Manitoba is a province of Canada at the longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's fifth-most populous province, with an estimated population of 1,503,865 as of 2026. Manitoba is bordered by Nunavut and the Northwest Territories to the north, Hudson Bay to the northeast, Ontario to the east, the US states of North Dakota and Minnesota to the south, and Saskatchewan to the west. The province has a widely varied landscape, from arctic tundra and the Hudson Bay coastline in the north to dense boreal forest, large freshwater lakes, and prairie grassland in the central and southern regions. Its capital and largest city is Winnipeg.
Indigenous peoples have inhabited what is now Manitoba for approximately 10,000 years. In the early 17th century, English and French fur traders began arriving in the area and establishing settlements. England secured control of the region in 1670, creating a territory named Rupert's Land under the administration of the Hudson's Bay Company. Rupert's Land, which included all of present-day Manitoba, grew and evolved from 1670 until 1869 with significant settlements of Indigenous and Métis people in the Red River Colony. Deep disagreements over self-determination during negotiations to transfer Rupert's Land to Canada in 1869 led to an armed resistance known as the Red River Rebellion, led by Louis Riel against the Canadian government. Subsequent negotiations resulted in Manitoba becoming the fifth province to join Canadian Confederation, when the Parliament of Canada passed the Manitoba Act on 15 July 1870.
Manitoba has a diversified market economy led by manufacturing, natural resources, and agribusiness. The province maintains an established Francophone presence, with French holding official legislative and judicial status in Manitoba alongside the majority English language. Winnipeg is the dominant economic, political, and cultural centre, with the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region encompassing nearly two-thirds of the provincial population. As the province's primary hub, the city hosts the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and Manitoba Court of Appeal, four of the province's five universities, all of its professional sports teams, Winnipeg Richardson International Airport, and CFB Winnipeg/Canadian NORAD headquarters. Outside of the capital region, secondary economic centres in Manitoba include Brandon, Steinbach, and Thompson.
The name Manitoba possibly derives from either Cree manitou-wapow or Ojibwe manidoobaa, both meaning 'straits of Manitou, the Great Spirit'. Alternatively, it may be from the Assiniboine minnetoba, meaning 'Lake of the Prairie' (the lake was known to French explorers as Lac des Prairies). The name was chosen by Thomas Spence for the new republic he proposed for the area south of the lake. Métis leader Louis Riel preferred the name over the proposed alternative of "Assiniboia". It was accepted in Ottawa under the Manitoba Act, 1870.
Indigenous societies and European settlement
Modern-day Manitoba was inhabited by the First Nations people shortly after the last ice age glaciers retreated in the southwest about 10,000 years ago; the first exposed land was the Turtle Mountain area. The Ojibwe, Cree, Dene, Sioux, Mandan, and Assiniboine peoples founded settlements, and other tribes entered the area to trade. In Northern Manitoba, quartz was mined to make arrowheads. The first farming in Manitoba was along the Red River, where corn and other seed crops were planted before contact with Europeans.
In 1611, Henry Hudson was one of the first Europeans to sail into what is now known as Hudson Bay, where he and some loyal crewmembers were marooned by mutineers. Thomas Button travelled this area in 1612 in an unsuccessful attempt to find and rescue Hudson. When the British ship Nonsuch sailed into Hudson Bay in 1668–1669, she became the first trading vessel to reach the area; that voyage led to the formation of the Hudson's Bay Company, to which the British government gave absolute control of the entire Hudson Bay watershed. This watershed was named Rupert's Land, after Prince Rupert, who helped to subsidize the Hudson's Bay Company. York Factory was founded in 1684 after the original fort of the Hudson's Bay Company, Fort Nelson (built in 1682), was destroyed by rival French traders.
Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, visited the Red River Valley in the 1730s to help open the area for French exploration and trade. As French explorers entered the area, a Montreal-based company, the North West Company, began trading with the local Indigenous people. Both the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company built fur-trading forts; the two companies competed in southern Manitoba, occasionally resulting in violence, until they merged in 1821 (the Hudson's Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg preserve the history of this era).
Great Britain secured the territory in 1763 after their victory over France in the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War, better known as the French and Indian War in North America, lasting from 1754 to 1763. The founding of the first agricultural community and settlements, the Selkirk Concession, by Lord Selkirk in 1812 led to conflict between British colonists and the Métis. Twenty colonists, including the governor, and one Métis were killed in the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816.
Rupert's Land was ceded to Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1869 and incorporated into the Northwest Territories; a lack of attention to Métis concerns caused Métis leader Louis Riel to establish a local provisional government which formed into the Convention of Forty and the subsequent elected Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia on 9 March 1870. This assembly subsequently sent three delegates to Ottawa to negotiate with the Canadian government. This resulted in the Manitoba Act and that province's entry into Confederation. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald introduced the Manitoba Act in the House of Commons of Canada, the bill was given Royal Assent and Manitoba was brought into Canada as a province in 1870. Louis Riel was pursued by British army officer Garnet Wolseley because of the rebellion, and Riel fled into exile. The Canadian government blocked the Métis' attempts to obtain land promised to them as part of Manitoba's entry into confederation. Facing racism from the new flood of white settlers from Ontario, large numbers of Métis moved to what would become Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Numbered Treaties were signed in the late 19th century with the chiefs of First Nations that lived in the area. They made specific promises of land for every family. As a result, a reserve system was established under the jurisdiction of the federal government. The prescribed amount of land promised to the native peoples was not always given; this led Indigenous groups to assert rights to the land through land claims, many of which are still ongoing.
The original province of Manitoba was a square one-eighteenth of its current size, and was known colloquially as the "postage stamp province". Its borders were expanded in 1881, taking land from the Northwest Territories and the District of Keewatin, but Ontario claimed a large portion of the land; the disputed portion was awarded to Ontario in 1889. Manitoba grew to its current size in 1912, absorbing land from the Northwest Territories to reach 60°N, uniform with the northern reach of its western neighbours Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.
The Manitoba Schools Question showed the deep divergence of cultural values in the territory. The Catholic Franco-Manitobans had been guaranteed a state-supported separate school system in the original constitution of Manitoba, but a grassroots political movement among English Protestants from 1888 to 1890 demanded the end of French schools. In 1890, the Manitoba legislature passed a law removing funding for French Catholic schools. The French Catholic minority asked the federal government for support; however, the Orange Order and other anti-Catholic forces mobilized nationwide to oppose them. The federal Conservatives proposed remedial legislation to override Manitoba, but they were blocked by the Liberals, led by Wilfrid Laurier. Once elected Prime Minister in 1896, Laurier implemented a compromise stating Catholics in Manitoba could have their own religious instruction for 30 minutes at the end of the day if there were enough students to warrant it, implemented on a school-by-school basis.