The tents of "Canvas Town" with Immigration Hall in the background.
HOMEtown Reflections
Jeff O’Brien
The barr colonists
Saskatoon's first tourists Photo Credit: Local History Room - Saskatoon Public Library - LH 2780
Tourism has always been hugely important to Saskatoon, even in 1903, when the Barr Colonists—the first really big tour group to hit the City of Bridges—got off the train here on their way to Lloydminster. They only stayed here a few days, but Saskatoon would never be the same again.
In 1902, Isaac Barr, an Ontario-born, Anglican minister living in England, conceived of a scheme to lead a party from England to plant the flag of Britain at the very edge of the Empire, in the far Canadian west. Barr called his new colony “Britannia” and he spoke passionately of a land of empty spaces
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and endless riches, where the government was giving away hundreds of acres for the price of a ten-dollar filing fee, but which was starting to fill with immigrants from America and Central Europe. “Let us take possession of Canada!” he thundered. “Let our cry be ‘Canada for the British!’”
Trip West Plagued with Problems Initially, Barr’s plans were quite modest, intended for a small party composed of people “of some means and an inclination for farming,” as one colonist later recalled. But the venture attracted huge interest and he was soon swamped with thousands of applications.
