Our Archives: Preserving More Than 130 Years of Music and Memories

The Manitoba Archives Building

Imagine Winnipeg in 1894. The city was still young, its population was growing rapidly, and six women with a shared love of music began meeting in their homes to perform for one another and to learn more about the composers whose music they loved.

From those modest gatherings grew the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg, now the city’s longest continuously operating musical organization. More than 130 years later, the story of those six women - and of the generations who followed them - is preserved in the WMC archives.

Our archives are much more than a collection of old papers. They are the memory of our Club.

Within them are programs, photographs, minutes, correspondence, newspaper clippings and other records that tell the story of an organization that has remained remarkably resilient through more than a century of change. By 1907, membership had grown to an astonishing 430 members, and in 1911 the Club was formally incorporated.

Over the decades, WMC brought to Winnipeg musicians whose names would become legendary. Sergei Rachmaninoff, Glenn Gould, Teresa Stratas, Maureen Forrester and Anton Kuerti are among the celebrated artists connected with our concert history. In more recent years, WMC audiences have heard artists including James Ehnes, Jasper Wood, the Chooi Brothers and Kerson Leong.

But perhaps one of the most important chapters in our history is the Club’s enduring commitment to young musicians.

The WMC awarded its first scholarship in 1915, beginning a tradition that continues more than a century later. Today, scholarships, performance opportunities and the biennial WMC McLellan Competition for Solo Performance with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra continue the vision established by generations of WMC members: to encourage emerging musicians and help them take the next steps in their careers.

The archives also remind us that WMC has endured difficult times. The Club continued through two World Wars, the Great Depression and more than one pandemic. Through it all, music—and the community created around it—continued.

That history belongs not only to the Women’s Musical Club, but also to Winnipeg and Manitoba’s broader cultural heritage.

Thanks to the dedication of those who have preserved our records over many decades, we are able to look back and discover the personalities, performances, traditions and sometimes delightful little stories that shaped our Club. Many of these treasures have been brought to life through the “Notes from the Past” articles on the WMC website, reminding us that history is not simply a collection of dates - it is made up of people.

In 2024, when WMC celebrated its 130th anniversary, we celebrated something quite extraordinary: an organization begun by six music-loving women in a young prairie city had not merely survived - it had flourished.

Today, every concert presented, every scholarship awarded, every young musician encouraged and every volunteer who gives their time becomes another page in that continuing story.

Our archives preserve where we have been.

Our music carries us forward.

And together, they tell the remarkable story of the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg.

- submitted by Joanne Pearson, Chair of Archives 

Pictures to come!