Sandpit History
Located south of Park Avenue just west of 1st Street South, the sandpit of Beausejour has a storied history dating back to the late 1800's.
1870 - 1900
The area East of the Red River was used by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. With the arrival of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Northwest Company it became a source of furs for trappers and as a source of food, hay and fuel wood for Lower Fort Garry and the Red River Settlement.
Before the Dominion Land Survey crews arrived the area East of the Red River had a network of trails, both East/West and North/South. Some of these trails became “roads” for the transport of supplies into the area and resources back out. The main trail from the settlement at the mouth of Cook’s Creek (East Selkirk) to the Brokenhead River was known by a succession of names including tote road, McArthur’s (logging) Road, Brokenhead River Road. These roads were used well into the 1900’s. The main road to Beausejour from East Selkirk followed this path until the Van Horne Farms began to fence off sections of the road that crossed their property. The road was relocated to follow the section line and was known by some as the “Selkirk Line Road”.
In June of 1875 a survey party under Harry William Dudley Armstrong landed in the small village of Selkirk and made their way east and to start their task of laying down the line for the CPR track from Cross Lake to Selkirk (at that time the proposed crossing of the Red River). Camp was made on high ground where the (proposed) “Burgoyne Station” would be located. When the official list of station names was presented to Parliament the station was called Beausejour. A log house was built and work began. In June 1877 Armstrong married in Winnipeg and brought his wife (daughter of the customs agent in Winnipeg) back to Beausejour Station where they had the first child born in the area.
At the same time that Armstrong was bringing his wife to their home they met the Campbell family, believed to be the first settlers in the area. They settled along the Brokenhead River, two miles east of present day Beausejour.
1900-1928
Sandpit & Glassworks
Some might consider James Laird Turner the founder of the Town of Beausejour. There is no question that James Laird Turner played a crucial role in the town and its history.
Born in 1863 at Holland Landing in York County, Ontario, James was the youngest of his parents’ three children. Samuel was three years old and Mary Eleanor five when William and Ellen Turner entered their new baby to the world.
James and his older brother Samuel came to Beausejour Station with the CPR as telegraph operators. By 1883 James and Samuel had acquired the quarter section east of the Beausejour CPR station (NE36-12-7E). James became the station agent and in 1887 he also donned the Postmaster hat.
Wedding bells rang two years later for James and his new bride, Ada Smith, the daughter of Edward Smith who lived at a neighbouring farm (29-12-7E). The following year, in 1890, the couple had a daughter, Eleanor Margaret, and two years later her sister Ada Esther was born. Sadly, their mother Ada passed away shortly after, leaving James alone with two young daughters.
According to the 1891 census for North Springfield, James was still the station agent and Postmaster, but he was also listed in a Winnipeg newspaper ad as a Beausejour School secretary treasurer. He and Samuel built a store east of the railway station on Pacific Street and moved the post office there, and by 1893 James had also acquired the quarter section of land surrounding the CPR station (NW 35-12-7).
Records show that James had begun making plans for the Beausejour townsite as early as 1892. He eventually decided to concentrate on the development of his properties, and Samuel took over as Postmaster in 1898. That same year, James filed the official survey of subdivision (Manitoba Plan 527) establishing the first streets of today’s town of Beausejour, including lots south of Park Avenue to the railway property, from First Street to Third Street on the east side.
The Turner brothers filed a total of six development plans for the South portions of what would become the town. We can suspect that James was aware of the potential of the silica sand deposits on his property, as he left the prime area undeveloped. He may have also discovered that the main deposit was on the adjacent property.
Soon after the turn of the century, James also acquired the adjacent property west of First Street (NE & N1/2NW of 35-12-7E). In 1903, he became a member of The Lisgar Masonic Lodge in Selkirk and began to find investors for his Manitoba Pressed Brick Factory.
Future Senator George Bradbury of Selkirk was the financial power behind the Manitoba Pressed Brick Company formed in 1904. Soon after, the company began shipping the high silica content sand to Winnipeg for use in the construction industry. The brick plant opened officially in 1905 and met with such success that by 1910 it had to expand.
