WILLIAM D. CRAIG.
 

	In the city of Regina no one stands higher in the esteem of his fellow
citizens than William D. Craig, farmer, pioneer telephone contractor,
business man, sportsman and public-spirited citizen.  Born in Bruce
county, Ontario, on the 6th of June, 1862, he is the son of Robert and
Margaret (Mullins) Craig, both of whom are deceased. The father was
a native of Ballymena, Ireland, while the mother was born, reared and
married in Ontario. William D. Craig is the oldest of a family of six
children, four of whom are living. The only other member of the family
in Saskatchewan is a brother, Joseph, who manages a farm near Unity.
Robert Craig was a farmer by occupation and in his later years became
interested in the cattle business. In 1858 he moved down into Kansas,
where he lived for eighteen years on a homestead which he proved up. It
was his manner of doing business to go south into Texas to purchase a
herd of cattle, which he would then drive through to the northern mar-
kets, at times having as many as twelve thousand head of cattle to care
for. He and his wife were both consistent members of the Presbyterian
church, and in regard to Canadian politics he held Conservative views.
	William D. Craig was educated in the public schools of Kansas and
Bruce county, Ontario, and completed his school days at the high school
of Kincardine. His first position in the business world was that of a
clerk in a dry goods store, which he held for a year and a half. At the
end of that time he went to work in a mill to learn the trade, spending
two years in this type of employment in Ontario. In 1882 he came west
to Manitoba, where he found a position in a mill at Portage la Prairie,
eventually rising to the post of second miller and remaining there three
winters.  Meanwhile, he took up a homestead near Virden, Manitoba.
In company with two other young men of that vicinity he built a mill at
Virden in 1885, which they ran in partnership for three years. At the
end of that time Mr. Craig sold his interest in the milling business to
devote his time to grain trading at the same place. For twenty years he
bought and sold grain in Manitoba, with substantial profit's to himself.
After a time, however, he started to search for a wider field of activity,
with the result that he formed a partnership with H. C. Simpson to do
contracting work for the railroads.  Their energies were soon directed
into the business of constructing telephone lines and the firm erected more
than a thousand miles of line for various Manitoba municipalities. Fol-
lowing the dissolution of the partnership in 1910 Mr. Craig continued in
the telephone construction business and has since put up a third of the
lines now in Saskatchewan, whither he moved in 1912. He built one of
the first lines in the province for the government and now has an impos-
ing total of twenty thousand miles of the magic wires to his credit, which
he hopes to increase to a much larger figure before many years have
passed into history.
	Like many men of wealth and constructive business ability, Mr. Craig
has attained outstanding success in more than one line of endeavor and
is equally at ease in a half dozen different roles. As a farmer he can
point to a splendid record of forty-one years, for he has operated a farm
ever since he first went to homesteading as a young man in 1882. His
second season he cultivated forty acres of land which he had prepared
for the planting of seed. That little patch of forty acres would be com-
pletely lost in the eight hundred acres he has in crops at the present time,
while some years he has cultivated as high as seventeen hundred acres
of land. Two sections of his land are located near Regina; the others
are in different parts of the best agricultural districts of the Canadian
west.
	Quite recently the oil industry has attracted Mr. Craig's interest and
capital. In the name of the Queen City Oil Company, of which he is
president, he is conducting operations on one thousand and eighty acres
of land in the Sunburst field in Montana, where two wells are being
drilled. The surveys of this field are most encouraging and should Mr.
Craig strike the oil he is justified in believing is underlying his land, he
will be one of the pioneers in the oil industry in western Canada, an
industry that will undoubtedly be one of the foremost in that region in
a few years. Prospecting, drilling and piping oil from the fields to the
refineries all take time, patience and money-requisites that Mr. Craig
can supply beyond the ability of most men. For it is only the person of
great wealth who can afford to undertake the development of untouched
natural resources, and the province of Saskatchewan is fortunate in
having among its citizens a man who has the resources, ability and in-
clination to take up such work. Another of Mr. Craig's financial interests
is the Sterling Security Company, capitalized at two hundred thousand
dollars, of which he is now president and formerly was vice president
for three or four years.
	While he was living at Portage la Prairie, in the early days of his life
in Manitoba, Mr. Craig was married to Miss Lilla Barton MacDonald,
who was born and educated in Toronto. They have become the parents
of three daughters: Amy, the widow of. the late John Strang of Regina;
Hattie, who married James S. Balfour, an attorney of Regina; and Jean,
who lives at home. The family is affiliated with the Knox Presbyterian
church.
	Mr. Craig is a Mason, belonging to the blue lodge; is a member of
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Canadian Order of Foresters,
and the United Workmen.  As a curler he took several prizes in the
province. Baseball is another of his favorites. In fact, he is given the
credit for having "put baseball on the map" in western Canada, for he
organized the first team in Virden, which took the championship for
three years in succession.  One of the most admirable of Mr. Craig's
many good qualities is his public-spiritness. His personal efforts have
ever been of a constructive nature, his undertakings of the type that bene-
fit the entire community in which they are conducted. Moreover, he has
always been ready to assist any movement that has as its object the
public betterment and has been himself the instigator of many an enter-
prise that has contributed to the upbuilding of his city or 
neighborhood.



Bibliography follows: