Audio Transcript

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Welcome to the Royal Saskatchewan museum. Established as the provincial museum in 1906, its mandate, as read by our historical impressionist Barry, was to "secure and preserve natural history specimens, and objects of historical and ethnological interest".

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Now that's what I call a museum mandate! Not only was it the first museum in Saskatchewan, it was the first provincial museum the all of the prairies. Between 1906 in 1945, the museum went on a bit of a journey. It occupied several premises, including the Regina trading company building, the provincial legislative building and the normal school, which is a historic building at the university of Regina.

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During the second World War, the museum's collections, then on display at the normal school, were moved to the General Motors building. This move permitted the normal school to be used for war efforts as it housed the Commonwealth air training plan.

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When the General Motors building was also requisitioned by the government for war purposes, the artifacts were then moved to Pilkington's glass company building. The collections returned to the normal school in 1944, and opened to the public again in 1946. Finally, the provincial government built the building you're looking at now, on the the site of the abandoned Chateau Qu'appelle hotel. If you have some time I highly recommend a visit to the museum.