Lynne Smith, president of the Friends of the Lloydminster Regional Archives, led the organization in a lunch celebration of the city’s 120th anniversary at the Legacy Centre on June 7. Geoff Lee Meridian Source
There was history in the making during the 120th anniversary of the City of Lloydminster.
Roughly 156 people took part in a lunch celebration sponsored by the Friends of the Lloydminster Regional Archives and Lloydminster and District Co-op.
“We have a program and some singing and some musical drama and we have the story of the founding of Lloydminster, and hopefully, a really good lunch,” said the group’s president Lynne Smith.
The display of old photographs and memorabilia at the lunch will be added to some new ongoing projects by the volunteer archivists.
“We are doing businesses of Lloydminster, which, of course, is huge over 120 years. We’re also doing history of cultural organizations,” reported Smith.
The historical collection on hand also inspired long-time residents like Smith, who has been in the area for 78 years, to reminisce about her heydays in the city.
“In the early days, I lived on the farm where I still live and we only came to town so mom could buy groceries on Saturday mornings,” recalled Smith.
“I was in the first graduating class from what is now E.S. Laird and then I started to see the city more than I used to.”
Smith thinks saving the history of Lloydminster is so important, although she didn’t feel that way when she was younger.
“The older I get the more important I think it is,” she said.
That was music to the ears of Don Duncan, a former perennial chair of the volunteer board that owned and operated the archives for many years before the city recently took it over with funding.
“Without the founding of Lloydminster, we’d have nothing to celebrate whatsoever,” said Duncan.
He thinks the anniversary is an opportunity to recognize the initiative and the spirit that motivated the first British settlers here while recognizing the First Nations as the original inhabitants.
“The community as we know it started in 1903,” he said.
The history books tell us Rev Isaac Montgomery Barr led the Barr Colony to settle here while Rev. George Exton Lloyd is the founder of Lloydminster.
Duncan asks, without an archive, how do we keep track of such things?
Ann Campbell, secretary of friends of the archives, recalls organizing a great centennial celebration of the city, noting with 20 years gone by, they thought this would be a good time to mark another milestone.
“I think it will be a fun celebration. There will probably be a bigger one on the 125th,” she said.
Campbell was born in Lloydminster in 1949 and remembers the community being a small town when she was a little girl.
“There’s lots of places in Lloydminster I remember being built. I remember when the sidewalks were wooden like a boardwalk. When you rode your bike on them they made a neat noise,” she said.
Another senior, Lawrence Davidson, has been here since 1948 and rates most of the changes he’s seen good such as paving the roads, new houses going up and the population expanding as positives.
The historical lunch presentation also reunited him with old friends whom he hasn’t seen for years.
“It’s just great to get together again. Seeing this pandemic is over, we can visit once more,” said Davidson.
Wilma Bodnard took a moment to explain her eye was drawn to a collection of old photos of the city because she’s lived here since 1965 and has been to the museum many times.
“These pictures are all remembering things. It’s beautiful and it’s nice to know the history of our area,” said Bodnard.
Pastor Michael Stonehouse hopes to add to Lloydminster’s history with the writing of a book about Barr Colony churches.
He says the founder of Lloydminster came up with something called the “Saskatchewan Plan” to plant an Anglican church within six miles of every settlement.
“So just in the Barr Colony on the Alberta side, there was about 15 to 20 churches and the same on the Saskatchewan side,” said Stonehouse.
He’s written 500 pages already.
