Article

Garson

Published Online September 10, 2012

Last Edited March 4, 2015

Garson, Manitoba, unincorporated village, population 483 (2011c), 324 (2006c). Garson was incorporated as the Village of Lyall in 1915 and amalgamated into the Rural Municipality of Brokenhead in 2003. The community is located 37 km northeast of Winnipeg.

Garson, Manitoba, unincorporated village, population 483 (2011c), 324 (2006c). Garson was incorporated as the Village of Lyall in 1915 and amalgamated into the Rural Municipality of Brokenhead in 2003. The community is located 37 km northeast of Winnipeg. Since the village of Lyall had continued to be commonly called Garson, in 1927 it reverted to its original name - after William Garson, an early quarrier of the area's mottled Tyndall limestone, used in many prominent Canadian buildings. (The interior walls of the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, and the exterior and interior walls of the CANADIAN MUSEUM OF CIVILIZATION are constructed of Tyndall limestone from Garson.) Mixed farming by Ukrainian, German, Polish and Anglo-Saxon settlers began in the region in the 1880s.

William Garson operated the first of 3 limestone quarries developed in the area in the late 1890s. The quarries attracted a cosmopolitan mix of skilled workers from the turn of the 20th century onward. Only one quarry operation remains today and residents primarily commute to nearby centres to work.