Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a Canadian Prairie province, located between Alberta and Manitoba.

The population has hovered around one million in recent decades. The largest city is Saskatoon at 197,000 (in 2001), Regina. the provincial capital, numbered 178,000. Prince Albert came third at 34,300, followed by Moose Jaw at 31,000.

Resources

Agriculture

Saskatchewan is a major agricultural producer.

Mining

Potash

Saskatchewan is the world's largest exporter of potash, a vital ingredient in fertilizer, via the state-owned PotashCorp.

Petroleum

Like its neighbour to the west, Alberta, Saskatchewan has an oil and gas industry, though on a smaller scale. These deposits are part of the vast Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, stretching from British Columbia to Manitoba, as well as parts of Montana and North Dakota.

Oil wells

Saskatchewan's first commercial crude oil discovery was made in 1944. It produces approximately 17 percent of total Canadian oil production. Crude oil production in 2006 was a record 24.84 million cubic metres (156.3 million barrels). Remaining recoverable reserves at December 31, 2005 were estimated to be approximately 187 million cubic metres (1.18 billion barrels). Saskatchewan produces most of its petroleum from four major regions: Lloydminster, Kindersley-Kerrobert, Swift Current, and Weyburn-Estevan.

Oil Sands

The province's oil sands deposits are located principally in the Clearwater Valley area, near Churchill Lake. Unlike Alberta's booming Athabasca Oil Sands, Saskatechewan's deposits are located deeper and therefore cannot be surface-mined.

Culture

The Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival is North America's longest continuously running film festival.

Sports

see Canadian sports

The Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League became the 2007 Grey Cup champions.

History

Settlement

National policy set by the federal government, the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Hudson's Bay Company and associated land companies encouraged immigration. Exaggerated advertising campaigns promoted the benefits of prairie living. Potential immigrants read leaflets information painted Canada as a veritable garden of Eden, and downplayed the need for agricultural expertise. Ads in The Nor'-West Farmer by the Commissioner of Immigration implied that western land was blessed with water, wood, gold, silver, iron, copper, and cheap coal for fuel, all of which were readily at hand. Reality was far harsher, especially for the first arrivals who lived in sod houses. However eastern money poured in and by 1913, long term mortgage loans to Saskatchewan farmers had reached $65 million.

The dominant groups comprised British settlers from eastern Canada and Britain, who comprised about 50% of the population during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They played the leading role in establishing the basic institutions of plains society, economy and government.

Gender roles were sharply defined. Men were primarily responsible for breaking the land; planting and harvesting; building the house; buying, operating and repairing machinery; and handling finances. At first there were many single men on the prairie, or husbands whose wives were still back east, but they had a hard time. They realized the need for a wife. In 1901, there were 19,200 families, but this surged to 150,300 families only 15 years later. Wives played a central role in settlement of the prairie region. Their labor, skills, and ability to adapt to the harsh environment proved decisive in meeting the challenges. They prepared bannock, beans and bacon, mended clothes, raised children, cleaned, tended the garden, helped at harvest time and nursed everyone back to health. While prevailing patriarchal attitudes, legislation, and economic principles obscured women's contributions, the flexibility exhibited by farm women in performing productive and nonproductive labor was critical to the survival of family farms, and thus to the success of the wheat economy.

Province 1905-1918

When Saskatchewan became a province in 1905, political leaders at the time proclaimed its destiny was to become Canada's most powerful province. Saskatchewan embarked on an ambitious province-building program based on its Anglo-Canadian culture and wheat production for the export market. Population quintupled from 91,000 in 1901 to 492,000 to 1911, thanks to heavy immigration of farmers from the U.S., Germany and Scandinavia. Efforts were made to assimilate the newcomers to British Canadian culture and values.

The long-term prosperity of the province depended on the world price of grain, which headed steadily upward from the 1880s to 1920, then plunged down. Wheat output was increased by new strains, such as the "Marquis" strain which matured 8 days sooner and yielded 7 more bushels per acre than the previous standard, "Red Fife". The national output of wheat soared from 8 million bushels in 1896, to 26 million in 1901, reaching 151 million by 1921.

