Sir Wilfrid Laurier continued a lengthy tour of western Canada on this date in 1910 and was in Saskatchewan. It fell to him to lay the cornerstone of the University of Saskatchewan in Regina. During his address, he had special praise for those who would study agriculture at the new university.
“Agriculture is not only a work of the hands, but a work of brain. It is an art, and I hope that this study will take a foremost rank in the curriculum. It is the finest of all studies and sciences,” he said. “The necessity of that is very great, for agriculture, which is the chief occupation in this province, is the most ancient of occupations and sciences; and when farmers realize that by education, they can obtain two, three, or four times what their fathers obtained, they will be enthusiastic in the study of agriculture.”
Let a university arise here which may be a worthy disciple of Oxford, Cambridge, and other universities which have done so much for mankind.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.