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College, Normal School and Darke Hall
By 1909, Regina was the capital city of a brand-new province. It was growing
in leaps and bounds from the inhospitable chunk of waterless dirt that had
seemed so unappealing only twenty-seven years before. Now Regina was starting
to look like a capital city. Plans to build a new legislative building were
already underway. An adequate source of water was finally available, and
plans to build proper sewer lines were also underway. Regina had its own
power house and was able to provide electricity to homes and businesses.
Settlers were flooding into southern Saskatchewan to take up homesteads,
and Regina was rapidly becoming a commercial centre in the middle of what
would become known as the “Bread Basket of the World.” All
Regina lacked to make itself a world-class city on a par with Winnipeg
or Toronto was a university.
The provincial government had drawn up plans to build a university. The
University of Saskatchewan, as it would be known, would serve as a bastion
of higher learning in the new province. Cities began to campaign ruthlessly
for the privilege of being the location for the new university. (One apocryphal
story from that time concerns Prince Albert. Supposedly, Prince Albert’s
town founders were given the choice: a university or a jail. Prince Albert
chose the jail – reasoning there would always be a demand for the
services of a jail.) Regina and Saskatoon were the two most likely candidates
for the university. Both cities offered a large chunk of free land for
the project. The President of the University of Saskatchewan, Walter Murray,
favoured Regina because it was the capital city, but the board voted Murray
down. Saskatoon became the new home of the University of Saskatchewan.
Regina’s town founders were devastated.
Then a group of prominent local citizens decided that if the province
would not provide them with a university, they would simply establish
their own university instead. A group of local Methodists persuaded the
Saskatchewan Conference to establish and fund Regina College. Local businessmen,
led by F.N. Darke (who, in 1888, had become Regina’s youngest mayor)
raised money to build an impressive new building for the college. The
City of Regina donated a plot of land, which was later sold to raise more
capital for the building project. Land for the buildings was purchased
from the province of Saskatchewan – ironically, it was the land
where the city jail had once stood.
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Title: Cast of a normal school production
Year: ca. 1910
Retrieval #: CORA-RPL-B-64 |
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Title: New wing of Regina College under
construction.
Year: 1911
Retrieval
#: CORA-A-1484 |
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Title: Regina College under construction
Year:
ca. 1911
Retrieval #: CORA-RPL-B-215 |
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Title: Provincial Normal School under construction
Year: ca. 1913
Retrieval #:
CORA-A-2132 |
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Title: New Normal School, Regina, Saskatchewan
Year: ca. 1914
Retrieval #:
CORA-RPL-A-110 |
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Title: Regina Normal School Spring Term Second
Class Students
Year: 1915
Retrieval
#: CORA-RPL-F-5 |
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Title: Normal School, Regina, Saskatchewan
Year: ca. 1917
Retrieval #:
CORA-RPL-A-726 |
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Title: Provincial Normal School, Regina, Saskatchewan
Year: ca. 1925
Retrieval #:
CORA-A-1218 |
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Title: Interior of Darke Hall
Year:
ca. 1930
Retrieval #: CORA-RPL-B-50 |
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Title: Helen Halloway
Year:
ca. 1931
Retrieval #: CORA-RPL-A-126 |
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Title: Cast of “Bunty Pulls the Strings”
Year: 1932
Retrieval #: CORA-RPL-B-51 |
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Title: Regina in the early years
Date of Creation: ca. 1930.
Clip Scope and Content: Regina College, Normal School and
Darke Hall.
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