Headingley (sometimes spelled Headingly) is a rural municipality in Manitoba, Canada. It is located directly west of Winnipeg and had a population of 3,579 people as of the 2016 census. The Trans-Canada Highway and the Assiniboine River run through the municipality. The unincorporated community of Headingley is situated within the municipality along Manitoba Provincial Road 334 near the Trans-Canada Highway. The municipality takes its name from the suburb of Headingley in the city of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England. History The first permanent European residents of the present-day Headingley area are figured to have been Oliver Gowler (1814-1865) and his wife, Mary (Nee Lady Neville Braybrooke) (1816-1878), who came to Canada together in the fall of 1836, hired by the Hudson ’s Bay Company to work on their experimental farm at Red River. First owning a farm in Fort Garry in 1846, the Gowlers fled westward after the 1852 Red River flood, whereupon they begun the first farm on Headingley soil. There, Oliver Gowler eventually became one of the most successful early farmers in what would become western Canada. James Cunningham, a member of Manitoba’s first Legislature (1870), also arrived in the area in 1853 following the 1852 flood. In November 1852, Reverend Griffith Owen Corbett was sent from England and was tasked with organizing a new parish west of the Parish of St. James, itself created in 1850. Corbett established the parish of Headingley, naming it after his sponsoring parish of the same name in Leeds, England, and immediately built a house where he conducted services. In 1869, the area saw its first rope ferry, established at the Headingley Grand Passage. In the late 1860s, Reverend George Young, the first Methodist missionary in Red River, began to visit Headingley regularly. Following the passing of the federal Manitoba Act on 12 May 1870, which created the Province of Manitoba, provincial elections were held in November that year, upon which John Taylor was declared the first M.L.A of Headingley, with a majority of one vote—though the new Attorney General appointed James Cunningham to the seat on a "technicality." At this time, the area was divided, with north Headingley belonging to the Rural Municipality of Assiniboia and south Headingley to the RM of Charleswood. In November 1904, telegraph service was extended to Headingley, but were still missing modern conveniences of a streetcar and voice telephone service. In 1911, Headingley received its first