In the 1905 provincial elections, Liberals won 16 of 25 seats in Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan government bought out Bell Telephone Company in 1909, with the government owning the long-distance lines and left local service to small companies organized at the municipal level. Premier Walter Scott preferred government assistance to outright ownership because he thought enterprises worked better if citizens had a stake in running them; he set up the Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator Company in 1911. Despite pressure from farm groups for direct government involvement in the grain handling business, the Scott government opted to loan money to a farmer-owned elevator company. Saskatchewan in 1909 provided bond guarantees to railway companies for the construction of branch lines, alleviating the concerns of farmers who had trouble getting their wheat to market by wagon.

The province responded to the First World War in 1914 with patriotic enthusiasm and enjoyed the resultant economic boom. The price of wheat tripled and acreage seeded doubled. The wartime spirit of sacrifice intensified social reform movements that had predated the war and now came to fruition. Saskatchewan gave women the right to vote in 1916 and at the end 1916 passed a referendum to prohibit the sale of alcohol.

1919-39

The war created an angry agrarian protest movement. Prairie farmers had long considered themselves the victims of powerful corporations--grain companies, banks, and railways -- all based in Toronto and Montreal. Attacks on industrialists and financiers blamed high tariffs designed to protect manufacturers at the expense of farmers. During the war farmers felt doubly betrayed. The federal government first promised to exempt their sons from compulsory military service, then canceled the exemption. It imposed a ceiling on wheat prices when they were high, but removed the floor when they were low. The farmers' pent-up frustration led to the formation of the Progressive Party in several provinces; it sent 64 to Ottawa in the 1921 general election.

The Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association worked with the provincial Liberals and kept them in office until 1929, when a Conservative-led coalition was elected for a term. As wheat prices recovered the late 1920s were golden years. By 1927 Saskatchewan ranked first among the provinces in the production of wheat, oats, rye, and flax, and in sundry other areas. Most important, it ranked first in per capita wealth. With a population of 922,000 in 1931 ranked third in size, behind only Ontario and Quebec.

The Great Depression hit the prairies hard. The world market for wheat collapsed and per capita money income fell 75%. Relief expenditures in the province in 1937 exceeded $40 million, dwarfing the entire 1939 provincial budget of $23 million. The hard-pressed government imposed a new 2% sales tax to cover the promissory notes that had been given to teachers in lieu of salaries.

In 1930 Saskatoon initiated a series of "work for wages" schemes designed to provide the unemployed with unskilled manual jobs. Financed from municipal, provincial, and federal sources, but operated by the city, the projects kept unemployment to manageable levels at first. Before 1932, most experts saw the depression as a temporary anomaly, a short-term emergency requiring no more than short-term emergency measures. By 1932 it was getting much worse with no end in sight. By spring 1932, the federal and provincial governments abandoned expensive public works in favor of the cheaper, more efficient direct relief of giving out cash and foot baskets.

Tommy Douglas and CCF

A new political movement emerged, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF); its 1933 manifesto promised to eradicate capitalism and put in place a "full program of socialized planning which will lead to the establishment in Canada of the Co-operative Commonwealth." Tommy Douglas, (1904-86), a Baptist minister from working class origins, led the CCF to power from 1944-61. Douglas headed the first socialist government elected in Canada, and is recognized as the father of socialized medicine and the leader who put democratic socialism in the mainstream of Canadian politics.

The CCF won in June 1944 with a "Pocket Platform" calling for home ownership and debt reduction; increased old age pensions, mother's allowances, and disability care; medical, dental, and hospital services; equal education; free speech and religion; collective bargaining; and the encouragement of economic cooperatives. The CCF, while rhetorically socialist, did not nationalize banking or industry; it sought a mixed economy, including public, private, and cooperative sectors, with a strong role for private ownership in innovation and competition. In its first term the CCF passed a farm security act, and introduced the most pro-labour trade union act in North America. Saskatchewan became the first province to allow civil servants to organize unions (1944), the first to enshrine a bill of rights prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, colour, or creed (1947), the first to implement compulsory government automobile insurance (1946), and the first to institute a hospital insurance plan (1947).