By 1906 James had built his house on Second Street South, and had brought first his Aunt Rachel Ashton, then his widowed? father William, to live with him and his children.
At the same time the potential for the silica sand was being experimented by a group of local businessmen. In 1906 the Manitoba Glass Company was started by Joseph Kielbach on the property directly south of the Brick Factory. While the glass works did have some of the high silica sand on its property, as it grew the brick works sand pit supplied the sand. In 1907 the name was changed to The Manitoba Glass Manufacturing? Company Ltd.
Around 1908 James invested in the glass company, and purchased it soon after. With new investors, he started planning an expansion to the factory, while also modernizing the existing glass factory. In 1910 the brick factory also expanded, including the addition of a “railway” of ore cars in the sand pit and a spur track from the main CPR line to brick factory and also extended to the Glassworks.
Around this time, in 1909, James was one of the founders of Beausejour Masonic Lodge (Ophir #12) and became its first master.
In September of 1910 James sold both factories to a group of Winnipeg investors, who in turn sold the companies to Diamond Flint Glass Company, which in 1914 became Dominion Glass. With the opening of a new glass plant in Redcliff Alberta, Dominion Glass wound down operations in Beausejour and was “dormant” by 1915. That year, along with local and Winnipeg investors, James started the Celtic Flax Company in Beausejour.
By this time, James had remarried. He and his new bride, Bertha Lee Redman, moved to Kenora, where her sister’s husband, Harding Rideout, owned a furniture business. James joined in as a partner, and the business was renamed Rideout & Turner. They sold the business in 1917.
In 1921 the family moved from Kenora the town, to 189 Canora Street in Winnipeg. For several years James was secretary-treasurer of the Masterola Phonograph Co. of Winnipeg. He also started an electric manufacturing company and owned the Mall Garage on Preston Street for a short time. By 1927 James and Bertha Lee had moved to the Warwick apartments on Central Park in Winnipeg.
James Laird Turner’s life came to a tragic end in 1928, when on June 4, at the age of 65, he was killed in a pedestrian auto accident outside his home. He is buried in St. Clements Anglican Cemetery in Selkirk, Manitoba, alongside his first wife Ada and their daughter Ada Esther.
James’ brother and business partner, Samuel, died just a few years later, in 1932. James’ younger daughter, Ada Esther, taught school in Winnipeg for many years and died in 1956. Older sister Eleanor Margaret married John Leslie McMurtrie in Cranbrook, B.C. and lived there until 1973. As of 2017, their son James McMurtrie was still living, along with grandchildren James Alexander and Sheila Eileen.
1900-1928
Alsip Brick, Tile and Lumber Company Ltd
Winnipeg Tribune 1926
In 1917 the property and assets of the Manitoba Pressed Brick Company were tendered for sale by judicial order. It was purchased and operated by a Winnipeg company into the 1920’s. After after that operation closed down, the property and buildings remained dormant until 1928 when Alsip’s Brick Tile and Block Company purchased the sand pit property. This also included property on the East side of First Street.
Alsip’s had a market for the high-grade silica sand with the Canada Cement plant in Fort Whyte (Winnipeg). Work began with the installation of a state of the art Sauerman Line Scraper. When plans were made for a railway spur into the sand pit Alsip’s found that the town owned a strip of land between the CPR rail line and the sand pit property and access had to be negotiated with the town.
Around 1939 the sand pit began to see some water seepage, but operations continued with the drag line until 1951, when the water level had reached 3-4 ft deep. In 1952 a sand pump was installed (0% SSRLC, 25 HP electric motor) and pumping of the sand began. The pump was located in a shed on the North shore. A flexible pipe ran to a floating barge. A sand slurry was pumped to a pile on the shore and the water would drain away. The Sauerman scraper continued to be used to bring sand to the loading area where gondola cars were filled for shipping to Canada Cement. By 1964 Alsip’s was pumping 90 tons of sand per day.
Operations would start each year in the spring with dynamite being used to free the frozen sand. The explosives were stored in a vault in the cliff side along first street and the blasting caps in a storage shed to keep them separated. Over the almost six decades of operation there was only one fatality.
