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Queen St Health Collective, home

McFarland House

We work in a house that was finished in 1912. This is a short history of the building and what it is like to sit in it.

The front of McFarland House on a summer day: a dark brown shingled Craftsman house with a wide porch of tall windows, brick steps and a Queen St Health Collective sign.

The building

A Craftsman house from 1912

The house went up between 1911 and 1912 in the Craftsman style of the early twentieth century. It has wide eaves, deep windows, and rooms built to be lived in rather than looked at.

It has been a home, and now it is a place people come to talk. The proportions are the reason it works: the rooms are small enough to feel private and tall enough not to feel closed in.

Inside

The rooms we work in

Down the spiral staircase is the studio. The floor is heated from underneath and a labyrinth is carved into it. There is an electric fireplace.

The rooms on the main floor and the second floor are where counsellors and hands-on practitioners see people. The studio downstairs is used for yoga, meditation, and somatic therapy.

Photographs

The house

  • The front door, marked McFarland House, beside a window carrying the Queen St Health Collective sign and the words Supporting whole person health.
  • A sitting room with a river stone fireplace, wood panelling, a beamed ceiling and a tan leather sofa, lit by a hanging lamp.
  • A long wooden table with slatted chairs on a patterned rug, beside leaded glass windows and an open sitting area.
  • The lower level studio, with a stained glass pillar of water lilies beside a labyrinth set into the floor.
  • A small room with a green sofa, a black armchair and a bare brick chimney, under a sloped ceiling and leaded windows.
  • A purple room with a grey sofa, a brown leather armchair and bookshelves, with a glass door onto a sunroom.
  • Two white armchairs by a brick fireplace, with a small table and chairs under leaded glass windows and a beamed ceiling.
  • A yellow room with three black armchairs on a patterned rug, a metal leaf sculpture on the wall and a tall plant.
  • The labyrinth set into the studio floor, with a wooden fireplace surround against the far wall.
  • A long wooden dining table and chairs, with a fireplace and a leather sofa in the room beyond.
  • A sepia photograph of the house newly built in 1912, with bare ground and building rubble in front and a few people on the porch.
  • Four old sepia photographs of the newly built house from the front, both sides and the back, with the yard still bare and building debris on the ground.
  • An old photograph of Mrs McFarland in a long coat and feathered hat, standing with a baby carriage at the foot of the brick front steps.
  • An old photograph of baby Muriel McFarland propped against a cushion on a bench in the sunlit veranda, with her name written in ink below.

History

What happened here

  1. 1911 to 1912

    The house is built

    Construction begins in 1911 and finishes in 1912, in the Craftsman architectural style of the early twentieth century.

  2. 1912

    A tornado takes the roof

    A tornado tears the roof off the building and drops it in what later becomes the schoolyard of City Park Collegiate.

  3. 2004

    Deborah Black buys the house

    In April 2004 the house is sold to Deborah Black, who moves her communications company into it.

  4. 2006

    The main floor is restored

    Deborah Black restores the main floor and adapts the second floor for new use. The work is recognised by the City of Saskatoon.

  5. 2011

    The lower level becomes a studio

    The lower level is renovated, reinforced and given a heated floor, and opens for meditation, breathwork, and yoga.

  6. 2011

    The house is named McFarland House

    For its hundredth year, the house is named McFarland House, after the family who built it.

  7. 2011

    Prairie Hospice Society begins here

    Deborah Black, Jennifer Keane, and Sharon Fyke start Prairie Hospice Society in the house to support people facing advancing illness, death, and bereavement. It moves to the Community Service Village in 2021.

  8. 2022

    Queen St Health Collective opens

    Rooms on the second floor are set up for practitioners, and the collective begins working across all three floors of the house.

Elsewhere

In the news

  • A 2006 City of Saskatoon Heritage Award

    On 1 February 2006, the City of Saskatoon gave Deborah Black its 2006 Heritage Award for McFarland House.

  • WHOLifE Journal, November/December 2022

    The collective wrote a piece about the house and its history for the November/December 2022 issue of WHOLifE Journal.

    WHOLifE Journal, November/December 2022