The CCF was committed to efficiency-oriented planning. Douglas set up an Economic Advisory and Planning Board (EAPB), a cabinet committee with a supporting secretariat, charged with planning economic development strategies for the province and evaluating overall policies and programs. The EAPB evolved into two new agencies: the Budget Bureau and the Government Finance Office. The former was the secretariat for the Treasury Board, the committee of cabinet in charge of allocating budgetary expenditures. In addition, the Budget Bureau had an Organization and Methods unit, which surveyed the operations of various government departments and made recommendations on how they could be managed more effectively. Budgeting became more than the mechanical exercise of allocating money; it became the meeting point of the decision-making process, where all the Douglas government's diverse priorities were integrated.

The CCF set up eleven small Crown corporations including power and telephone utilities bus and airline companies, and ventures into sodium sulfate mining, a woolen mill, and a shoe factory. By 1949 the eleven corporations employed 3,000 workers and had annual revenues of $25 million.

Prosperity returned after 1945, and the population increased gradually. More dramatic was the movement from farms to towns and cities as farming became more mechanized and capital intensive. Increased production of oil, gas, and uranium, and the beginnings of a potash industry helped diversify the economy beyond just wheat.

Native policies

Douglas brought First Nations delegates together in 1946 to form a single organization to represent Indian interests. Three existing organizations merged into the Union of Saskatchewan Indians, which later became the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN). Douglas's EAPB prepared an in-depth analysis of the demographic, social, and economic challenges facing the First Nation population. In the 21st century the FSIN is a strong policy-making and program-delivery organization, arguably one of the most effective of its kind in Canada. CCF initiatives included encouraging northern aboriginals to trade their semi-nomadic lifestyles for lives in urban settings. The establishment of Kinoosao on Reindeer Lake provides an example of how CCF planners established new villages; community development processes excluded local people. Yet, in spite of considerable resistance, various incentives and coercive measures resulted in the movement of nearly all northerners to permanent settlements.

Socialized medicine

In 1959, Douglas promised universal medical care insurance, based on pre-payment, quality service and government administration, and through a scheme acceptable to both doctors and patients. The election of 1960 was fought on this issue; the doctors campaigning against it, but the CCF won.

The CCF comprised two contradictory traditions - a group aligned with a rational, bureaucratic, statist approach to government and a faction dedicated to the populist ideals of democratic participation. The struggle between these two sometimes overlapping factions ended, at least temporarily, with the resignation of Douglas and the succession of Woodrow S. Lloyd (1913-72) as premier in November 1961. Lloyd's statist approach to government dominated the CCF and its policies during the critical period of the introduction of a province-wide system of state-sponsored medical insurance. No referendum or local control through community clinics was permitted in the implementation of the medical insurance plan. The plan was presented to the public not for its approval but for its acceptance. The CCF did consider community involvement necessary. After twenty years in office, a centrist-bureaucratic ideology dominated the party and the anti-statist decentralist in the Saskatchewan CCF was in retreat.

The Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Bill became law in November 1961, and the medical society announced doctors would refuse to participate, complaining that it would bring regimentation and would interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. The doctors did strike for a few weeks in July, 1962, but returned when new legislation allowed them to practise outside the system. Eventually the Saskatchewan plan was so popular that in 1968 the federal government extended it nationwide.

Douglas, who led the federal New Democratic Party, a formal alliance between the CCF and organized labour, was defeated in the federal election of 1962, due to the backlash against the CCF's medical care program. In 1964 the Liberal party swept to victory behind Ross Thatcher, ending 20 years of CCF government. The Liberals had launched a strong party membership drive and engaged in vigorous campaigning on a platform demanding more private enterprise and industrial development; it promised substantial tax cuts. The CCF's internal factionalism, together with lingering reaction to the medical care crisis of 1962 and the separate school issue, contributed to the CCF defeat.

The impact of the Douglas government on the rest of the country was profound, both in public policy and the bureaucratic machinery devised to implement it. After the defeat in 1964, the former administration's influence continued to ripple out from Regina, as senior civil servants left the province and became influential elsewhere.

