The building at 1215 Main Street North was raised to send young men to war. On Sept. 30, the Lieutenant-Colonel D.V. Currie VC Armoury will instead hold a morning of listening, as Moose Jaw marks the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation with a free public gathering led by Indigenous speakers and performers.
The event runs from 9:30 a.m. to noon and is organized by the City of Moose Jaw's Cultural Action Plan Committee together with the Moose Jaw Public Library and the Saskatchewan Festival of Words. The Mosaic Company is the title sponsor. There is no admission charge, and the city says local classrooms will receive information about attending through their school divisions.
The keynote speaker is Lori Whiteman, a member of Standing Buffalo Dakota First Nation who has spent her career in Indigenous education and community learning. She will be joined by Darrell Hawman, president of Moose Jaw's New Southern Plains Métis Local No. 160, and by the Kawacatoose Boys, a drum group from Kawacatoose First Nation.
Craig Hemingway, the city's director of strategic growth, framed the morning as an invitation rather than a ceremony. Residents, he said in a Sept. 10 news release, will have an opportunity to "learn, reflect, and engage with Indigenous voices and perspectives." He described the gathering as part of the city's work toward reconciliation through education and stronger relationships.
That work has a particular resonance in Treaty 4 Territory, where the day's meaning is bound up with the history of the land itself. The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation honours the children who never returned home from residential schools, along with the survivors, their families and their communities. It is observed each Sept. 30, the same date as Orange Shirt Day.
Orange Shirt Day traces back to 1973 and to Phyllis Webstad, a six-year-old who arrived for her first day at St. Joseph Mission residential school near Williams Lake, B.C., wearing a bright orange shirt her grandmother had bought her. The shirt was taken from her when she arrived and never returned. Webstad has said the loss left her feeling that her belongings and her feelings did not matter. Her story grew into the message that every child matters, and the orange shirt became its emblem. The federal government designated Sept. 30 a statutory holiday in 2021.
In Moose Jaw, the choice of venue carries its own layer of meaning. The armoury was built during the building boom of 1912–13 at a cost of $150,000 and officially opened on July 3, 1913, on a ten-acre site fronting Main Street at the north end of the city. The land was donated by the city after what the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan describes as considerable discussion and prodding from the Minister of Militia, Sir Sam Hughes. The initial push came from prominent local businessmen, among them Walter E. Seaborn, an insurance and property broker who later commanded the 210th Battalion, and who argued that no self-respecting city could call itself a city without an armoury.
Designed by a staff architect in the Department of Public Works under chief architect David Ewart, the building was meant to suggest a medieval castle, with buttressed walls and a crenellated roofline over the main entrance — a castellated style applied to Canadian armouries since the 1880s. Its enclosed drill hall measured roughly 100 by 200 feet, and the final design made room not only for military and cadet units but for the Boy Scouts. Over the decades it has housed the 95th Saskatchewan Rifles, the 60th Rifles, the King's Own Rifles of Canada and the 77th Battery of the Royal Canadian Artillery. Today it is home to the Saskatchewan Dragoons.
The armoury's namesake is a Moose Jaw story in his own right. David Vivian Currie was born in Sutherland, Saskatchewan, on July 8, 1912, and from 1913 to 1939 his family lived in Moose Jaw, where he was educated at King George Public School. Before the Second World War he served in a militia unit based in the city — the same armoury where he began his military career. During the campaign in France after the D-Day landings, Currie was serving with the 29th Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment, the South Alberta Regiment.
On Aug. 18, 1944, as a major, Currie commanded a small mixed force of tanks, self-propelled anti-tank guns and infantry ordered to cut one of the main escape routes from the Falaise pocket. Held up by strong enemy resistance at the village of St. Lambert-sur-Dives, he entered the village alone on foot at last light, through the enemy outposts, to reconnoitre the German defences and extricate the crews of two disabled tanks — succeeding despite heavy mortar fire. For 36 hours his force repeatedly threw back German attempts to break through, then renewed the attack and drove the enemy out. His force inflicted 800 casualties and took 2,100 prisoners. Currie was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy available to British and Commonwealth forces. He later served as honorary lieutenant colonel of the Saskatchewan Dragoons from 1972 to 1980, and died in 1986 — the year the Moose Jaw armoury was renamed in his honour.
On Sept. 30, that hall will hold a different kind of history. The Kawacatoose Boys bring the drum of a Plains Cree nation whose namesake, Chief Kawacatoose, signed Treaty 4 on Sept. 15, 1874, and received a reserve in the Big Touchwood Hills two years later. The band's name derives from the Cree kawâhkatoso, meaning "be weak with hunger." Kawacatoose First Nation, headquartered at Raymore, is a Treaty 4 band with reserves including Kawacatoose 88, Poorman 88 and Last Mountain Lake 80A.
Hawman, meanwhile, has become one of the most visible Métis voices in the city. He has served on a committee for the Western Development Museum and took part in a Métis flag raising with Prairie South School Division. In 2024, when Moose Jaw was confirmed as host of the 2025 BKT World Men's Curling Championship, Hawman welcomed the event to Treaty 4 and the homeland of the Métis. His local, New Southern Plains Métis Local No. 160, has hosted a Métis fall festival in Wakamow Valley and installed a Red River cart outside the Tourism Moose Jaw kiosk to honour the historic role of Métis transportation across the Prairies.
Whiteman's roots run through the Qu'Appelle Valley. Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation, whose reserve sits about eight kilometres northwest of Fort Qu'Appelle, is a Dakota band that is not a signatory to Treaty 4 but is protected under the Indian Act. Whiteman has described her approach to education as "walking in both worlds," and her work has taken her into anti-racism conversations and into research touching on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, the Sixties Scoop and reconciliation.
Marnel Jones, Mosaic's director of government and public affairs, said in the same news release that the day calls for reflection on the past and recognition of survivors. She said the company supports Indigenous participation in the economy, in mining careers and through community partnerships.
Residents are encouraged to wear orange shirts. The gathering is one of several observances in the city. A.E. Peacock Collegiate will raise a flag and host the Red Dog Singers on Sept. 29, and there will be no classes the following day at Peacock, Central, Riverview or Vanier. The Western Development Museum will keep a reflection space in its Feature Gallery through Sept. 30, bringing together the Survivors' Flag, Treaty 4 and Métis flags, and books and resources about residential schools, treaties and reconciliation; families can decorate a paper orange shirt and add it to the display. The museum is also screening a roughly 71-minute program of National Film Board of Canada shorts, including Urban.Indigenous.Proud: Full Circle, Urban.Indigenous.Proud: Places to Gather and Learn and My Friend the Green Horse, repeating throughout the day so visitors can come and go. A seek-and-find activity sends younger visitors hunting for words written in Michif, the Métis language, with completed sheets entered in a prize draw. The films and activity are included with regular admission, and WDM members enter free.
The United Church of Canada's Moose Jaw-based Living Skies Regional Council is encouraging congregations to take part in worship, community gatherings and learning guided by Indigenous people, and Saskatchewan Polytechnic's campus store is selling 2026 edition orange shirts, with proceeds supporting its Indigenous Student Emergency Bursary. City hall will be closed Sept. 30, though regular transit and scheduled garbage and recycling collection will continue. The Yara Centre will open from noon to 7 p.m., the Kinsmen Sportsplex pool from 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the landfill from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
But the centre of the day is the armoury, and the voices inside it. For three hours on a Wednesday morning, a building that has spent more than a century preparing for conflict will be given over to the harder work of remembering — and to the message that every child matters.