As One Who Serves: The Making of the University of Regina

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

An Act of Faith: The Early Years of Regina College (1988), the first
volume in what one hopes will be a three-volume set, covered the history
of the university from 1911, when Regina College was established by the
Methodist Church, to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. This second
volume picks up the story from that year and takes it to 1974, when the
university secured its independence from the University of Saskatchewan.
Relying heavily on primary sources, Pitsula has abstracted the key
themes that characterized those years. Administrators, educational
philosophies, programs, students, and the professoriate have all gone
into the mix, and in Regina’s case, the mix included the University of
Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, the government, and the community it served.

While some might think Pitsula could have focused a bit more on the
professoriate itself, most will agree that he has struck the right
balance among possible topics. The result is a book that is not only
informative but also compulsively readable, what with Pitsula’s eye
for interesting—mostly amusing—detail, and oodles of black-and-white
illustrations. Further, because this has been written as a labour of
love, certain tales get told that would never have made it into an
“official history.”

This is, however, not to suggest that the book is not serious. Its
author has the historian’s special ability to reflect on the
significance of individual events to the total story. Pitsula points
out, for example, that the failure to add a few buildings during the
1950s on the original College Street campus proved to be a blessing. Had
they been erected, the university would have been committed to a
downtown site and it would have been much harder to move to a new campus
in the next decade.

Pitsula, a historian at the university since 1978, has not only risen
to the challenge of writing university history but has soared above it
to be point that he has now set the standard for such volumes. The motto
of the University of Regina is reflected in the title of the book. Of
James Pitsula it must be said: “Well done, thou good and faithful
servant.”