It was a sunny but breezy afternoon for the celebration of the Fred Light Museum's main building's 100th birthday.
The former St. Vital School has been home to the museum since it opened in 1980. Now owned and financed by the Town of Battleford, the museum is named after the late Fred Light, who was part of a local pioneer North West Mounted Police family. He dedicated years to collecting and displaying local artifacts.
Speaking at the come and go tea held Sunday at the museum, curator/director Bernadette Leslie said Light had approached the Town about using the then empty building to house his collection and had gained permission by the time she entered the picture in 1979. At that time, she said, they were still cataloguing items and putting up displays. The museum opened officially in 1980.
In the early 1980s, said Leslie, major renovations were done. Lath and plaster was removed and the walls were insulated and drywalled. Light did large amounts of the work himself.
"Thirty-six years later, I'm sure Fred Light would be impressed and thrilled the way the museum has grown," said Leslie.
Councillor Ames Leslie, representing the Town of Battleford, also welcomed the afternoon's visitors.
"If anyone hasn't connected the dots, Bernadette is my mother," he said.
In addition to representing the Town, he has a special connection to the museum.
"I have visited this Fred Light Museum for 30 years, since Mom has been the curator/director of this museum, and even today, walking around with my fiancée I found things that are new and exciting and makes me want to come back and see this place," he said.
Relating the history of the building, he said construction began in May of 1914 and was completed in October of the same year.
"It's pretty amazing in today's world to see a building of this stature being built in four months. I think a lot of our modern construction people could take a lesson from this building."
Reading from the May 15, 1914 Saskatchewan Herald, he quoted, "This will add another to Battleford's large number of splendid public buildings, which bears the evidence of the steadily and rapidly increasing population of Battleford."
He said, "This is still true today, a hundred years later, and we are very privileged as a town to have the Fred Light Museum occupy this wonderful building and continually providing a unique experience and insight into the Battlefords history for any tourists who come to our community as well as residents from the surrounding areas."
He concluded, "Under the banner of the St. Vital School, this building provided education for countless students ... Since 1980 it has continued to be that conduit of education, but under the Fred Light Museum, and hopefully it will be for many years to come."
A birthday cake was part of the celebration and, as builder of the replica museum dollhouse being raffled, board member Floyd Anderson was asked to blow out the candles.
A time capsule originally established in 1982 was also opened, into which additional mementos were deposited.
Architectural History
According to the Canadian Register of Historic Places, the building now occupied by the Fred Light Museum was built in 1914 of brick manufactured in Battleford, with four classrooms on the first two floors, an auditorium on the third floor and two rooms in the basement. At some point in the late 1970s, the brick was covered with stucco.
Its architectural style is known as modified Second Empire, a style that originally flourished during the period of the Second Empire in France from 1852 to 1870, when Napoleon's nephew, Napoleon III, ruled. The style had the goal of impressing the visitor with a feeling of grandeur and class. From France, it spread to other parts of the world.
The CRHP indicates that in Canada, where its popularity peaked in the 1870s, it was used as an expression of wealth and of a certain kind of cosmopolitanism that was mainly used on commercial, public and private buildings, but which certain religious institutions accommodated as well.
The Prairie provinces and British Columbia generally have few examples of the Second Empire style, mainly because these regions were developed long after the style fell out of fashion. However, it remained popular with the Roman Catholic Church for its convents and schools, and it was the style applied to the St. Vital Catholic School in Battleford.
Elements of the building that served as a school until 1974 that reflect the Second Empire architectural style include its symmetry, its window arrangement and design, the mansard roof, dormer windows and prominent pavilion. It also features elements that denote its use as a Catholic school, such as the cross atop the pavilion and original stone signage above the entryway.
- The Canadian Register of Historic Places provides a single source of information about all historic places recognized for their heritage value at the local, provincial, territorial and national levels throughout Canada.
