Portrait of Allan A. Bowerman, early postmaster of Saskatoon, and donor of scholarships and rare books to the University of Saskatchewan.

Bio/Historical Note: Allan Arthur Bowerman was born 20 May 1844 on a farm near Picton, Ontario. He was educated at Victoria University (Cobourg, Ontario) and the Kingston Military School. In 1870 he came to Manitoba as a member of the Wolseley Expedition and stayed after it was demobilized, becoming principal of the newly-established Wesleyan Institute. During the Winnipeg real estate boom of the early 1880s, Bowerman invested heavily in real estate, owning land along Portage Avenue where he erected a residential building known as the Bowerman Terrace and established a florist shop. He lost most of his investments in the subsequent crash. In December 1883 Bowerman accepted a position as Classics master at the Winnipeg Collegiate Institute, becoming principal the following year. He resigned in mid-1889 to concentrate on his florist business. After the business closed in the mid-1890s, Bowerman took a position as principal of Griswold School, serving until early 1899. He then traveled west and became principal of the school at Moose Jaw, North West Territories. Bowerman left Moose Jaw for Saskatoon; he became the first postmaster in Saskatoon on the west side of the river (1900-1906), and a member of Saskatoon's first town council (1903-1905). Again, Bowerman invested in real estate and amassed a substantial fortune over a period of less than a decade. He built the Canada Building and was an early supporter of the University of Saskatchewan. He sold a piece of property to the government for the site of a sanatorium. In his retirement years, Bowerman wintered in California, where he died at Los Angeles on 25 December 1923. He left an estate valued at about $3 million.