Discussions

The Designation Authority is The City of Brandon and the Current Owner’s are Murray & Audrey Martin.  
 
Mr. Benjamin Jones Hales 2½ story house at Lot 2, Plan 38537 was built in 1912 and was then the residence of Mr. Benjamin James.  
 
Mr. B. J. Hales was born in Peterborough, Ontario in November 1868, and married Elizabeth Lewis, (1864 – 1943). He died in 1945, and they are both buried in Brandon Cemetery. He had one Daughter, Marion Margaret Hales Doig (1902-1961). She is also buried in the Brandon Cemetery.  
 
Mr. Hales was the first principal of the Brandon Normal School, one of four Normal schools built in Manitoba devoted to teacher training.  
 
Mr. Hales was also an educator, author and naturalist. He was concerned about the preservation of wildlife, and between the 1880’s and 1932 assembled examples in his collection of over 300 Manitoba species.  
 
He founded the B. J. Hales Museum of Natural History, which became permanently established at Brandon University in 1965, but has recently been boxed up and returned to the Brandon School Division, the legal owners, and stored at Earl Oxford School.  
 
Educated as a lawyer and a teacher, Mr. Hales served as an alderman from 1920 to 1923, and Chairman of the City of Brandon Parks Board for 19 years.  
 
Mr. Hales studied the flora and fauna of Manitoba, and through his personal endeavors, a tree of every species that will grow in Manitoba was planted on the Normal School grounds.  
 
Hidden behind a wall of towering trees, this brick structure on Tenth Street is not specifically representative of any single architectural style, but does showcase a number of interesting architectural features such as the two dormer windows on the second floor bound by the connected eyebrows, the steep hipped roof, and a fairly unique canted bay window, side lights, and display windows.  
 
The Lot is located directly north of the Police Station, and is partially bordered by a fieldstone wall with a large fieldstone fireplace built into the southern wall of the property.  
 
The property’s wild grape arbor, wild crabapples, Manitoba maples, elms, ferns, honeysuckle, mountain ash and huge basswood trees are legacies of B. J. Hales’ residency.  
 
Note #1: In 1942 the Militia asked city council for three additional city Blocks upon which they could erect new Army establishments.  
 
They requested an area that embraced all lands bounded by Tenth and Thirteenth Streets, Hill and Brandon Avenues.  
 
The move would absorb the Normal School, and the houses of Mr. Walter Hutchins, and Mr. B. J. Hales, but the Board of Trade members loudly protested the closure of the education center, causing city hall to reserve its decision.  
 
Note #2: The Normal School at 1129 Queens Avenue is now known as the Ag. Center.  
 
http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/hrb/prov/p018.html  
 
Source: City of Brandon. Brandon a City by G. F. Barker.  
 
http://flinflon.brandonu.ca/bjhales/