Establishment The
diocese was established by the Synod of the
Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert's Land in 1884 at the beginning of European settlement on the
Canadian prairies beyond the vicinity of
Winnipeg; it geographically corresponds to the former
District of Assiniboia in the then
North-West Territories : indeed, until the 1970s it precisely so-corresponded, and included a strip of territory lying over the
Alberta provincial boundary once the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were created in 1905. This was ceded to the
Diocese of Calgary. At the beginning of settlement it was unclear where the District headquarters and territorial capital would be; the diocese selected the then-burgeoning village of Troy (now
Qu'Appelle), some east of present-day
Regina as the cathedral city, and the first pro-cathedral was St Peter's in that village. The original Bishop's Court was there but subsequently relocated to nearby Indian Head: it is in a verdant rolling parkland immediately adjacent to the
Qu'Appelle Valley, amply treed with aspen and birch groves, with spring-fed creeks in lush
coulees and plentiful local supplies of water.
Early difficulty in coping with the majority of prairie settlers Relations between the English immigrants of the Anglican pro-cathedral parish in Qu'Appelle and the native-Canadian Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic settlers from Ontario and Quebec as well as numerous settlers from the USA across the border to the south were at times frosty and the Anglican Church was long referred to in some disparagement as "the English Church" by eastern Canadian settlers who perhaps regarded themselves as more authentically Canadian. Growth of the diocese was hindered in early years by a number of factors: :[E]astern Canadian dioceses did not respond in a liberal manner to the numerous appeals for financial support and volunteers. As a result, the western Canadian dioceses relied on money and manpower from the Church of England and its missionary societies. Heavy dependency on overseas help in turn created problems for the Church on the frontier: inadequate funding by far-removed committees, party divisions, the "Englishness" of the Church, a laity not used to voluntary giving, and the failure of the clergy to adjust to frontier conditions all hurt the Anglican cause. Owing to some fairly astonishing corruption by latter day standards, another site was chosen instead. The Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West(sic)Territories,
Edgar Dewdney, had acquired substantial landholdings adjacent to the future route of the
Canadian Pacific Railway at
Oscana—the
Cree word meaning "pile of bones" in reference to the plains bison bones scattered around Wascana Creek before the area was populated by non-indigenous people. Dewdney designated it to be the site of the Territorial headquarters: what became the town of Regina, on a particularly disobliging tract of land, featureless, treeless and waterless. However, the minority English settlers at Qu'Appelle had in any case somewhat alienated the native Canadians among whom they had settled and it was perhaps sensible for the Anglican Church to make a new start in Regina. When it became apparent that neither Qu’Appelle nor nearby Indian Head were going to be an important urban centre the diocese acquired a substantial property in Regina on College Avenue east of Broad Street.
Adjustment to emerging reality Meanwhile, the
St Paul's, Regina was designated the pro-cathedral in 1944. By 1973 it was clear that the diocese would never be self-supporting — it had been a mission field of the English diocese of
Lichfield but this had long since become unrealistic — other than by alienating its only substantial real estate, whose acquisition had been substantially underwritten by the original missioning diocese. Today approximately one-half of the civil Province of
Saskatchewan's one million residents live within the diocesan boundaries of Qu'Appelle. However, only some 10,000 of these 500,000-odd people identify as Anglican. Immigration patterns at the outset of settlement determined that the majority of Southern Saskatchewan's people would be German Lutherans and Roman Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians and Roman Catholics, British and American Methodists (the former's ancestors from eastern Canada), Ukrainian Orthodox and Roman Catholics, to name only some of the denominations and ethnicities that constitute the vast non-Anglican majority.
Closure of Anglican theological college and girls' school; sale of diocesan headquarters property "In 1964, for reasons of efficiency St. Chad's Theological College amalgamated with Emmanuel College in Saskatoon. Six years later, St. Chad's Girls' School was closed and the diocesan site sold" to the provincial government in the 1980s. The diocesan offices, the former St Chad's Qu'Appelle Diocesan School, the former bishop's palace, an old people's home and other diocesan structures remained, for a time leased back from the provincial crown; the government has now itself sold the former diocesan property for residential and commercial development. (Of special interest on the property is the intended cathedral site laid out at the corner of Broad Street and College Avenue, outlined in
caragana hedges.) St Paul's was upgraded to cathedral status in 1973 and a satisfactory 2-manual
Casavant Frères pipe organ was built in it in 1974. ==Bishops of Qu'Appelle==