John Duncan Dewar was born on 7 March 1932 in Sexsmith, Alberta. Graduating with a Bachelor of Education in Physical Education from the University of Alberta in 1955 he went on to earn a Master of Arts from the University of Ohio in 1960 and a Doctor of Education from the Florida State University in 1965. A former member of the University of Alberta Golden Bears basketball team, Dewar accepted the position of Athletic Director and Coach at the University of Saskatchewan for the 1960-61 academic year. He next moved to the University of Alberta, Calgary, where he was Assistant Professor of Physical Education, Men's Athletic Coordinator and Basketball Coach from 1961 until 1967. The next two years found him serving as Associate Professor and Director of Physical Education at St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia. In 1969 Dr. Dewar joined the faculty of Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario. Over the next eight years he held a variety of academic and administrative positions, including: Full Professor and Dean of the Division of Physical Education, Associate Dean of Professional Schools, Acting Director of the School of Social Work, Head Administor of the School of Nursing and Acting Director of the School of Commerce. In 1977 Dewar returned to the University of Saskatchewan as Professor and Dean of the College of Physical Education. He remained Dean until 1986 and continued on faculty as Full Professor until his retirement in 1996, becoming Professor Emeritus. The bulk of Dr. Dewar's scholarly work relates to the study of sports history. Research and publications include works dealing with Dr. James Naismith, the Edmonton Grads, the Olympics, Indigenous athletes and athletics and residential schools. Dewar was member of several local, national and international societies and organizations and served on the editorial board or as a reader for several Saskatchewan sports history groups.

The Department of Family Medicine came in existence in 1971 under the Deans Dr. John Gutelius (1970-1973) and Dr. Robert Murray (1973-1983). Dr. Louis Christ was the first Head of the Department of Family Medicine from 1971-1977. He later joined the Department of Geriatric Medicine. Dr. Christ died on 9 February 1983 in Saskatoon.

Walter Charles Murray, first president of the University of Saskatchewan, was born in Kings County, New Brunswick, in 1866 and received his BA with honours in 1886 from the University of New Brunswick. Having won the Gilchrist Scholarship for Canada, for continued studies overseas, he attended the University of Berlin and the University of Edinburgh, where he received his MA with first class honours in 1891. Later that year he joined faculty at the University of New Brunswick as Professor of Philosophy and Economics. In 1892 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy and lecturer in Education at Dalhousie, where he remained until joining the University of Saskatchewan as president in 1908. Murray served as president for 26 years, retiring in 1937. Murray was successful in building a progressive university of high standards with a beautiful campus. His own work was in education and education history, but he was also a supporter of art and music. Murray served on numerous councils and commissions, including the National Research Council from 1916-1932. Murray married Christina Cameron (1866-1947), born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in 1895. They had three daughters: Christina Cameron Murray, Lucy Hunter Murray and Jean Elizabeth Murray. Murray died in Saskatoon in 1945. The city of Saskatoon honours Murray with several landmarks: "Murray Place" in the Dundonald area; Walter Murray Collegiate Institute, opened in 1965 and located near Market Mall; the Murray Building on the University of Saskatchewan campus; and President Murray Park, located in the Varsity View neighbourhood.

Eugene Alfred Forsey PC CC FRSC (1904–1991) served in the Senate of Canada from 1970 to 1979 and was considered to be one of Canada's foremost constitutional experts.

General Henry Duncan Graham "Harry" Crerar CH, CB, DSO, CD, PC (1888 -1965) was a senior officer of the Canadian Army who became the country's leading field commander in World War II, where he commanded the First Canadian Army.

In the spring of 1910, when the sod was turned on the site of the present College Building, there was on the prairie but one clump of half a dozen poplars. The university of today, large, complex, handsome, is the result of human imagination – and money and work and the will to make it happen. To remember the prairie before the building began is a good way to recognize the importance of human agency in remaking our world. This essay is a brief account of the decisions that led to the building of the university of today.

