'Moose Jaw Murders and other Deaths' is his most popular historical book he's written, though it's not his only one.

Bruce Fairman, a historian who chose to write about Moose Jaw's past, has gathered stories, information, photographs and more to compile 5 books, which can be found around Moose Jaw in various shops and online.

"I expanded on my first book. Which started essentially as a family tree, and has gone nuts. And that was the early years book. That's been updated over the years several times. Finally it got to the point that I needed 2 books. So I took it, and broke it in half. The main difference now is photographs. I managed to track down about 500 photographs of old Moose Jaw. There's tons of great old photographs in there."

Fairman said that he was given access to Moose Jaw archives for an entire weekend, which allowed him to expand his current work.
"2 years ago, they gave me access, saying you've got a weekend, get in there and do your best. And I just copied everything I could get my hands on, high quality. it's stuff that hasn't been seen for many many years in the city."

His other well known project is 'Then and Now', which recalls the history of Main St, and Fairman said it's designed to be like a tour.
"It's downtown Moose Jaw, a walk with history. The theory being you carried the book with you when you walk around. It's Main St. Moose Jaw, starting at Manitoba St, up as far as Athabasca, and down the far side again. A lot of detail on High and River St. which was hard because there's nothing there anymore. It covers off as far back as 100 years. I don't write much new stuff. And anything that's happened after I was born doesn't interest me. That's not history, that's remembering."

One of his lesser known works is a book called Sitting Bull's Moose Jaw Sioux.
"My grandfather moved here from England in 1912, and as a young man he used to tell me stories, as grandfathers do, over and over again. About going down and looking down in the valley, and watching what he called the 'Red Indians' down there. He found it quite amazing. I heard that story for many years. Then I heard that was actually Sitting Bull's group. So then I started to do research. Most books I don't tend to do in one lump. That book probably took 5 years. I wrote a little bit, and then I ran out of things to write about. And then I started doing history of the Sioux themselves, and where they originated and they came into the west. I still didn't have enough for a book, really. And then I happened to run across 60 old hand written letters. I spent a whole winter trying to read them, and that was the book, essentially."

Fairman said he might have one more in him, involving what he calls the Boom years, from 1910 to 1914, when most of downtown Moose Jaw was erected.
"Most of it is downtown now. City Hall, Hammond Block, the big buildings downtown. City buildings. There's more building done in 1912 and 1913 then for the next 65 years. There's many things. They paved the streets from wooden blocks. They put the lights in."

When it comes to re purposing a building that has once been left idol, Fairman believes that it's about finding an angle of use.
"When they first did the CPR, and converted it into a liquor store, they saved it from being demolished. That was the next step. That was my first year being on the Heritage Board in town, and I got talking to one of the fellas in Regina. And he pointed out that with old buildings, it's got to be a functional useful building. You can't put a million bucks into it and have it hang on a wall. Unless you can make it useful, it's no use. For example, the Nat. My father got his license card there in 1930. It's history right, for all of the city. But you start thinking what can you do with it. Well, there's no parking around there. You can take away part of the park for parking, but you don't want to do that. It becomes a matter of what you use it for."