1946. In 1946, one year after Premier Tommy Douglas set out to revise and repair Saskatchewan’s mental health policies, the premier hired Dr. Donald “Griff” McKerracher from Ontario to be the director of psychiatric services, under the Department of Public Health. Douglas tasked McKerracher with changing the program following many of the recommendations in the 1945 report done by Dr. Clarence Hincks. It is Douglas' hope that the new director would transform the province’s mental health program into something that made Saskatchewan a beacon to the country as an example of enlightened policy. (Houston and Waiser, 2010, p.116) Around ten years later, under the guidance of McKerracher and Douglas, part of that enlightened policy shone forth in the Saskatchewan Training School at Moose Jaw.

Before 1945, the residents of Saskatchewan who were deemed mentally handicapped were largely cared for in the province’s mental hospital in Weyburn. As medicine progressed and physicians (followed by politicians) began to better define mental conditions, they realized it was necessary to care for people and conditions separately – as defined by their individual merits. Under the initiative of Douglas, the recommendation of Hincks, and the efforts of McKerracher, the government set about building a separate facility to house and care for people who had mental development problems.

-Blaine Wickham

• Wickham, B. (2012, September). Valley View Centre Moose Jaw: Report prepared for the Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport. Retrieved from http://www.tpcs.gov.sk.ca/VVC.

• Houston, S. & Waiser, B. (2010) Tommy’s Team: The People Behind the Douglas Years. Markham, ON: Fifth House, Ltd.