Recent history

Thatcher and his Liberals were reelected in 1967, but were defeated in a landslide by Allan E. Blakeney and the NDP in 1971. The NDP was reelected in 1975, as the long-dormant Progressive Conservative party made a comeback. The NDP decided to nationalize the potash industry in 1976-78 by buying out 45% of the mining interests. Nationalization was the central issue in the 1978 elections; the NDP held its own but the Liberals were wiped out and the Progressive Conservative party grew. Prosperity was at hand, with good prices for wheat and expansion of oil and uranium. Voters went to the polls in 1982 as the economy started slipping, with falling prices for wheat, oil, potash and uranium. The NDP was routed after a dozen years in power, dropping from 45 seats to 9 while the the Progressive Conservative party took all the other 55 seats. The new premier was 37-year-old economist Grant Devine, who won with a simple populist message: the people should share in the wealth of the province rather than watch it contribute to the expansion of the 24 Crown corporations. The new government ended the 20% tax on gasoline and lower interest rates on mortgages. It was reelected in 1986 and began selling off crown corporations. The government said the companies would operate more profitably as private businesses. The opposition NDP warned that the sales would result in loss of control over the province's key economic sectors.

The Progressive Conservatives, based in rural areas and small towns, lost many rural voters after pushing through the unpopular U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1989. As a result, the NDP was returned to power in 1991. Scandals hurt the Progressive Conservatives, who gave way to the Saskatchewan party. The NDP won reelection in 1995 and 1999, and (in coalition with the Liberals) in 2003.

In 2005 two-thirds of the province's population lived in urban areas, there was a diverse economic base, and citizens enjoyed a rich cultural life.

The rural towns have evolved from a very large number of widely dispersed grain delivery points in 1900, through a period of expansion over the first thirty years of 20th century, to a pattern of relatively concentrated population and businesses in an urban-based economy by 2000. Mechanization, especially the rapid replacement of horses by tractors after 1945, meant one family could operate a much larger farm, so some farmers bought out their neighbors, who then moved to town along with the surplus children. The rural economy diversified far beyond its exclusively agricultural base, with service employment in education and medicine important, as well as small-scale factories. Better highways, along with cell phones and internet coverage encouraged a concentration in fewer, larger centers, which drew customers and clients from a wide radius. Most rural communities declined continuously over the second half of the 20th century, but some grew in population, expanded their economic base, and experienced an increase in their market areas for a limited range of goods and services. These communities also became centers of employment for their own and surrounding (farm and nonfarm) population.

Bibliography

Surveys and reference

• The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan: A Living Legacy. U. of Regina Canadian Plains Research Center, 2005. 1071 pp.
• The Canadian Encyclopedia (2008) a very good starting point
• The Dictionary of Canadian Biography(1966-2006), scholarly biographies of every important person who died by 1930
• Barnhart, Gordon L., ed. Saskatchewan Premiers of the Twentieth Century. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2004. 418 pp.
• Boswell, Randy. Province with a Heart: Celebrating 100 Years in Saskatchewan (2005) 224pp, popular excerpts and text search
• Friesen, Gerald. The Canadian Prairies: A History (2nd ed. 1987)
• Pitsula, James M. "Disparate Duo" Beaver 2005 85(4): 14-24, a comparison with Alberta, Fulltext in EBSCO
• Waiser, Bill, and John Perret. Saskatchewan: A New History (2005), 563 pp. the major scholarly survey

