Anybody that has spent any kind of time living in Brandon has likely had their share of drives to Winnipeg and as a result has had their share of brushes with the well-known halfway tree on the South side of the road near Bagot that marks the halfway point between the two cities. Now a moving story said to speak to the origin of the famed Cottonwood has gone viral this week.
In the story its said that a young man by the name of Fred Archer immigrated to Manitoba from England as a 16-year old orphan and would later marry a Catherine Pearce. They would have two sons named George and Sidney when tragedy struck and Catherine died giving birth to a third child in 1919. The child died three months later which led a grieving Fred Archer to plant two trees in their honour between Bagot and MacGregor, one of which was damaged during highway construction… the other further flourishing into what is known today to so many as the halfway tree.
It’s a moving story that speaks to new meaning for many to one of the province’s foremost landmarks and my natural inclination is to want to dig deeper to understand further. The text that’s circulating is signed as coming from “The descendants of Mr. Archer” and first appeared as a post way back in 2011. I was able to verify via Manitoba Vital Stats that a Catherine Pearce did in fact marry a Frederick Archer in Winnipeg 1912. Census records do also back that they resided with children Sidney and George in 1916 and that by 1921 the household in Rossendale (just South of Bagot) was comprised of Fred and two sons.
I’ve since connected with an area history aficionado that received essentially the same account from a granddaughter of Mr Archer, adding that Catherine Archer’s passing was in March of 1919 and narrowing further the window when the tree would’ve been planted. After making this post I later connected with a grandson who recalls hearing the story as far back as the late 1950's as a young boy.
It was previously quoted in a TV news story that a totally different man planted the tree almost 40 years earlier, though that is now believed to have likely not been the case. I'm not a historian and won't pretend to be. Perhaps one looking at through contrarian eyes would look for further litmus test to fully document the story's place in history books but I must say that the thought will change what I see the next time I make the 200km trek East.
Between having its own song and being marked on Google maps, the tree that’s the subject of the story seems to be more commonly referred to online as the halfway tree. The Manitoba Historical Society however has published info that speaks to the fact that some also consider the Willow tree on the North side of the highway in the RM of Portage la Prairie to be the halfway tree. For those interested in the history of both trees the link is:
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/sites/halfwaytree.shtml
Photo credit: Weiming Zhao painting, 2017
Updated March 19, 11:10am: Added reference to information from Fred Archer's grandson