Filmgoers headed to Saskatoon’s newly-opened Brighton multiplex today have no idea how good they have it.

Every variety of Coca Cola on tap. A perfectly-focused digital picture. Leather reclining loveseats you can reserve weeks in advance on your smartphone. And staying power.

“We’re here for at least 20 or more years,” said Landmark Cinemas CEO Bill Walker inside the 35,000-square-foot seven-plex last week.

Bill Walker is president of Landmark Cinemas, which opened a new theatre in Saskatoon's Brighton neighbourhood Friday. (Guy Quenneville/CBC) Post image on Pinterest: Bill Walker is president of Landmark Cinemas, which opened a new theatre in Saskatoon's Brighton neighbourhood Friday. (Guy Quenneville/CBC)

Bill Walker is president of Landmark Cinemas, which opened a new theatre in Saskatoon's Brighton neighbourhood Friday. (Guy Quenneville/CBC)

But when the city’s first cinema, the Kevin, opened more than a century ago in June 1907, patrons were lucky to have even a semi-permanent home for “motion pictures.”



Cinemas came and went quickly in those days.

“I don’t remember them, other than hearing of them,” says Magic Lantern Theatres president Tom Hutchinson of Saskatoon’s earliest movie houses.

Movies had emerged a decade before as an “itinerant entertainment” — a footnote to the main attraction of travelling live stage performers coming to towns along the CP rail line. Short films depicted prize fights, fire brigade runs and bathing scenes.

It wasn’t until 1907 that, across Canada, “independent entrepreneurial showmen converted long, narrow, commercial store spaces into small theatres,” according to early Saskatchewan cinema historian Paul S. Moore.

“Seats were ordinary kitchen chairs with a plank running underneath them to hold them together,” Dalton Fisher, Saskatchewan’s first provincial theatre inspector, once told the Regina Leader-Post.

The West Side Theatre was a typically short-lived movie house. It opened in 1912 at the northwest corner of 20th Street West and Avenue C South — currently home to a Scotiabank.

The West Side Theatre, shown here in 1912, sat at the corner of Avenue C South and 20th Street West. A Scotiabank sits there now. (Saskatoon Public Library Local History Room; Photo PH-96-144) Post image on Pinterest: The West Side Theatre, shown here in 1912, sat at the corner of Avenue C South and 20th Street West. A Scotiabank sits there now. (Saskatoon Public Library Local History Room; Photo PH-96-144)

The West Side Theatre, shown here in 1912, sat at the corner of Avenue C South and 20th Street West. A Scotiabank sits there now. (Saskatoon Public Library Local History Room; Photo PH-96-144)

The theatre was gone within five years. (The Roxy, opened two lots over in 1930, closed for a time but still survives today.)

Down the street, just west of Idylwyld Drive (where Freedom Functional Fitness stands now), the King Edward featured vaudeville acts along with films, as with many theatres of the time. But it barely lasted a year, becoming the first Saskatoon theatre to be destroyed by fire.

Theatres that didn’t quickly close often changed names or locations (sometimes both), which makes it difficult to keep some of them straight.

The Kevin, for instance, was almost immediately rechristened the Bijou (a common name for theatres at the time) and was later rebuilt at either the same location (Second Avenue South and 19th Street East) or a different one. Records also point to a Bijou on 21st Street.