Conway James Skelly was born in Ontario in 1922. He graduated from the School of Agriculture in 1947. Skelly died in 1949.

Alfred Lewis (Lew) Parres was born 19 February 1915. He was a juvenile and junior hockey star with the Nutana Athletic Club in Saskatoon. He also excelled at track and field, winning many awards. In 1932 his brother Jim entered Geological Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan with Lew following in 1934. Lew played hockey for the Huskies and after graduation could have had a career in hockey but chose the mining business instead. Parres was a staunch Northerner. He knew the North and loved the North. His vision in proposing a new Northern Province (which he called Precambria) was to keep the wealth (especially the tremendous mineral wealth) of the North in the North working to improve the lives of Northerners. His dream was to combine Northern Manitoba and Northern Saskatchewan and a small piece of Northern Alberta into one entity. His plan was backed by the local Chamber of Commerce in the early 1950s and made headlines across western Canada.

Frances McAusland was born in Melfort, Saskatchewan, daughter of Clarance McAusland and Muriel Hadden. Frances completed her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1969. She married Arthur Westlund in 1970 and moved to his farm at Brownlee. During the winter months in the early 1970s, Frances and Arthur lived in Saskatoon. Frances worked at the University of Saskatchewan Library during the winter. In 1985, they moved to the Melfort area to continue farming on the McAusland family farm with Clarance McAusland.

The Saskatchewan AIDS Network (SAN) was a coalition of community-based organizations dedicated to responding to HIV/AIDS at the provincial level through the development and maintenance of community partnerships. At the time of its formation in 1994, the founders believed that an organization was needed to facilitate co-operation and communication on a province-wide basis to deal with the HIV/AIDS crisis.

SAN was designed as a province-wide coalition in order to ensure that the voices of rural communities would be included and that the independent efforts of member organizations would contribute to collective goals. SAN had numerous objectives including: to support other service organizations and communities in their efforts to advocate for social change; to make HIV/AIDS a higher health priority for the general public in Saskatchewan; to develop more effective relationships with all levels of government and with other health and social justice coalitions; to provide opportunities for members to network, share information, build skills, and develop partnerships with one another; and to act as a resource centre for its members by providing access to up-to-date information, hard-to-find documents, and other HIV/AIDS-related resources.

The Board of Directors of SAN consisted of one representative from each member group of SAN. The SAN Steering Committee was responsible for the day to day operations of the coalition, for tasks on a provincial level (such as lobbying Ministers or building coalitions with other provincial groups), and for developing resource materials that would be helpful for member organizations. SAN membership was open to any Saskatchewan non-governmental organization that was dedicated to addressing HIV/AIDS in its organizational mandate. By the early 2000s, SAN was having difficulty meeting its mandate so it was dissolved in February 2003.

The story of National Grain is the story of the Peavey family in Canada. When western Canada was being settled, Frank Peavey had already established an empire of grain elevators across the American West, as well as lake shipping, rail cars and terminals on the Great Lakes and the West Coast. After completing the Canadian Northern Railway between Edmonton and Port Arthur, William Mackenzie and Donald Mann made a rail car available to American grain interests to view the west and select sites for new elevators; Frank Peavey's sons-in-law Frank Heffelfinger and Frederick Wells, along with Augustus Searle and Peavey executives E. Kneeland and Robert Evans, made the tour. After the Winnipeg Grain Exchange had introduced a wheat futures contract, allowing for hedging grain purchases, Heffelfinger and Wells proceeded to form the British America Elevator Company in 1906, with Mackenzie and Mann holding 40% of the capital stock. The agreement was to construct fifty new elevators on northern lines. By 1911, under Kneeland's leadership British America had 100 elevators - most of them in Saskatchewan.

