Regina Trading Company Stables, 1800 Garnet Street

The distinctive barn-shaped structure at Saskatchewan Drive and Garnet Street is a fitting place for The Animal Clinic of Regina. Constructed in the early to mid-1920s, this building served a very similar purpose in its earliest days: to provide a space for the care and accommodation of animals, these ones belonging to the Regina Trading Company.

Founded in 1898 by John Dawson and James Franklin Bole, the Regina Trading Company was Regina’s first department store, carrying everything the residents of a young prairie town might need, such as groceries and dry goods, hardware, clothing, boots and shoes, machine oils, firearms and ammunition, and prescription drugs. The store had a prime location across from the railway station on what was then South Railway Street (now Saskatchewan Drive). Horse-drawn wagons delivered goods throughout the city, and the first bill of goods delivered for the company was made by a horse named Barney, who was still enjoying the odd delivery job as late as 1916.

As the first decades of the twentieth century passed, and Regina grew at a rapid rate, business boomed at the Regina Trading Company. In 1920, the company began construction on a four-story building located at Scarth Street and 12th Avenue. The location in the heart of the business district was a prime spot for retail but offered no space for the stables necessary to the store’s delivery infrastructure, by this time consisting of ten wagons and two automobiles. The company chose to erect a new stable further afield, where space was at less of a premium. The chosen location was South Railway, just west of Albert Street, in the company of the railway, various warehouses and coal sheds, paint shops and blacksmith’s shops.

Business continued until the late 1920s, when the company was sold. In 1931, at the onset of the Depression, the company went bankrupt and the stable was sold. Subsequently used as stables by National Cartage, the Regina Pure Milk Company, Purity Dairy, and Bower’s Contractors, it finally got its modern-day veterinary connections when Dr. Harold Hunter arrived in Regina and began a private practice out of his van. Caring for Bower’s draft horses led to Dr. Hunter renting a portion of the stable, which he converted into a veterinarian’s office. The company grew over the next several decades, with the stable eventually purchased in its entirety by Dr. Hunter, and provided employment for several veterinarians who would go on to open many of Regina’s other pet care practices.