The Grand Theatre hopes to win a Canada-wide competition to repair historic site in Indian Head

Darla Ponace · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 08, 2025 8:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

For much than a century, residents of Indian Head, Sask., and adjacent neighbours person gathered at The Grand Theatre  to bask everything from soundless films and vaudeville acts to modern blockbusters, unrecorded performances and assemblage events.

Built arsenic an opera location successful 1904 by Arthur James Osment utilizing bricks made by a salient Métis household from the Qu'Appelle Valley, the gathering needs repairs to support it safe and accessible.

Lisa Horsman, seat of the theatre's board, says it's a immense economical operator for the assemblage located astir 70 kilometres east of Regina, bringing concern to section stores and restaurants. 

"It brings radical from each over, astatine slightest an 80-kilometre radius to our town, which of people drives the system and our town," Horsman said. "But much than that. It's truly been an important portion of our history. The gathering has immense roots for the Métis Nation successful the area."

The hunt to travel up with wealth for the repairs led the committee to Next Great Save, a Canada-wide contention that provides an accidental for communities to triumph wealth to support their historical buildings. 

Horsman says preserving the gathering means repairing its flooring and making it wheelchair accessible. 

"There's a immense measurement into the washrooms and stalls that a wheelchair couldn't entree adjacent if it wanted to. There's besides nary spot successful the theatre to parkland and beryllium successful a wheelchair," she said.

"It's conscionable not harmless oregon accessible and that's not acceptable."

Horsman feels a idiosyncratic attachment to the theatre. 

"Once you go progressive with the theatre, it truly steals a portion of your heart," she said.

"There are truthful galore things that I've done present with my family, with my schoolroom astatine school. I pb the section play nine astatine the simple school. We person our productions here, so there's conscionable truthful overmuch a portion of maine present and truthful overmuch a portion of the assemblage here.

"My large anticipation for this spot is that my grandchildren volition get to bask it the mode their grandparents did."

Megan McEwan, a subordinate of the board, says the theatre has been assemblage owned since 2014. 

"The Grand Theatre is truthful peculiar to our community," she said. "It truly holds the stories of however our assemblage has gotten to beryllium wherever it is today. 

"To sphere our practice buildings, is to sphere the stories of what makes a assemblage unique. This is wherever a batch of radical had their archetypal dates, this is wherever galore teenagers had their archetypal job. For myself, arsenic a parent, this is wherever my kids saw their archetypal movie …" 

The closing time for voting successful the contention at the Next Great Save website is April 17.