1927: Alexander Campbell, Veteran of the Northwest Resistance

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The retirement of Alexander Campbell, Dean of Pharmacy, came “like a bolt from the blue”¹ to President Walter Murray.  The Saskatchewan Pharmaceutical Association had been the first in Canada to request the education of its members be under the direction of a university,²  and twenty-one students enrolled when the School of Pharmacy was first established in 1914.  By 1921 the School had become a College.  Enrolment had increased substantially every year; and Campbell, there since the school’s inception, had taught a majority of the classes even as faculty numbers increased.  The College of Pharmacy as it existed in 1927 was largely Campbell’s creation.  Remarkably, he had joined the University at age  62 – but “no one,” Murray wrote, had “ever associated age with the active veteran of the rebellion of 1885.”

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Indeed, Campbell had been part of the 7th Fusiliers from London, Ontario, called into active service on 1 April 1885.  By the time they had made the trip west the Northwest Resistance was over: the 7th Fusiliers left for their return journey to Ontario in mid-July without ever having seen combat.  Campbell had done pencil sketches at the time and later turned these into watercolours, with a narrative of his service: An Account of the Advances of the 7th Fusiliers of London to aid in the suppression of the North West Rebellion of 1885.

Following his retirement from the University Campbell moved to Victoria, where he died in 1943 at the age of 91.   The Saskatchewan Pharmaceutical Association established the Campbell Prize in his honour.

Related Collections

College of Pharmacy fonds, RG 2118.
See also: The Northwest Resistance

Images

1927a: Self portrait of Campbell. University Library Special Collections, MSS 49 #17.
1927b: Photograph Collection, A-2825.

Sources

1.  Greystone, 1927, p.3.
2. The Spectrum, 1921, p. 139.