Letters from a Student Passing Through...

I am now at Trinity College, on the eve of departure for Emerson. I go by rail to Emerson, sixty-five miles by stage afterwards. It is late in the year for business of this kind. I have been worried out of my life, for the last two weeks, by one thing and another, but have enjoyed my stay at Trinity College immensely, which, as you know, I always regard as my "Canadian home." I leave* Toronto Tuesday. November 8th, 15:50 p.m. Arrive at Chicago, Wednesday, 9th, 7 a.m. leave Chicago, 10:50 a.m. Arrive at St. Paul's, Thursday, 10th , 5:50 a.m., leaving St. Paul's, 10th , 7:30 p.m. Arrive at St. Vincent, Friday 11th , 4:40 p.m.; Emerson, Friday, 4th , 10 p.m...

...Floods have been bad in Emerson [May 1882], everybody living upstairs, water five feet in the streets. The fellow who brought my waggon out from Emerson, had to bring each wheel, axle, etc., over the Red River, separately in a skiff, and it cost him $4, the bridge being washed away by the flood.

From Letters from a Young Emigrant in Manitoba

* It wouldn't be until completion of the Canadian transcontinental railroad in 1885, providing a way to traverse the Canadian Shield, that there would be a more direct route from the east to the west in Canada...