Did You Know?

  • The Assiniboine River is the chief tributary of the Red River? The first trading post along its banks was built in 1738 by La Verendrye who called it the St. Charles River.

  • The S.S. Alpha, an Assiniboine River steamboat hauling freight from Winnipeg to Portage & Brandon, ran aground north of Littleton, the original site of Cypress River, on April 27, 1885. Its remains can still be seen today when the river water level is low.
     
  • Postage stamp province – In 1877, Manitoba’s west border was east of Cypress River.
     
  • An 1880s-era feature was Cypress River’s Union Hotel. Once advertised as "the best temperance hotel in the West”, it now serves as a grocery store.
     
  • Our Lady of the Prairies, near Holland, is the first and only Trappist Monastery west of Ontario.
     
  • In 1905, Holland became the location of the first consolidated school district in Manitoba, when the Holland and Dawson school districts joined to become School District No. 117.