A list of endangered buildings is putting the spotlight on Saskatoon's Stone Barn

Well, it's an L-shaped building with a barn-styled roof and cedar-shingled upper walls set on a base of rough granite. You've seen it. You probably smelled it if you lived in Saskatoon. The stone barn is a 100-year-old structure at the University of Saskatchewan, and it is now on the National Trust for Canada's endangered list. Chris Wiebe is the manager of heritage policy and government relations with the organization, and Chris joins us live. Good afternoon. Great to see you, Peter. So Chris, what can you tell us about the stone barn and what it looks like? It's a pretty extraordinary structure. It's a really large L-shaped barn, and as you say, it was built in 1911 to 1912. It has, you know, kind of a rough granite foundation, but the style of it, this really large kind of gambrel roof with real, very sort of prominent ornamentation uh both on the um the two kind of concrete silos that that kind of adorn it and also the you know the dormers and the kind of the ventilators along the roof it was designed to be seen and it's a very it's a very prominent landmark that i think a lot of people in Saskatoon would see almost every day yeah for sure how has it changed over the years well i guess it was used for quite a long time uh one of the wings was used for the dairy herd uh and the other for the horse uh for the horse herd um but then i guess you know coming after the war things sort of subsided somewhat uh and i understand that the the barn was uh left abandoned in 2010 and has since been looking for for a new use so why did you include it on the list of endangered buildings well each year the National Trust for Canada we're the we're the leading national charity dedicated to the conservation and promotion of Canada's historic places uh and every year we put out well since like actually 2005 uh we've put something this national endangered places list to really draw attention to some of the challenges facing historic places across Canada and trying to find you know representative places in uh different provinces and territories to to do that uh we've always had our eye on rural heritage uh and i think uh that the you know the historic barn at the university of alberta of saskatchewan is really um a prominent one that that that really kind of speaks to some of the wider challenges facing rural heritage across the prairies across Saskatchewan.