Remember When

Frances Hyland

Frances Hyland (BA'47, LLD’72) was one of the first drama students at the University of Saskatchewan. Professor Emrys Jones, recognizing this exceptional talent, helped launch this young actor’s career: he launched a scholarship fund to support Hyland’s studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

After starting her professional career in England, Hyland was recruited as part of the founding company of the Stratford Festival. Often dubbed the “first lady of Canadian theatre,” she gained prominence in theatre, television and radio. Her former professor later lauded Hyland’s decision to stay in Canada: “She turned away from the path of international fame and fortune she had already achieved, and went wherever she was needed—from Quebec to British Columbia and back again—to help companies, small and large, in their struggles to become truly professional.”

She was also a leading voice for improved compensation and status for Canadian actors.

Frances Hyland in The Doctor in Spite of Himself—part of the Greystone Theatre’s first summer tour in 1948. Department of Drama fonds.

Henry Taube

Henry Taube in Saskatoon, 1935. Henry Taube fonds.

Henry Taube (BSc‘35, MSc’37, LLD’73) is, so far, the only graduate of the University of Saskatchewan to be awarded a Nobel Prize. He also remains the only Saskatchewan-born Nobel Laureate. Taube arrived at the U of S in 1931, a native of Neudorf, Sask. and recent graduate of Regina’s Luther College. He recounted later that he intended to study a range of subjects and was especially taken by English literature—but overwhelmed by the crowds at registration, registered for chemistry after a Luther College classmate helped him find his way. After his bachelor and master’s degrees from the U of S, he headed to Berkeley for his PhD. Unable to find a faculty position in Canada, he stayed in the United States for his entire career. He started making his mark early: after a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1949, a “classic paper” in 1952 laid the foundations for the work recognized by the Nobel Prize. His 1983 Nobel Prize was awarded “for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes.”

Lawrence Eldred Kirk

L.E. Kirk (in the back) as a member of the Better Farming Train’s Field Crop Car, 1922. Photograph Collection, A-1403.

While he may not have “stopped the dustbowl in its tracks” as one newspaper report put it, there’s no doubt that Lawrence Eldred Kirk (BA’16, BSA17, MSc’22, LLD’49) had a major impact on prairie agriculture and beyond. Kirk was born in Ontario; his family moved first to Manitoba and then homesteaded near Arcola, Sask.

Due to the lack of educational opportunities, Kirk did not complete high school until the age of 24. He made up for lost time, though, with the completion of a BA, BSA, and MSc from the U of S (all between 1916 and 1922) and then a PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1927.

It was as a graduate assistant that he first “became impressed with the special qualifications of Arctic sweet clover and crested wheat grass, as forage crops for Saskatchewan conditions.” This led to Kirk’s development of Fairway crested wheat grass, which was “used extensively during the Depression to reclaim blown-out fields.”

He followed a few career paths, first at the U of S; becoming dominion agrologist in 1931; returning to the U of S as dean of agriculture between 1937 and 1947; and finally as chief of the Plant Production Branch of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Edith C. Rowles Simpson

One of the earliest Homecraft Clubs, in Star City, ca. 1937. Instructor Edith Rowles is on the left. Photograph Collection, A-6353.

A native of Manchester, England, Edith C. Rowles Simpson (BHSc' 32, LLD’32) was raised on a homestead on the Saskatchewan/Alberta border. She taught at a number of rural Saskatchewan schools prior to enrolling at the U of S where she won the Rutter Prize for most distinguished graduate receiving her bachelor degree in 1932.

She continued her education at the University of Wisconsin (MSc, 1939) and Columbia (EdD, 1956). Simpson joined the faculty of the U of S Department of Women's Work in 1932, serving in a number of positions throughout her career, retiring as dean of home economics. In her extension work she conducted Farm Girls’ Camps and Extension Short Courses, and along with Bertha Oxner she is credited with establishing the Homecraft Clubs (precursor of the 4-H Homecraft Clubs).

Her academic speciality was in food science. She undertook some of the first Canadian research on freezing food; her publications on this topic as well as the preservation and use of fruit “were widely used throughout the prairies and beyond.”

Mabel Timlin

Mabel Timlin in her office, with a collection of journals being donated to the University Library in 1969. Photograph Collection, A-7688.

The university could not have known how well it had chosen when in 1921, the Board of Governors accepted the appointment of Mabel Timlin (BA’29, LLD’69) as a secretary, at a salary of $90 per month. Determined to pursue her education, she earned her BA in 1929 from the University of Saskatchewan and her PhD in 1940—at the age of 49—from the University of Washington, all the while continuing full-time employment at the U of S.

By 1941 she was appointed assistant professor in economics—quite possibly the first, and certainly one of the few employees to have had a career progression from clerical staff to faculty. Her PhD thesis, Keynesian Economics, published by the University of Toronto Press in 1942, was a “pioneering theoretical study” which clearly established her as a scholar of note.

“It would have been easy to plough the field of her dissertation for life,” but Timmie, as she was affectionately known, “was the kind of theorist... whose work related to the complex issues which faced humanity, rather than a refinement of breakthroughs already made.”

She continued to publish, including two substantive studies, Does Canada Need More People? (1951) and The Social Sciences in Canada (1968). Among other honours, she was the first woman social scientist elected to the Royal Society of Canada and was elected to the executive of the American Economics Association.