Winnipeg was Canada's first important city in the west and was the supply point for other prairie cities like Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, and even far-off Vancouver. It exploded from a village of 2,700 people in 1877 to a fully modern metropolis of 100,000 in just thirty years and by then had a university, newspapers, publishing firms, a major theatre, and a vibrant mass of immigrants who flooded in to open up the West.

Growing Winnipeg was served with paddle-wheelers on the Red River, Red River ox carts, a Canadian-owned railway to St. Paul, Minnesota, and finally the CPR linking Montreal with the west coast.

A Winnipeg Album is a pictorial impression of Winnipeg's colourful, dramatic, and relatively brief history, compiled and with commentary by John David Hamilton and Bonnie Dickie. Over one hundred stunning black-and-white photographs record the early days of the city and trace some of the dramatic events that made Winnipeg "Canada's Chicago."