Robertson College

Robertson College was founded in 1911 after founder M.I. Robertson emigrated from Scotland to live with her sister and brother-in-law in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In Edinburgh, Scotland, Mrs. Robertson worked in the city hall. It was thought that Mrs. Robertson was married and had a husband who had been a ship’s sea captain, but there is no proof of this. Back then it was not proper protocol to ask, or to speculate private matters. Nonetheless Mrs. Robertson came to Canada with her young daughter. When she arrived to Canada she lived in a small shack with her daughter, sister and brother-in-law near the railway. She and her sister then started a court reporting business by the name of Dominion Stenographic Service. Part of her work was taking in “apprentice” based students, Mrs. Robertson, her sister and employers noticed the need and the quality of apprentices that they were putting forth. It was in 1919 that the judicial courts began to hire their own shorthand stenographers; which helped evolve the business into a shorthand school. In the 1921 Saskatoon Henderson Directory it was noted that Mrs. Robertson began to advertise her business as Dominion Business College. In 1923 it was then advertised as the Robertson Shorthand and Secretarial School when her sister and husband moved to British Columbia.