Hello Fred. Arrived home. All OK. The boys all wish to be remembered to you.
Those words were written on the back of a postcard sent in 1913 to Mr. Fred Williams in Balcarres, Saskatchewan. On the other side is a colour lithograph of the R.H. Williams & Sons Store, the first department store in Regina.
This postcard of the R.H. Williams Store in Regina is part of the University of Saskatchewan’s online Postcard Collection.
The postcard to Mr. Williams is one of more than 3,000 historic postcards available on the University of Saskatchewan’s website — and the university library intends to digitize even more.
The scope of the postcard collection is Canada-wide with an emphasis on Saskatchewan cards.
When possible, the postcards with messages have been described to facilitate searching for names, themes, or words.
The description of the postcard to Mr. Williams, for example, provides historical details:
Colour lithograph of the R.H. Williams Store, Regina’s first department store, which was also known as Glasgow House, and was named after Glasgow, Scotland. The business was established in Regina in 1888 on South Railway Street. A larger and up-to-date department store was built at 11th Avenue and Hamilton Street in 1910. The Robert Simpson Company purchased the business in 1946. The building was demolished in 1982. The handwritten note on the back is postmarked 1913.
The postcards can be searched by keyword, topic, or browsed.
If interested in learning about new additions to the collection, you can sign up for notifications or simply look at the Recent Additions column on the left on the home page.
Visit the postcard collection on the University of Saskatchewan website. For future reference, I have added this collection to my Genealogy Research Toolbox — Canada.
Follow Genealogy a la carte’s board Canadian Genealogy Resources on Pinterest.
I have reviewed a few of the Sask Post Cards and am amazed at the amount of errors posted describing the activities and transcribing the written content on the cards. For a University, this is very shoddy work.
You should send them a note about the errors. The project is ongoing, so perhaps they are still editing. I have yet to notice any errors. Thanks.