A second company, the Security Elevator Company Ltd. was formed to build elevators on the newly constructed Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (today part of Canadian National Railway). A third company, the National Grain Elevator Company, was formed in 1909 to operate elevators on both Canadian Pacific and Northern lines; in the same year Peavey purchased the Northern Elevator Company, the first line company to be established in the west (in 1893). In 1929 the close association between the Peavey interests and Augustus Searle was ended when the two parties agreed through an exchange of shares to divest their joint interests; Searle merged his grain interests into the new Searle Grain Company. In 1940 the Peavey companies (British America, Northern, National, and Grand Trunk Pacific Elevator) were merged to form National Grain Company Limited, with George Heffelfinger, son of Frank Heffelfinger, as president. The new company had close to 400 elevators.

National Grain did not participate in direct overseas selling. An opportunity arose in the late 1960s, when the McCabe Grain Company was dispersed, to acquire the expertise needed to trade internationally. In 1967 United Grain Growers purchased the McCabe elevators; Peavey interests purchased the feed and seed components. The McCabe company still existed with its experienced merchandising staff, but had no physical facilities. In 1971 Heffelfinger and McCabe merged their interests to form National Grain Ltd., George Heffelfinger remaining president. Shortly after this merger the Peavey interests decided to reduce their dependence on commodities and began to seek a buyer for their Canadian grain and feed operations. Cargill Grain, already a massive diversified grain company located primarily in the United States, became the buyer: National Grain Ltd. was amalgamated with a Cargill Canadian subsidiary on January 1, 1975, to become Cargill Grain Company Ltd. National Feed and Livestock Ltd. became Cargill Nutrena Feeds Ltd.

Gary Storey

Charles Dunning was born July 31, 1885, in Leicestershire, England. He came to Canada to farm in 1902 when he was 16, penniless, with little formal education, and no knowledge of agriculture. He spent a year working as a farm labourer around Yorkton before establishing a homestead near Beaverdale and eventually formed a Farming partnership with his father. He married Ada Rowlatt in 1913 and they had two children.

Dunning was disillusioned with the treatment of farmers and became involved with the Territorial Grain Growers Association, and later with the Saskatchewan Grain Growers Association (SGGA) local. A natural speaker, Dunning was elected district director at the 1910 SGGA convention in Prince Albert and vice-president in 1911. He was charged with investigating the country elevator system in Saskatchewan and different grain-handling options to remedy faults in the current system. His report led to the establishment of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company. Dunning was appointed to the board of directors of the co-op and was selected its first general manager. Within four years the co-op became the largest grain-handling company in the world. By 1916, the co-op had built 230 elevators and handled over 28 million bushels of various crops. During this time Dunning served on two Royal Commissions dealing with Saskatchewan agriculture. The Grain Market Commission had little lasting influence but the Agricultural Credit Commission eventually led to government experiments in farm credit during Dunning's later political career.

In 1916 Premier Walter Scott was suffering from ill health and his government was under siege in a corruption scandal. Scott resigned and Regina MP William Martin took over as Premier. He asked Dunning to come into government as Provincial Treasurer for his business expertise and to bolster the Liberal Party's ties to the farm movement. Dunning won a by-election in the constituency of Kinistino by acclamation. In 1919, he was given added responsibility for the Department of Agriculture and he expanded the duties and responsibilities of the Labour Bureau. He used the bureau, created in 1911, to expand Saskatchewan's resource base. Dunning promoted the first commercial extraction of sodium sulfate reserves, established the first experimental Coal plant near Estevan, and undertook the first extensive prospecting for Mineral Resources in northern Saskatchewan.

The Saskatchewan Liberals officially severed ties with the unpopular federal party to avoid the creation of a farmers' party in Saskatchewan. Premier Martin later openly supported federal Liberal candidates in the 1921 federal election, upsetting many in the farmers' movement. A senior Minister resigned and with the SGGA openly discussing the option of forming a third party, Martin's authority was undermined and he resigned. The Liberals chose Dunning as Premier to reduce agrarian unrest. Dunning met with the SGGA directly to convince them that he still represented farmers and was not Prime Minister Mackenzie King's pawn. A series of provincial by-elections resulted in Liberal victories over independent progressive candidates. In 1924 the SGGA rescinded their call for a new farmers' party and the Liberals won the 1925 election. As the federal Progressive Party began to wane, Dunning became more actively involved in federal politics and was eventually able to re-establish formal ties between the provincial and federal levels of the Liberal party.

