U of S, Saskatoon feed off each other
Gerry Klein, Special to The StarPhoenix
Published: Thursday, May 22, 2008
One doesn't have to live in Saskatoon long before the impact of the University of Saskatchewan becomes apparent.
The university owns about 30 per cent of the land in Saskatoon's core area, including vast swatches of prime property along the river and next to Circle Drive that are worth a fortune in today's real estate market. Some of this land, such as the parcel east of Circle Drive, south of College and squeezed next to Sutherland, is barely used as a source of feed for the university's livestock.
Other parcels, such as those east of Central Avenue, north of Circle and Attridge Drive and along the river amount to more than 290 acres that are now used mostly for beef research, feed production and manure handling. These operations could be moved out of the city easily and the university could capitalize on a massive real estate development to bolster its coffers while giving Saskatoon the chance to grow without having to spread out so much.
But it isn't just in its land that the university has an impact on the city. Saskatoon has a long history of cultural and artistic development going from the campus across the city.
Not only have the people on campus shared their their talents with the wider community, but their presence has helped to attract others from across Canada and the world. It is this history that helped Saskatoon land the title of Cultural Capital of Canada last year and made festivals such as Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan, the Fringe, the SaskTel Saskatchewan Jazz Festival and others standard fare during Saskatoon summers.
While there tend to be "town and gown" conflicts anytime a major university takes up so much space in a city -- both culturally and physically -- the U of S and Saskatoon have a unique symbiotic relationship on many levels. For example, as long as Saskatoon was a relatively inexpensive place to live -- even snagging a prime property close to the river used to be affordable -- it made recruiting for the university that much easier.
The city recognized early on the potential locked up in a university. It was for that reason that its citizens celebrated into the morning upon learning that Saskatoon was to be the home of Saskatchewan's university. And it was for that reason Saskatoon became one of the few local governments to make significant cash contributions to national research facilities by agreeing to chip in for both the Canadian Light Source and InterVac.
But as Saskatoon grows and the university balances its land legacy with other needs, there is a possibility the two entities will grow apart. It hasn't happened yet, however.
For example, tonight a group of researchers led by the Community University Institute for Social Research will be conducting interviews with homeless people in the city. This institute is a flagship of the community-university research alliances program for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and was on the leading edge of this new national initiative to have universities more directly involved in their host communities. This research is expected to form the basis of City Hall's plan to address homelessness in Saskatoon -- a problem that has been growing at least as fast as the city's economy.
Ironically, among the first groups to be hurt because of that rapidly growing economy will be the artistic and cultural communities that have been attracted to Saskatoon, in part because of its beauty and affordability.
The university council last week launched an initiative, however, that has the potential to alleviate some of the pain of skyrocketing housing costs. Although it has been slow off the mark to address student housing issues, which in turn could help lower rents across Saskatoon, the U of S is establishing a centre for culture and creativity that may give artists and writers the opportunity to pass on their skills while getting paid for doing so.
Peter Stoicheff, associate dean of humanities and fine arts in the college of arts and sciences, has been working for three years to get an interdisciplinary committee off the ground. The university traditionally has managed its programs within departments, but this made it difficult to organize initiatives across departments or to incorporate skills that are more readily available off campus, he said Wednesday.
With this new centre in place, Stoicheff hopes, for example, to establish a program for writing that might have creative writing as a cornerstone. Saskatchewan has a wealth of writers who could be brought on campus to teach their expertise, which would not only give them extra income but also further enrich Saskatchewan's stable of writers.
Given the already strong reputation Saskatchewan has for writing, Stoicheff hopes such a program could attract talent from across Canada or even the world. Similarly, the university could also have a curatorial program for the visual arts. Separate from fine arts, this could include teaching skills necessary to establish galleries, manage archives or run museums. For a province where each town has its own museum or crafts shop, such an endeavour could be in high demand.
At this point, anything is a possibility, Stoicheff says. The potential is only limited by people's imagination and, considering this is a centre of creativity, one suspects that limitation is nearly non-existent.
Much has been said over the past decade about how far the university has strayed from its original mandate to be close to the people. That may happen as Saskatchewan's economy grows, but it will be in spite of the efforts of a lot of people on and off campus.
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