Early opera houses/town halls played focal roles in developing settlements
Studying the old time opera house’s role in shaping early Saskatchewan communities has been a large part of Ian McWilliams’ life
The years researching his doctoral thesis gave the Moose Jaw scholar a wealth of information on early settlements.
A theatre background had him fascinated by the acts performing in the opera houses. How these buildings and events influenced the social, cultural and community identity really intrigued him.
About 17 Saskatchewan towns built opera houses, often borrowing what were then magnanimous sums of $10,000 to $12,000 from residents in the early 1900s to build the edifices.
“They were ages paying them off. Some were still paying them off after the Second World War.” The opera house “combined a meeting hall, performance space, civic offices, sometimes police and fire, sometimes with main floor storefronts, rented to keep costs low,” says McWilliams.
“It was a place for people to get together and play, and mourn and govern and express — those who were invited in.”
The elaborate structures expressed hopes. “Every little town wanted to build big centres. Everybody guessed they were going to be the size of Chicago. It was all boosterism.”
Prince Albert billed itself as the Gateway to the Klondike gold rush.
Rampant speculation and boosterism reigned. “This is the new happening place. For two or three decades the notion was we will always grow, prices will always go up. If you even try to draw attention to the fact things are cyclical you were anti-progress.”
The attitude created a good sense of community and silenced dissent in a 40-year span when population increased 400 per cent.
“If you were born in 1885 and you see that happening maybe it is pretty easy to convince yourself it’s going to continue happening. It can feed a lot of pioneer community activity…”
Before settlers could pour into the country “the government had to clear the land, create this space as conceptually empty” by putting First Nations people on reserves.
“Once you can make the leap that the people who lived here for thousands of years suddenly aren’t there any more, it’s empty, then it becomes a lot easier to push them away especially if their population seems to go down while yours goes up,” McWilliams said.
Exclusion of First Nations people and other non-British from the communities was widespread. “(Exclusion) will either show up by editorials against certain groups of people but it also could be more subtle – names that show up at the events that happened are the same, pretty white.
“Even little things like the tax roll to council and challenging the tax assessment: the people whose names occasionally showed up on council were first in line to challenge. People who owned businesses would be as successful. Minorities of various kinds wouldn’t even show up to challenge assessments. “How complete that separating aside was for these communities is shocking,” he said.
Opera houses and town halls brought people together with events that built the kind of community settlers wanted. And events literally built the community by raising funds for hospitals.
As a focal point, the hall was put to use to build the community.
“People were writing, directing, producing their own shows.
Throughout these communities there were people who said: ‘you know we need to raise some money for the local agriculture society. I’m going to write a three act play with music for 50 people.’”
And it went fine, was well received.
“You hardly ever see a script of these. That to me was really fascinating to study these scripts” mostly from newspaper reviews.
Reviews noted the performances made references to local politicians and or events. McWilliams hopes one day to write his findings in a
“People recognize the loss of these buildings like the loss of a family member.”
Ian McWilliams
less academic version than the 500-page thesis. Some opera houses like Wolseley have been restored; some like Qu’Appelle are up for sale. “People recognize the loss of these buildings like the loss of a family member.”
He says there is sharp division between residents seeing their restoration as a money pit and residents who recognize it as a kind of community centre. Some Prairie residents don’t have a deep appreciation of how important history of these early structures is going forward.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net