Prairie College

Prairie College. This cairn is faced with stone from the walls of Prairie College, the forerunner to Brandon College and Brandon University. It was constructed in 1999, Brandon University's Centennial Year. Prairie College was the first post-secondary educational institution on the Canadian Prairies west of the original Manitoba border of 1870. It was established in 1880 just north of the Village of Rapid City to train Baptist ministers for service on the western agricultural frontier and to provide general literacy instruction to the rapidly growing population of the area. , Prairie College owed its provenance to the inspiration and vision of Reverend John Crawford, formerly a member of the Theology Department at the Canadian Literacy Institute in Woodstock, Ontario. Crawford was assisted in this very personal venture by Reverend G.B. Davis. A graduate of the Canadian Literacy Institute. The creation of Prairie College was an initiative taken with the unofficial endorsement and support of the Baptist Union of Ontario and Quebec. The same Baptist idealism and educational traditions that shaped the brief life of Prairie College in the early 1800's provided the inspiration for the creation of Brandon College in 1899.