Description of Historic Place

The Canadian Pacific Railway Station at Wynyard is a one-and-a-half-storey, clapboard railway station built in 1909. It is located at the centre of the small town of Wynyard, Saskatchewan. The formal recognition is confined to the railway station building itself.

Heritage Value

The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) Station at Wynyard was built as a divisional point along CPR’s main line from Winnipeg to Edmonton. The town of Wynyard, created and surveyed with the station as its focal point, benefited from the extensive railway facilities and the employment these generated.

The Wynyard station is a medley of standard CPR plan elements with the addition of a gabled freight wing, and is distinguished by an unusually high gambrel roof. It illustrates the ingenuity of the CPR Engineering Department in providing cost-effective architectural variety for divisional point stations during the turn-of-the-century period of expansion.

Still in use as an administrative centre, the Wynyard station is prominently located at the head of one of Wynyard’s two commercial thoroughfares and is recognized by the community as being historically significant. Key elements of the original station setting are intact, including the tracks, the round house, and the tall Douglas fir trees that are the remnants of the original station garden.

Sources: Heritage Character Statement, Canadian Pacific Railway Station, Wynyard, Saskatchewan, January 1992; and Heritage Research Associates and Great Plains Research Consultants, Railway Station Report 059, Canadian Pacific Railway Station, Wynyard, Saskatchewan.

Character-Defining Elements

Character-defining elements of the Canadian Pacific Railway Station at Wynyard include:
-its one-and-a-half-storey height, sitting snug to the ground with a high gambrel roof and a one-storey, gable-roofed, freight wing on its east side
-its distinctive roof shape, consisting of a high gambrel roof punctuated by a large, gambrel gable over the telegrapher’s bay, and by flat-roofed dormers on each of the track and town sides of the building
-vernacular exterior finishes, including clapboard siding, and cedar-shingle roof covering
-the carefully balanced arrangement of openings on each elevation
-its fenestration, including six-over-two, double-hung sash windows throughout the building and fixed, six-pane transom lights over doors and windows, which extend up to the eaves line.