Perspectives of Saskatchewan 9780887551833, 9780887553530

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P e r s p e c t i v e s o f S a s k at c h e wa n

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P e r s p e c t i v e s o f S a s k at c h e wa n

J e n e M . P o rt e r

University of Manitoba Press

© The Authors 2009 University of Manitoba Press Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada R3T 2M5 www.umanitoba.ca/uofmpress Printed in Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the University of Manitoba Press, or, in the case of photocopying or any other reprographic copying, a licence from ACCESS COPYRIGHT (Canadian Copyright Licencing Agency) 6 Adelaide Street East, Suite 901, Toronto, Ontario M5C 1H6, www.accesscopyright.ca. Cover and interior design: Relish Design Studio “Dried Out” (1933) and “Beaver Creek Trail” (1929) by Augustus Kenderdine are reproduced by permission of the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Perspectives of Saskatchewan / edited by Jene M. Porter. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-88755-183-3 (bound) 1. Saskatchewan--History. 2. Saskatchewan--Civilization. I. Porter, J. M. (Jene M.), 1937FC3511.P47 2008

971.24

C2008-902255-6

The University of Manitoba Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for its publication program provided by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage, Tourism and Sport. Support for the publication of this book has also been provided by the President’s Office, the University of Saskatchewan.

Contents i x • P r e fa c e Jene M. Porter XI • I n t r o du c t i o n David E. Smith 1 • P e o pl e o f t h e L a n d : P o pul at i o n C h a n g e s i n S a s k at c h e w a n Peter S. Li 1 3 • S a s k at c h e w a n ’ s F o r g o t t e n N o r t h : 1 9 0 5 t o 2 0 0 5 Robert M. Bone 3 7 • S a s k at c h e w a n : A D i s t i n c t P o l i t i c a l Cult u r e David E. Smith 5 7 • T h e M y t h o f M ult i c ult u r a l i s m i n E a r ly S a s k at c h e w a n B i l l Wa i s e r 7 5 • m a s k ê k o - s â k a h i k a n i h k : O n e Hu n d r e d Y e a r s f o r a S a s k at c h e w a n F i r s t N at i o n M a r y E l l e n Tu r p e l - L a f o n d 1 0 5 • S a s k at c h e w a n ’ s P at h t o E c o n o m i c D e v e l o pm e n t James M. Pitsula 1 2 5 • O n e Hu n d r e d Y e a r s o f E v o lu t i o n i n t h e Ru r a l E c o n o my Jack C. Stabler and Rose Olfert

1 4 9 • C a n a d a’ s “ C o - o p e r at i v e P r o v i n c e ” : I n d i v i du a l i s m a n d M u t u a l i s m i n a S e t t l e r S o c i e t y, 1 9 0 5 t o 2 0 0 5 Brett Fairbairn 1 7 5 • M e d i c a r e : S a s k at c h e w a n ’ s G i f t t o t h e N at i o n ? H a r l e y D . D i c k i n s o n a n d R e n é e To r g e r s o n 1 9 9 • T h e P r a i r i e Fa c e o f L a b o u r Beth Bilson 2 1 5 • T h e P e o pl e ’ s U n i v e r s i t y ? T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f S a s k at c h e w a n a n d t h e P r o v i n c e o f S a s k at c h e w a n Michael Hayden 2 3 3 • S c i e n c e i n S a s k at c h e w a n : T h e E a r ly Y e a r s R o b e r t J . Wo o d s 2 5 5 • Cl a i m i n g S a s k at c h e w a n : L a n d s c a p e P a i n t i n g f r o m 1905 to 1950 Keith Bell 2 7 3 • Ab s t r a c t A r t o n t h e P r a i r i e s Eli Bornstein 2 8 9 • W r i t i n g S a s k at c h e w a n : T h e F i r s t Hu n d r e d Y e a r s Neil Besner 3 0 7 • W o m e n ’ s L e g i s l at i v e a n d P o l i t i c a l P a r t i c i p at i o n i n S a s k at c h e w a n , 1 9 0 5 t o 2 0 0 5 Cristine de Clercy 3 2 9 • A n Amb i gu o u s I n h e r i ta n c e : C h u r c h i n S a s k at c h e w a n Lynn Caldwell and Christopher Lind 3 5 1 • S a s k at c h e w a n ’ s D i a s p o r a Mark Abley 3 6 9 • N o t e s o n C o n t r i bu t o r s

