JohnwesleyProutandEva

John Wesley Prout                               Born August 23, 1884
                                                                        Portage La Prairie, Manitoba
                                                                        Died September 26, 1983
                                                                        Winnipeg, Manitoba

                Married February 17,1904 in Portage La Prairie to:

Eva Edna Miller                                       Born July 1, 1882
                                                                         Napanee, Ontario
                                                                         Died January 8, 1945
                                                                         Portage La Prairie, Manitoba

*** John Wesley Prout was the son of Thomas Prout and Emmeline Clark. He was born in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba the night before his parents were to move into their brand new home. While the house was being built they had lived in a small apartment above the stable his father Thomas ran. Ever after John Wesley used to proudly tell people he had been "born in a barn" - and indeed he really had!

John married Eva Miller, a hat maker on February 17, 1904 and they soon started having what was to be a very large family. They ended up having ten children namely: Roy Wesley, Iola Victoria May, Carlyle Melford, Emmaline, John Wilbur, Ellen Thelma, Mable Mary Jane, Ernest Don, Florence Winnifred and Phyllis Lorraine. To support his growing family he drove a horse and buggy into outlying districts of the Portage area selling his father's John Deere equipment to farmers. He was an entrepreneur at heart and tried branching out to make his own fortune.

He was the very first operator of a movie theatre
in Portage. The first show ran to a sold out
audience and was a silent movie set on glass
slides entitled "Lilac Time". The movie was a
1928 romantic World War I airplane aviation
melodrama starring a very young Gary Cooper!
It caused quite a stir in the sleepy population of
the small town and was a silent movie with a
piano accompianist. John went on to operate
three more theaters in Portage -The Princess,
Elite and the Playhouse.

In later years John went into small market
gardens. He acquired a government grant for a
section of land in Amaranth after the First
World War but soon returned to the Portage area
where he ended up buying a small farm. There was an old log cabin that the family moved into and at one time it had been a fur trading fort. John also started a seed store in the town of Portage leaving his wife and children to run the farm.

Every year in the spring the Prout family would have to move off of the farm because the Assiniboine River flooded the outlying areas. They stayed in town with their grandparents until the waters receded and it was safe to return home. Many years later the river would finally be dammed up and the flooding stopped. John's cousin, Tom Weber, was one of the engineers who worked on the dam.

Eva Miller Prout was a kind hearted lady who was well loved by all of her neighbours and friends. She was a hard worker and loved her large family. Her early death in 1945 of pneumonia came as a shock to her family and friends.

After her death, John sold the farm to his son Carlyle but continued to run his seed store in Portage until he sold it in 1958. He still lived on the farm in a tiny log cabin at the back of the property. He spend the later years of his long life travelling and married a lady by the name of Lottie Stevenson (though this did not last long!) Both of them thought the other has money and as it turned out neither of them did! It was not a match made in heaven or anywhere else for that matter and it did not take them long to go their separate ways!

John Wesley Prout died on September 26, 1983
at the grand age of 99. He was laid to rest next to his wife Eva in the Prout Family Plot, Hillside Cemetery, Portage La Prairie, Maniotba.