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1927: Alexander Campbell, Veteran of the Northwest Resistance
The retirement of Alexander Campbell, Dean of Pharmacy, came “like a
bolt from the blue”1 to President Walter Murray. The Saskatchewan Pharmaceutical Association
had been the first in Canada to request the education of its members be under
the direction of a university,2 and twenty-one students enrolled when the School of Pharmacy was
first established in 1914. By 1921 the
School had become a College. Enrolment
had increased substantially every year; and Campbell, there since the school’s
inception, had taught a majority of the classes even as faculty numbers
increased. The College of Pharmacy as
it existed in 1927 was largely Campbell’s creation. Remarkably, he had joined the University at age 62 – but “no one,” Murray wrote, had “ever
associated age with the active veteran of the rebellion of 1885.”
Indeed, Campbell had been part of the 7th Fusiliers from London,
Ontario, called into active service on 1 April 1885. By the time they had made the trip west the Northwest Resistance
was over: the 7th Fusiliers left for their return journey to Ontario in mid-July
without ever having seen combat.
Campbell had done pencil sketches at the time and later turned these
into watercolours, with a narrative of his service: An Account of the Advances of the 7th Fusiliers of London to aid in the
suppression of the North West Rebellion of 1885.
Following his retirement from the University Campbell moved to
Victoria, where he died in 1943 at the age of 91. The Saskatchewan Pharmaceutical Association established the
Campbell Prize in his honour.
Related Collections | |
College of Pharmacy fonds, RG 2118.
See also: The Northwest Resistance
Images | |
1927a: Self portrait of Campbell. University Library Special Collections, MSS 49 #17.
1927b: Photograph Collection, A-2825.
Sources | |
1.
Greystone, 1927, p.3.
2. The Spectrum, 1921, p.
139.
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