Bruno

Town, pop 571, located approximately 90 km E of Saskatoon, 7 km N of Hwy 5. The area terrain is gently rolling; about 80% of the land is farmed; and the remainder consists of aspen groves, wetlands, and prairie. The community is named for its founder, Rev. Bruno Doerfler, a Benedictine Father who immigrated to the area in 1902 with a small number of German families from Minnesota. The next year, more German American settlers arrived at the fledgling religious colony, and after the railway was completed in 1905 settlers poured into the district. On the eve of World War I, as convents in Germany were being taken over by the government for military use, a number of URSULINE SISTERS sought refuge in Canada and, upon Doerfler’s urging, eventually settled in Bruno. An Ursuline convent was opened in 1919, and St. Ursula’s Academy in 1922. During the 1960s, it is estimated that there were more than a hundred Ursuline Sisters in the community. The Academy, closed in 1982, was temporarily managed as a satellite campus of the University of Saskatchewan between 1999 and 2004, and has since been returned to the Ursuline Sisters. The primary economic base of the Bruno area has long been agriculture, which today involves grains, oil seeds, hogs, cattle and turkeys. potash mines at Colonsay and Allan provide additional employment.

David McLennan