Specialized studies

• Barnhart, Gordon L. Peace, Progress and Prosperity: A Biography of Saskatchewan's First Premier, T. Walter Scott (2000) excerpt and text search
• Calder, Alison and Wardhaugh, Robert, ed. History, Literature, and the Writing of the Canadian Prairies.U. of Manitoba Press, 2005. 310 pp.
• Cottrell, Michael. "The Irish in Saskatchewan, 1850-1930: a Study of Intergenerational Ethnicity." Prairie Forum 1999 24(2): 185-209. Counting both Catholics and Protestants Irish comprised 10% of the population
• Dale-Burnett, Lisa, ed. Saskatchewan Agriculture: Lives Past and Present. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, (2006) 205 pp. short biographies
• DeClercy, Cristine. "Women and the Public Sphere in Saskatchewan, 1905-2005." Prairie Forum 2007 32(2): 357-382. Issn: 0317-6282
• Emery, George. The Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896-1914. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 2001. 259 pp.
• Emery, George. The Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896-1914. (2001) 259 pp.
• Fairbanks, C. and S.B. Sundberg. Farm Women on the Prairie Frontier. (1983)
• Friesen, Victor Carl. Where the Rivers Run: Stories of the Saskatchewan and the People Drawn to Its Shores. (2001.) 480 pp.
• Harding, Jim, ed. Social Policy and Social Justice: The NDP Government in Saskatchewan during the Blakeney Years. (1995).
• Hayden, Michael. Seeking a Balance: The University of Saskatchewan, 1907-1982 (1983) online edition
• Hewitt, Steve. Riding to the Rescue: The Transformation of the RCMP in Alberta and Saskatchewan, 1914-1939. (2006). 205 pp. excerpt and text search
• Hodgson, Heather, ed. Saskatchewan Writers: Lives Past and Present. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2004. 247 pp. short biographies
• Johnson, A. W. Dream No Little Dreams: A Biography of the Douglas Government of Saskatchewan, 1944-1961. (2004). 370 pp. excerpts and text search
• Jones, David C. Empire of Dust: Settling and Abandoning the Prairie Dry Belt. (1987) 316 pp.
• Keahey, Deborah. Making It Home: Place in Canadian Prairie Literature. U. of Manitoba Press, 1998. 178 pp.
• Lalone, Meika and LaClare, Elton. Discover Saskatchewan: A Guide to Historic Sites. (1998). 206 pp.
• Langford, N. "Childbirth on the Canadian Prairies 1880-1930." Journal of Historical Sociology, 1995. Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 278-302.
• Lipset, Seymour Martin. Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan, a Study in Political Sociology (1950) online edition
• Laycock, David. Populism and Democratic Thought in the Canadian Prairies, 1910 to 1945. U. of Toronto Press, 1990. 369 pp.
• Leeson, Howard, ed. Saskatchewan Politics: Into the Twenty-First Century. Regina: Canadian Plains Researcg Center, 2001. 425 pp.
• Palmer, Howard. The Settlement of the West (1977) online edition
• Millions, Erin. "Breaking the Mould: a Historiographical Review of Saskatchewan Women's History, 1880-1930." Saskatchewan History 2002 54(2): 31-49.
• Olfert, M. Rose and Jack C. Stabler, "Rural Communities of the Saskatchewan Prairie Landscape." Prairie Forum 2000 25(1): 123-138. Issn: 0317-6282
• Parson, Edna Tyson. Land I Can Own: A Biography of Anthony Tyson and the Pioneers Who Homesteaded with Him in Neidpath, Saskatchewan (1981)
• Pitsula, James M. "Muscular Saskatchewan: Provincial Self-identity in the 1920s." Saskatchewan History 2002 54(2): 6-17.
• Pitsula, James M. and Ken Rasmussen. Privatizing a Province: The New Right in Saskatchewan. (1990), an attack from the left
• Rollings-Magnusson, Sandra. "Canada's Most Wanted: Pioneer Women on the Western Prairies." Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 2000 37(2): 223-238. Issn: 0008-4948 Fulltext: Ebsco

• Smith, David E. Prairie Liberalism: The Liberal Party in Saskatchewan, 1905-71 (1975) 352 pages
• Stewart, Walter. The Life and Political Times of Tommy Douglas. (2003)
• Thompson, Christian, ed. Saskatchewan First Nations: Lives Past and Present (2004), short biographies excerpt and text search
• Thompson, John Herd. Forging the Prairie West. (1998)
• Wardhaugh, Robert A. Mackenzie King and the Prairie West. (2000). 328 pp.
• Wardhaugh, Robert A., ed. Toward Defining the Prairies: Region, Culture, and History. (2001). 234 pp.
• Warnock, John W. Saskatchewan: The Roots of Discontent and Protest (2004) 256 pages excerpts and text search
• Warren, Jim and Carlisle, Kathleen, eds. On the Side of the People: A History of Labour in Saskatchewan. Regina: Coteau Books, 2005. 344 pp.
• Weir, Erin. Saskatchewan at a Crossroads: Fiscal Policy and Social Democratic Politics (2004) excerpts and text search

Primary sources

• Kates, Jack. Don't You Know It's Forty Below? Cypress, Calif.: Seal, 2000. 451 pp. life in Sheho
• Paget, Amelia M. People of the Plains. (1909, reprint 2004). 199 pp.
• Thomas, Lewis Herbert, and T. C. Douglas. The Making of a Socialist: The Recollections of T.C. Douglas (1984) online edition