The Third Column

 Colony to City  

By “Old Timer”

  One hundred and fifty-five miles east of Edmonton on Highway 16 the City of Lloydminster straddles the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary.

Two years older than either of the provinces in which it stands, the community had its start in the colonization drives of the early 1900’s.  They were a byproduct of the railway-building era.  And as was the case with pretty well every settlement north of the  Red Deer River, Edmonton played a leading role in its development.

In Lloyd’s case, Edmonton was headquarters for the reverend I. M. Barr.  His scheme, in turn, brought the first white settlers of the Lloydminster area. 

Even his name gave the project its first title, the Barr Colony.  He scouted the surveyed route of the Canadian Northern railway and in the fall of 1902 decided that the route’s intersection with the 110^th Meridian was the site for his dream colony.

This decided, he returned to England and organized the group that became the Barr Colony.  He recruited 2,000 people – some of them well-to-do – and by the spring of 1903 was ready to lead them to the New World.

Before they left, the Church of England’s Continental Church Missionary society nominated the reverend George E. Lloyd as colony chaplain.  A member of a Toronto regiment during the Riel Rebellion, Mr. Lloyd had more than a nodding acquaintance with the Canadian frontier.

As well as his 2,000 colonists, Mr. Barr was followed by something else on the voyage from London to the far West – trouble.

By the time the party had reached the prairie, it had a new leader.   This was the chaplain, Mr. Lloyd.  He took over when the colonists repudiated Mr. Barr.

The hamlet that sprang up almost immediately was named Lloydminster.  The “Lloyd” was in deference to the colony leader, while the “minster” denoted the church background – just a York Minster and Westminster were coined in the Old Country.

Edmonton again entered the Lloydminster picture, servicing as the new community’s trading centre until the Canadian Northern railway reached it late in 1906.  Edmonton had two points backing its choice; a reliable source of native lumber, and the North Saskatchewan River, down which goods could be rafted in bulk.

Hundred of thousands of board feet of lumber from John Walter’s mill in Strathcona were framed up as barges, floated downstream and dismantled.

Under North West Territories legislation, Lloydminster became a village at the end of November, 1903.  When the N.W.T. was dissected and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan created by the federal government in 1905, something unique in municipal administrative problems was created. 

The difficulties all had their origin in the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary.  When the power-tat-be at Ottawa fixed the 110^th Meridian as the common border, they made no attempt to detour around the border settlement.

The immediate result was that neighbors awoke to find one set of school regulations applied here, and another there.  For a time, there were two separate municipal councils, two fire departments and two of every other governing body.  Here was a red-tape machine that had few parallels anywhere.

The first move toward corporate status came in 1906 when the Alberta side of the community obtained village status.  A year later, its Saskatchewan twin became a town, complete with mayor.

This town-village arrangement was to persist for almost twenty-five years.  Until the two provincial governments acted in 1930 to set up one municipal administration over both section of Lloydminster, the one thing each twin had most of was headaches.

Children on one side of town were subject to different school programs.  Motorists had two sets of driving regulations to follow.  Property sales sometimes involved title searches under two jurisdictions, and there were variations in the liquor regulations applicable to each province. 

Orders effective in May, 1930, merged the two communities as one town.  Again by mutual government consent, the town achieved city status on January 1, 1958.

A list of first administrative officers in the meridian-split settlement includes the following:  first overseer, Dr. W. W. Amos, one of the original colonists, 1903; first overseer of Alberta village, R.W. Miller, 1906; first mayor of Saskatchewan town, H.B. Hall, 1907; first mayor of merged town, Harold Huxley, 1930; first mayor of city, V.U. Miner, 1958.

Its colonist-days population quadrupled, metropolitan Lloydminster today is served by two railways, but and truck routes and paved inter-provincial highway.