Melville: Saskatchewan's largest city...for a few hours

When Melville, SK changed time zones, and grew 10x in size overnight.

By the time 1939 rolled around, 72 years had gone by since Canada had become a country. Amazingly, despite seven decades passing, it was not until 1939 that a reigning Canadian monarch set foot in the country. When King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrived at the shores of Canada, it would be an event unlike any other in Canadian history to that point.

The tour lasted for a month, and many communities were visited but the visit to Melville may be unlike anything Canada has ever seen before, or since.

The Royal Couple in Melville on June 3 at 10 p.m. and 60,000 people were waiting for them. The community typically had a population of only 3,000.

With such a huge influx of people into the community, the Royal Couple decided to spend several hours in Melville, rather than the originally planned 10 minutes. In the crowd were 600 First World War veterans, 10,000 school children and a 200-piece orchestra.

R.J. Carnegie would say of the stop in Melville,

“Never throughout the tour did I see such unbridled enthusiasm as then.”

The community is in the Central Time Zone but for the Royal Visit and to keep everything on the same day, the community temporarily switched to the Mountain Time Zone.

King would wrote,

“We got the surprise of our lives when we reached Melville. There was the largest outdoor massing of children and others that I have seen at any of the stations. I think the King and Queen were almost taken off their feet by surprise as they went to the platform.”

With its population swelling to 60,000 people, Melville became the largest city in Saskatchewan for a few hours.