When the CPR decided to remove the spur line from the sand pit in the mid fifties, Naaykins Transport Company started trucking the sand to Canada Cement.
The water depth reached 42 feet in the mid 80’s and danger of adjacent roads caving in put a stop to operations in the Beausejour sand pit. Alsip’s applied to the town to expand the pit to the old glass works property owned at the time by Canada Cement. This request was turned down. A suitable source of sand was located near Tyndall and operations moved there until 1987 when the Canada Cement plant closed (Canada Cement Lafarge).
Alsip’s also operated a gravel pit on the East side of first and a pea gravel pit to the west of the sand pit.
For many years Alsip’s allowed the local population to use the sand pit for recreation (swimming) often alongside the working crews. The quick drop of water depth at the shore line created a danger but over more than 40 years of swimmers there were only two drowning fatalities. In 1969 with Alsip’s permission the town had excavated a “swimming pool” at the south end and had swimming lessons and supervised swimming.
When a provincial tourism magazine included the Beausejour sand pit as a “destination” the property was inundated by many hundreds of weekend sunbathers and resulted in uncontrolled raucous behaviour. Alsip’s was approached by the town to do something to control it. The property was fenced, and no trespassing signs were posted. Unfortunately, this was also the end of local use of the beach and lake. Once the property was posted the RCMP put up roadblocks and turned the party goers away. Word soon got out and the traffic stopped but the legacy of broken glass in the sand can still be found today.
In 1989 news of a proposal for developing the “sand pit” as “Lake Serendipity” included a small resort hotel, a pitch and putt golf course and RV trailer park and “lots and lots of fun”. The purchase of the property was not completed.
In 1989 the Glass Works property was transferred to “the Glassworks Historic Site” committee.
In 1990 the sand pit property was purchased by Bisko Construction.
1990 - Present
The Sands Pit Resort and The Sands Lakeshore Estates
The Sands developer, Bob Bisko started his career in the construction business in Winnipeg in 1961 and ventured out on his own in 1969, starting “Robisko Construction” building commercial properties in Winnipeg, Beausejour, Lac Du Bonnet and surrounding area.
In 1990 he formed “Bisko Enterprises Company Limited” and purchased the property known as “the Alsip’s sand pits” from Alsip’s Building Products. His vision was to develop a recreational facility for the town and surrounding area. Washroom and concession buildings were built at both the North and South ends of the lake and other amenities included mini-golf, a par 3 golf course, volleyball, bocce ball and pedal boats.
On June 19, 1991 a deluge of rain did a great deal of damage to the beaches, especially at the North end of the property. The June 15th opening date was postponed while equipment was brought in to level and groom the beaches. “The Sands Pit Resort” opened soon after and the facility was in good shape to host the first beach tournament of the Manitoba Volleyball Association on July 27th.
The resort advertised “Enjoy the sand beaches and shallow shorelines created around the three spring fed swimming holes. Let the children enjoy the specially developed shallow wading pool with the rainmaker that is guaranteed to bring squeals of delight. Add pedal boating, canoeing, scuba diving, and wind surfing to the swimming and you have a smorgasbord of water activities to choose from”. Additional activities included fishing, volleyball courts, Belgian Bowling, horseshoes, tetherball, and funnel ball, miniature golf and a nine hole, par-3 golf course.
By 1998 attendance had dropped and the resort was closed. Bisko Enterprises continued to improve the property, constructing a walking trail around the lake for the enjoyment of the residents. In 2004 the development plan for “The Sands Lakeshore Estates” was approved. The streets, water, hydro and low pressure sewer system were installed and the first homes were constructed in 2006. That first year saw five homes built including Bob & Francis Bisko’s.
Since the town had turned down Bisko Enterprise’s offer to turn over the lake and property to the town, it was given to the 62 lot owners.
The Sands Lakeshore Estates is now a friendly family oriented community thanks to Bob Bisko.
Today the remaining evidence of the Sands Pit Resort include the original resort docks, the volleyball posts, the tetherball post. several shoreline spruce trees… and the occasional golf ball that pops out of the ground.