U of S Archives - The Student Experience

Student Activism: The Larger Sphere

University of Saskatchewan students were not immune from the wider sphere of world events, and have never hesitated to make their opinions known.

Votes for Women

Saskatchewan women won the right to vote on 14 March 1916 – the second province in Canada to extend the franchise.

“This writer has felt strongly for many years that women cannot achieve economic independence until they shall have secured political freedom, and in this respect the West has been far in advance of the rest of Canada.” - The Sheaf, December 1916

 

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Looking Across the City
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Posing in front of the College Building
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Women Graduates, 1917

[tune: “Marching Through Georgia”]
Leap year once again has come to give the girls a show
Custom grants the privilege to each to choose a beau
Or to gain a silken gown if the swain says “no”
Let’s use the right that’s been granted.

 

Chorus: Hurrah! Hurrah for the suffragettes we cheer
Hurrah! Hurrah for women’s wider sphere
So we’ll sing our anthem singing louder every year,
Till women’s rights have been granted.

 

Leap year’s but a foretaste of the power we then shall own
When we wrest from grasping man the vote he wields alone
When we take our rightful place as the power behind the throne
When women’s rights have been granted.

 

Chorus

 

Equal suffrage is our cry our platform lasting peace
Strife shall vanish from the earth and cruel war shall cease
Plenty shall adorn the land, prosperity increase
When women’s rights have been granted.

 

Chorus

    - Ladies Night at the “Lit,” 25 February 1916

Sound file: MP3 (1.19MB) or WAV (12.9 MB)



1918 Flu Epidemic

Despite being uniquely self-sufficient, the quarantined campus could not completely insulate itself against the world-wide influenza epidemic of 1918. Students tried to make light of the situation, but it was grave: by the end of the epidemic three students and four employees had died.

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Funeral Procession for Student William Hamilton


Prize Parody, November 26
to the tune of “Way Down Upon the Swanee River”


Way up upon the Varsity campus
Nine days we’ve been:
We’re trying hard to keep the “flu” out,
But it keeps us in.

 

Chorus: All the “U” is sad and dreary;
Fields are bare and brown.
Say, Kids! We find it mighty weary,
But wait till we get down town!

Nine days without a moving picture
Or eats at Golfs:
We never see a living creature
But ourselves and profs.


Chorus


    - The Sheaf, 1918

 

The Great Depression

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No End in Sight
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The On-to-Ottawa Trek and the Regina Riots
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"Take Another Ride, Buddy"



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