, and issued their orders-for-the-day before marching to their new home. The old building was now very busy, as it was all during the rest of The Second World War.       

Delta apparel

When Sam Greene started his “shirt factory” on Broadway North in the mid-1930s, he likely had no idea that someday it would grow and call for a factory as big as the Drill Hall. But when Bill Glesby took over and the big building became available, Delta Apparel had a new home. And so it was that an army of seamstresses turned out carloads of garments, until one fateful day in 1954 it caught fire and was no more. It was a very dramatic time for the neighboring houses, and even more so for the petroleum companies whose bulk depots were on the adjacent railway siding. The site remained vacant for awhile, and now has houses on it.

My little girl

It was in the early 50s that Wifey liked to take wee daughter down “to see the trains” and past Delta Apparel. Oftimes it would be at closing time, and the girls would come streaming out, often to be met by waiting boyfriends, some to be greeted by hugs and kisses. Maybe it had been a long day at the sewing machine? Our little one was always suitably impressed.