History
Gimli was founded by a large group of Icelandic settlers who arrived in New Iceland on Lake Winnipeg in the 1870s. Beyond the borders of Manitoba as it was then, this settlement fell within the District of Keewatin, until 1881 when Manitoba was enlarged. In 1876 the community was hit by a severe outbreak of smallpox. Originally organized as a self-administering "Icelandic reserve" directly responsible to Ottawa, the settlers of New Iceland developed a unique constitution of by-laws for local government which remained in effect until they adopted provincial municipal government in 1887. The initial status of New Iceland as a "reserve" remained in effect until 1899.
In the Gimli Glider incident on 23 July 1983, an Air Canada Boeing 767 en route from Montreal to Edmonton ran out of fuel and made an unpowered landing on a decommissioned runway (having been used as a drag strip) at Gimli Industrial Park Airport, a former RCAF base near Gimli with no control tower and no fire trucks available. A reenactment of the incident has aired on Discovery Channel's Mayday series and on Syfy's Urban Legends series.
In December 2002, the town of Gimli was dissolved as a legal entity.
Read more about this topic: Rural Municipality Of Gimli
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