As Premier, Dunning's main concern was the falling price of Wheat due to the post-war depression. He supported farmers in their opposition to the abolishment of the Canadian Wheat Board by the federal government and worked for its reestablishment. Dunning tentatively supported the idea of voluntary pooling. After a rough start, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool was established in 1924. The Wheat Pool then sought to buy the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company, a move that was supported by Dunning, who passed legislation allowing the sale to take place. This proved to be his last act as Premier.

Dunning was invited to become Saskatchewan's representative in the federal Cabinet and won a by-election in Regina in March 1926. The successive Liberal and Conservative minority governments fell and in September 1926 Dunning was re-elected in the general election. Dunning was appointed Minister of Railways and Canals in the Liberal majority government. He was instrumental in the construction of the Hudson's Bay Railway with Churchill as its terminus. In 1929, he was promoted to Minister of Finance until the Liberal defeat in 1930. Dunning suffered a personal defeat in Regina.

In 1930 Dunning returned to the business world until Prime Minster King pressured him to return to government when the Conservatives lost the 1935 election. The MP for Queen's County, PEI resigned, allowing Dunning easy access to the House of Commons. Dunning reassumed his post as Minister of Finance. In 1938, he suffered a heart attack; although his actions were severely limited, he struggled to continue in his post, but finally resigned in July 1939. He went to England to recuperate but returned to Canada just before World War II.

Dunning was appointed chair of the National War Loans Committee, which raised money for the war effort. He also was named chair of Allied Supplies Limited, the company established by the federal government to administer and bolster production of munitions and explosives for the British government. He was appointed chancellor of Queen's University and continued at this post until his death. After the war Dunning continued his connection with the business community, serving on the board of directors of several companies. Although he had interests in several Saskatchewan farms, Dunning retired to Montreal. He usually returned to Regina once a year until his death. He died October 1, 1958.

During World War I, it became clear that a coordinated approach was needed to deal with ill and injured soldiers. On February 21, 1918, the Department of Civil Re-establishment was created for that purpose. Subsequently, on June 11, 1928, the Government for Canada created the Department of Pensions and National Health, which took over responsibility for caring for ill and injured soldiers[2] Following World War II, the volume of soldiers returning home made it clear that the Government of Canada would require a department dedicated entirely to serving ill and injured veterans. Consequently, in 1944 Prime Minister Mackenzie King's government passed a motion that officially created the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Canada operated a benefits program similar to the American G.I. Bill for its World War II veterans, with a strong economic impact similar to the American case.[3] A war veteran's eligibility for certain benefits depended on the veteran's "overseas" status, defined by Veterans Affairs as having served at least two miles offshore from Canada. In the Second World War (1939–45) Canada did not yet include Newfoundland, which became a Canadian province in 1949. Thus, World War I and World War II veterans who served in Newfoundland (with Royal Newfoundland Regiment and Newfoundland Royal Naval Reserve) are considered by Veterans Affairs to be "overseas veterans" (and as such may be referred to the British Service Personnel and Veterans Agency).

In the late 1970s, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau undertook an initiative to decentralize government away from Ottawa.[citation needed] He and his Minister of Veterans Affairs, Daniel J. MacDonald (Member of Parliament for Cardigan) devised the plan to move the headquarters of the Department of Veterans Affairs from Ottawa to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The department's head office has been located in the Daniel J. MacDonald Building in PEI's capital since 1980. In the early 21st century, a second building two blocks from the DJM, the Jean Canfield Building, was constructed to house Veterans Affairs and other federal government offices. The department has become a major economic contributor to PEI, and has had an important impact on Charlottetown's cultural landscape. Veterans Affairs Canada is the only major federal department whose headquarters is located outside of Ottawa.