Manitoba Heritage Council Commemorative Plaques

Silver Heights

Stopping place on the Portage Trail; refuge of settlers in floods of 1826 and 1852. Here in 1856 John Rowand Jr. of Hudson's Bay Co. built a log house enlarged and occupied by James McKay, Speaker of the Manitoba Legislative Council; by Donald A. Smith (Lord Strathcona) later Governor Hudson's Bay Co.; and by Manitoba's first two Lieutenant-Governors; destroyed by fire in 1892. For several years a herd of buffalo was kept in this area.