l i s t o f i llu s t r at i o n s

Following Page 274 1. Sioux Parfleche, ca. 1900 (painted rawhide), from Gaylord Torrence, The American Indian Parfleche: A Tradition of Abstract Painting (Des Moines, IA: Des Moines Art Center, 1994). 2. Eli Bornstein, Aluminum Construction (“Tree of Knowledge”), 1956, Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation Building, Saskatoon. 3. Robert Murray, Fountain, 1959, welded steel, Saskatoon City Hall, Saskatoon. 4. William Perehudoff, Mural, painted canvas, detail, 1966, Frances Morrison Public Library, Saskatoon. 5. Don Foulds, Welded Steel Sculpture, 1978, Dental Clinic Building, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.

8. Randy Woolsey and Greg Hardy, Ceramic Mural, 1979, Sturdy Stone Building, Saskatoon. 6. Jack Sures, Ceramic Mural, 1979, Sturdy Stone Building, Saskatoon. 7. Eli Bornstein, Four-Part Structurist Construction, enamel on aluminum on welded steel frame, 1983, Wascana Centre Authority Administration Building, Regina. 9. Douglas Bentham, Head, welded steel, 2000, currently on Saskatoon City Hall grounds, Saskatoon. 10. Douglas Bentham, Unfurled, stainless steel, 2004, 25th Street Bridge, Saskatoon. 11. Eli Bornstein, Hexaplane Structurist Relief, acrylic enamel on aluminum, 2003, Synchrotron—Canadian Light Source Building, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. 12. Augustus Kenderdine, Dried Out, 1933, oil on canvas, collection of Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada, 57.41.10. 13. Augustus Kenderdine, Beaver Creek Trail, 1929, oil on canvas, collection of Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada, 57.42.16.

P r e fa c e J e n e M . Po r t e r

To include all the possible perspectives on a century in Saskatchewan would fill many volumes. In fact, there are over nine hundred local and community histories within Saskatchewan, and in each the people and land can be seen from a different perspective. For some a reflection upon the land would include the beautiful esker near Nipawin or a small but sandy beach in a cove at the upper end of Besnard Lake or fields of yellow canola and blue flax in bloom surrounding a stately Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The authors of the essays within this collection have reflected upon the land and its impact upon Saskatchewan’s people and upon the inevitable changes that a century contains of despair, hope, and achievement. For some the reflection will include the community of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation; others will note the indispensable role of the churches in shaping the life of the people; the artistic and literary contributions will be noted by others; still others will cite government policies or economic developments or the role of various social movements. For a province that was endowed neither with a superabundance of natural resources nor with a large and growing population, it has been an extraordinary hundred years. As just one measure, we began with sod houses and buffalo skins but ended with one of the world’s great research centres, the



Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Canadian Light Source. The land and the people of this province make Saskatchewan Canada’s finest secret. The task of assembling the essays in this book was more protracted than the editor and editorial board originally imagined. Many of the contributors have endured a lengthy wait before seeing their essays published. We are most appreciative of their patience. We gratefully acknowledge the generous grants provided by President Peter MacKinnon of the University of Saskatchewan and by the Canadian Institute for Society and Humanity, Mrs. Myrna Bentley, chair. Last, the Department of Political Studies, Professor Donald C. Story, chair, has continued to provide assistance throughout the months of preparation. On the prairie south and a bit east of Swift Current, two unpaved roads cross, and there is a sign post with boards pointing in several directions. Each spring for many years an elderly lady took a can of paint and carefully printed on the boards the names and mileage for several hamlets, all of which had by then returned to the prairie. Lest we forget, she painted the names … a litany of love for Saskatchewan.

