The Keystone Province

A History of Manitoba

A Sweeping History of the Province of Manitoba

At the geographic heart of North America lies a province that contains, in concentrated form, the full drama of Canadian history. In The Keystone Province, Daniel Hardy tells the story of Manitoba with the sweep of a novelist and the precision of a scholar — from the ancient worlds of the Cree, Anishinaabe, and Assiniboine peoples, through the violent rivalries of the fur trade, to the birth of the Métis nation and the electrifying resistance of Louis Riel.

Hardy brings equal authority to the immigrant flood that transformed Winnipeg into a booming metropolis, the 1919 General Strike that shook a nation and planted the seeds of Canadian social democracy, and the grinding devastation of the Depression on the prairie farms. He does not flinch from the darker chapters: the broken promises to the Métis, the flooding of Cree homelands for hydroelectric power, the residential schools whose legacy still shapes Manitoba today.

What emerges is a portrait of a place unlike anywhere else — plural, resilient, complicated, and still in the midst of becoming. The Keystone Province is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand not just Manitoba, but the country it sits at the heart of.