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In June 1874 a soldier named Joseph Michaud, twenty-three years old, stabbed an innocent passer by named James Brown over thirty times.  
 
After going Absent With Out Leave, (AWOL) Mr. Michaud, a Gunner with the Dominion Artillery got into some heavy drinking with some friends, which turned violent.  
 
Mr. Brown stepped into the brawl to assist in breaking it up, and was killed on the spot. Mr. Brown was well known enough in the community that some citizens were talking about performing a lynching, because there was no doubt as who had committed the murder.  
 
The gathering crowd was out smarted by Chief Constable Power because he went to the barracks the next morning, and arrested him. He was hidden in a covered wagon, and transported to the log jail behind the Post Office in Winnipeg.  
 
Mr. Michaud was soon convicted of murder and sentenced to hang in late August 1874.  
 
He was sent to the Provincial prison, which was located in Winnipeg at Main Street and William Avenue.  
 
There was unfortunately a small hitch in the proposed hanging: there was no one available to perform the procedure.  
 
A few people applied for the job, but Winnipeg’s Chief Jack Ingram selected a Hudson’s Bay Company cook named Robert Hodson because he claimed he had been an assistant to the famous English hangman, Calcraft.  
 
The execution was carried out in the prison yard at 8 a.m. and invitations to watch the hanging could be obtained from the Sheriffs office located next door. On August 326th, 1874, Joseph Michaud became the first person executed in Manitoba.  
 
Mr. Hodson terminated the life of Mr. Michaud according to his temporary job description of the day.  
 
While they cut down the body of the prisoner, Mr. Hodson went back to slinging hash and eggs for the fur trading company.  
 
It is known that he occasionally took breaks from cooking bacon, and beans, because he later became the hangman at Battleford after the 1885 North-West Rebellion.  
 
Source:  
 
http://www.members.shaw.ca/canada_legal_history/mb.htm