I n t r o du c t i o n David E. Smith

Centenaries are a time for celebration and for taking stock. Frequently, too, they are occasions for hyperbole about dreams fulfilled and futures secured. Saskatchewan began life as a province a hundred years ago in 1905 already captivated by the lure of superlatives: it was, said the boosters of the day, “the last, best West.” For a time, it was. A sixfold population increase in its first decade made the province the third largest in the country, a position it held until the 1951 census. The twin catastrophes of depression and drought severed contact with the province’s original promise, but the economic prosperity that accompanied war and, especially, post-war mechanized agriculture renewed optimism, so that at the Golden Jubilee, halfway along the hundredyear march, the future looked much as it had at the beginning. The last quarter century has demonstrated the error of that assumption. From once being the most populous and fastest growing of the Prairie provinces, Saskatchewan has become the smallest, with a population only slightly larger than in 1931. Nonetheless, that static total disguises a demographic transformation. Saskatchewan is no longer overwhelmingly, or even significantly, rural. The “unsettlement” of the land has fed the growth of two medium-size cities and a handful of smaller ones. The countryside is increasingly deserted; abandoned villages are not uncommon; and crossroad 7-11s

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have become the new century’s alternative to the communities of the last. The contrast between then—that is, any time up to 1930—and now is more striking still. Where once Saskatchewan was a province of immigrants and the birthplace, in fact if not in name, of multiculturalism, today few of its residents are not native born. Interprovincial migration occurs, but the direction of the movement is out of, and not into, the province. Once a recipient of diaspora, it is now a donor. In consequence, the province has gone from being home to the youngest population in Canada to its oldest. Intraprovincial migration is just as striking a phenomenon. In addition to the rural-to-urban shift, there is another massive migration underway—of Aboriginal people from northern Saskatchewan and from reserves in the south—into the province’s few major cities. The implications of these multiple demographic changes for the prosperity and social cohesion of the province are enormous and cannot be ignored. Nor are they in the chapters that follow. One advantage of a centennial book is that it can be selective in the treatment of its subject. Not everything can be included. For this reason, Perspectives of Saskatchewan is neither a general history nor a survey of the province’s development. Arguably, some of the essays might be categorized as historical in nature, and some synoptic, but others reconceptualize aspects of the province’s life. Nonetheless, all share a heightened alertness to the past and to its weight on the present. In a centennial book whose subject is Saskatchewan, it is difficult not to talk about the dimensions of time and space. These are recurring themes whether the topic is, for instance, the North (that half of the province north of Prince Albert and which alone of non-urban areas is growing in population) or cooperative societies, the economy, or religion, each of which had to serve one of the most widely dispersed populations in the country: it is a fact, although far from a trivial one, that Saskatchewan boasts the largest network of roads in the country. Closing of railway branch lines began decades ago; allowing paved roads to revert to gravel or dirt roads to prairie is a more recent public policy response to a common condition: rural depopulation. No one aware of western Canadian history can be ignorant of Saskatchewan’s early pre-eminence as a grain-growing province or of grain’s pre-eminent contribution to the national economy. In an historical line that included fish, fur, and timber, grain was twentieth-century-Canada’s great staple. But the tense is in the past, for no one knowledgeable about modern Canadian society can be unaware of Saskatchewan’s eclipse. The contrast with Alberta’s growth and prosperity is too great. How to account for the decline? The essays make

