When William Wensley Smith, an Englishman from Woolwich, immigrated to Canada in 1903 as a teenager, he didn't have much more than the shirt on his back and a few shillings in his pocket.
William Wensley Smith, or WW as he was better known, worked as a farm labourer in Manitoba before settling in Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan, where he spent a few years as an employee in a general store.
When he arrived in Swift Current, Smith formed a partnership with an acquaintance, Alexander Wallace, and the two became official agents of Confederation Life.
In 1914, Smith married Islay Fyffe, the daughter of a staff sergeant in the Royal North-West Mounted Police, and they eventually had four children: Elizabeth, Jack, William Jr., and Jerry.
Smith served in the government of James Thomas Milton Anderson during a time of severe economic hardship, social upheaval, and bitter political rivalries.
In 1931, he helped persuade the government to create and fund the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, located almost next door to Swift Current.
It became Canada's only interprovincial park when space in Alberta was designated as parkland in the 1950s, and is adjacent to historic Fort Walsh, the North-West Mounted Police post established in 1878.