Life’s a beach in Gimli, Manitoba’s ‘pearl of the Prairies’

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It’s a little after 7 a.m., and Martial Gauthier has already kicked off his shoes. His feet and fishing rod lean against a concrete seawall running along the Gimli pier.
The shoreline of this unincorporated town in Manitoba’s Interlake Region is his, and many others’, happy place. Some weekends, as many as 30,000 visitors flood Gimli’s waterfront. “I’ve always fished here, even when I was a kid, usually right in the corner where that guy is,” he says, pointing to a man a few metres to the north who has already reeled in his first walleye of the morning. “He got here at 5:30, and I was too late.”

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caption: Sigtryggur Jónasson – at far left in 1925, the 50th anniversary of Gimli’s founding – is remembered today as the ‘Father of New Iceland’ for bringing nearly 20,000 people from the Nordic island to the Prairies.
credit: Courtesy of the New Iceland Heritage Museum
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The 250 Icelandic settlers who founded Gimli in 1875 were also late arrivals. Winter was closing in, so they diverted from their intended destination of Whitemud River, landing instead on a sandy beach some 90 kilometres north of Winnipeg, soon to be New Iceland’s beating heart.

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caption: Gimli, once established, would be a haven for generations of Icelandic Canadians in the Interlake area.
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The settlement survived its first winter with the assistance of John Ramsay, an Indigenous man, who, despite losing his wife and three children to smallpox the following year, continued to help the newcomers adjust to life in Manitoba.
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caption-1: Between fishing seasons, mornings are quiet in Gimli’s harbour, which serves what may be the largest commercial fishery in Western Canada. About 338,000 kilograms of walleye, whitefish, goldeye, northern pike, white suckers, sauger and cisco were landed there last year.
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caption-2: Chris Kristjanson, right, is a fourth-generation fisher. His father, Robert Kristjanson, still heads out on the water at age 92. Their boat, the Lady Roberta, stays in dry dock until the fishery reopens in the fall.
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Modern Gimli, population 2,345, continues to attract newcomers to its sandy shores, along with day-trippers, anglers, and commercial harvesters.
“It’s the pearl of the Prairies,” says Chris Kristjanson, a 47-year fishing-industry veteran.
However, as Lake Winnipeg warms in mid-July and August, the large local fishery closes and most boats go into dry dock. Sun-seekers arrive in their wake, trickling in over the morning hours, then drifting home again as the light wanes.
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Amelia Anonuevo discovered Gimli Beach in the mid-1980s, not long after emigrating from the Philippines. Watching over a small barbecue with her sister on a recent Saturday, the 73-year-old recounted how it immediately reminded her of home.
“We would have a lot of family picnics then,” she said. “It’s a Filipino way of getting together and having fun, having relaxation, of course, with the family … and we have the same thing here.”
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By mid-afternoon, picnickers fill a shady grass strip along a walking path and boardwalk running the length of Gimli Beach. The beach volleyball courts are full, and sated beachgoers relax on towels and blankets, while others cool off in the shallow water.
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It’s busy, but not Ontario busy, says Rajdeep Sidhu, who recently moved from Toronto to Winnipeg. “It’s less crowded here compared to Ontario; you get to explore more nature here.”
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Angela Huot fell in love with the Gimli Seawall Gallery, a collection of murals undertaken by the local art club, while visiting with her children in the 1990s. Today, she works to restore them.
“You know how I explain this place? It’s kinda like the Murder She Wrote show from way back, with Angela Lansbury and her little town on TV that we watched growing up. It’s almost like Maine or somewhere on the East Coast,” she said.
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As dusk falls, locals and tourists gather around a giant screen hung from scaffolding erected a few metres into the lake for an outdoor movie night, part of the Gimli International Film Festival. It’s one of many events, lovingly facilitated by legions of proud volunteers, that draw visitors to a town that almost wasn’t founded.
“Muskoka has nothing on Gimli,” Ms. Huot said. “I meet people from around the world with a connection here, and it’s wonderful.”
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photo-credit: Portrait by Sanjana Mada
bio: Shannon VanRaes is a Winnipeg-based journalist and photojournalist with deep roots in Southern Ontario, where she grew up living and working on tobacco farms before studying at the University of Toronto. While there’s no topic that doesn’t pique her interest, the intersection of industry, gender and society, particularly agribusiness and social license, often informs her work.
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Photography and story by Shannon VanRaes

Editing by Lisan Jutras

Photo editing by Taehoon Kim

Digital presentation by Evan Annett

Visuals editing by Solana Cain and Liz Sullivan

Interactive design and development by Christopher Manza
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