R.W. Hardy was a Methodist and later United Church minister, who served congregations in Saskatchewan and British Columbia. He was born in 1890 and spent his childhood in Ontario, before attending the University of Toronto. He was ordained and married in June 1921, in Whitby, Ontario. He moved west and was assigned by the Methodist Church to the hospital in Hafford, Saskatchewan. From 1925 to 1930, Hardy served as a United Church minister in Speers and then Maymont, before transferring to Cranbrook, B.C.

The Provincial Church Union Committee was formed on July 26, 1923, by representatives of the Saskatchewan Methodist Conference and the Presbyterian Synod of Saskatchewan to take preliminary steps to effect Church Union in Saskatchewan. Representatives of the congregational Churches were also invited to be on the committee.

The Cooperating committee of Saskatchewan was formed when representatives of the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches met at Regina, May 2, 1911, in order to facilitate cooperative activity in various localities in Saskatchewan. The formation of this Committee paralleled a similar action taken at the national level by the Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational Churches. After mid-1923, this committee was called the Provincial Committee on Co-operation.

In 1908, the Basis of Union was formulated that would eventually lead to the creation of the United Church of Canada in 1925. Coinciding with this spirit of unity, the first Union church (Presbyterian and Methodist) was set up in Melville, Saskatchewan in 1908, followed a short time later by the church in Frobisher. In 1912, a committee of Union Churches approached the national church courts of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational denominations in order to seek affiliation with the parent churches. This committee formed the nucleus of what would become the General Council of Union Churches of Western Canada. An Advisory Council, with representatives of the Union Churches and the parent churches, was established in 1914 as a means of creating the sought after link between the Union Churches and the parent churches.