Introduction

clear that “the last, best West” of immigration lore needs to have its emphasis shifted from “best” to “last.” Saskatchewan was built with nineteenth-century technology. After 1929, its economic history was the story of adjustment necessitated by adoption of twentieth-century technologies. If Saskatchewan was at one time the foundation of the national economy, it was also for many decades a pillar of the national Liberal party. It is easy today to forget that prairie allegiance, in part because politics after 1944 was so identified with the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the New Democratic Party. Such strongly held partisan sentiment can obscure the central point that for most of its history Saskatchewan played a role in national politics far out of proportion to its size and resources. The contraction of national political influence is on a par with reduced economic importance. Still, the memory of past political achievements remains a powerful force in electoral contests. Invocation of the spirit of medicare is never distant, although less publicly familiar reforms need also to be recalled. Among these was the passage in 1944 of the Trade Union Act, which provided for collective bargaining, including in the public service. The word “static” was used above to describe Saskatchewan’s meagre population growth. Yet, as also noted, figures can mislead. Much is happening demographically in Saskatchewan; what is not taking place is growth. A contradiction between demographic reality and appearance has happened before. As in 1905, its source lay in the attention paid (or more accurately, not paid) to the First Nations and Métis peoples. This was true in matters of public policy, because the federal government retained the natural resources of the Prairie provinces until 1930 and because its jurisdiction extended to First Nations. But it was also true when the subjects were art and literature. The featureless, untouched landscape, as depicted or described by central Canadian and European immigrants, distorted what the settler saw. The same could be said of newcomers to Australia and South Africa; that is why New South Wales and the Orange Free State, along with the Qu’Appelle Valley of Saskatchewan, appear in paintings by English artists to resemble the Home Counties. Most telling is what (or who) is missing from the picture. Invisible, thus unrepresented in pictures of Saskatchewan life, First Nations and Métis are absent from the chronicle of building a province. Unacknowledged, perhaps; inactive, no. That is the story of one Saskatchewan First Nation. Whether recognized or not by those outside its boundaries, the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation was as involved in community building

xiii

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Perspectives of Saskatchewan

over the past century as any other association or group in the province. Indeed, more than others. Because of the authority of the Department of Indian Affairs, the First Nations were confronted regularly by the question of who was or was not part of their community. This question is as relevant today, when large numbers of First Nations people gravitate from reserves to the cities, as at any time in the past. Where, the reader might ask, is the celebration in these centenary essays? Not through reaffirming the practices or the ideals identified with the province’s founding. Saskatchewan today is another country whose complexion and way of life have permanently altered. Dimensions of that change are evident whether the subject under discussion is religion or the arts, politics, or the economy. Saskatchewan has changed over the last century less because of external factors than because of internal social and economic transformation. The hermetic world of one Saskatchewan, whose principal features were a settler society and rural agriculture, has retreated before a new community of many Saskatchewans in which rural life plays but a declining part. The Saskatchewan of the twenty-first century is one of many divisions—urban and rural, north and south, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. The essays that follow touch on these elemental but crucial dichotomies.

P e o pl e o f t h e L a n d : P o pul at i o n C h a n g e s i n S a s k at c h e w a n Pe t e r S . L i

Saskatchewan started the twentieth century with a population of only 91,279 people.1 Shortly after it became a separate province from the North-West Territories in 1905, the size of its population exploded, reaching almost half a million people in 1911, and then three-quarters of a million in 1921. By 1921, Saskatchewan’s population accounted for about 8.6 percent of Canada’s population. However, throughout the twentieth century there was no other significant population growth in Saskatchewan that matched the scale of the 1910s and 1920s. In fact, a review of one hundred years of population history indicated that Saskatchewan only managed to enlarge its population in noticeable magnitude in the two decades after the province was formed. Thereafter, it merely maintained a population level between 800,000 to 1 million. By the end of the twentieth century, Saskatchewan’s population was slightly over 1 million people, but it made up only 3.4 percent of Canada’s population. This paper discusses the changes in population in Saskatchewan between 1901 and 2001, and explains how the very same economic and social forces that brought its prosperity and growth in the early part of the twentieth century were also responsible for its relative population decline later in the century.

Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan’s Population, 1901–2001

The population increase in Saskatchewan in the 1910s and 1920s was precipitous, especially compared to its subsequent population change throughout the rest of the century (Figure 1). After the 1920s, the population stayed within a narrow range, fluctuating between 800,000 to 1 million people. Meanwhile, Canada’s population also grew rapidly in the 1910s and 1920s, but it continued to rise later in the century, especially in the period after World War II, increasing from 8.9 million in 1921 to over 10 million in 1931, and then to 14 million in 1951 (see Figure 2). Fifty years later, in 2001, Canada’s population stood at 31 million people, increasing threefold as compared to its population size in 1931. Because of the difference in the initial increase at the beginning of the twentieth century and subsequent population changes, Saskatchewan’s population accounted for a much larger proportion of the national population earlier in the century. From the beginning of the 1920s to the end of the 1930s, Saskatchewan made up over 8 percent of Canada’s population. In the 1940s and 1950s, the province’s population size stayed at roughly the same absolute level, between 800,000 and 900,000, but its proportion relative to the nation’s population Figure 1: Population of Saskatchewan, 1901–20012 ���������

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People of the Land

slipped to under 7 percent in the 1940s and then to less than 6 percent in the 1950s. By the 1960s, Saskatchewan’s population was less than 5 percent of Canada’s total population. The steady growth in Canada’s population in the last three decades of the twentieth century relative to Saskatchewan’s lack of growth further reduced the proportion of Saskatchewan’s population in Canada. After 1980, Saskatchewan accounted for only 4 percent or less of Canada’s population; by 2000, it made up about 3 percent. The relative decline clearly indicates that Saskatchewan has changed from a fast-growing nascent province early in the twentieth century, capable of attracting settlers and immigrants, to one where the land manages only to retain its population at roughly the same absolute level. Undoubtedly, the economic opportunity in Saskatchewan in the early part of the twentieth century was responsible for the surge in population. However, there were political and social developments earlier that made this possible. Major legislative and social changes towards the end of the nineteenth century created the economic and social infrastructures conducive to settlement and development in Saskatchewan. For example, the Canadian Parliament passed the Dominion Lands Act in 1872, which allowed a settler to pay a ten-dollar Figure 2: Saskatchewan’s Population as Percent of Canada’s Population, 1901–20013 ����

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Perspectives of Saskatchewan

registration fee to take up 160 acres of unoccupied Dominion land for improvement and to claim ownership of the land after three years of homesteading.4 A companion statute, the Immigration and Colonization Act, enabled recruiting agents to operate abroad to recruit immigrants and settlers for Canada.5 In 1873, the bill to create the North West Mounted Police was also passed in Parliament, and it enhanced the state’s law-enforcement capacity to manage the Aboriginal population and to control social unrest.6 Between 1871 and 1921, eleven numbered treaties were signed between the Canadian government and the First Nations in the west. Treaty 4 was signed with the Cree and Ojibwa nations in southern Saskatchewan and Treaty 6 with the Plains Cree and Woodland Cree nations in central Saskatchewan. The treaties enabled the Canadian government to place the Aboriginal people in reserve land in exchange for new land taken from them. As James Frideres described it, “the land taken by the Canadian government under Treaties Nos. 1 through 7 provided sufficient land for the mass settlement of immigrants entering Canada.”7 This point is fully developed in the chapter in this volume by Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, who shows that dubious and coercive strategies were used to force Aboriginal people to give up productive farmland in order to auction it to non-Aboriginal people.8 By the time the Saskatchewan Act was passed in 1905, the political, social, and transportation infrastructures were in place to facilitate settlement and agricultural development. The Saskatchewan government also passed legislation in the 1910s to regulate and organize hail insurance, farm loans, and cooperative associations, including the 1911 Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company Act, the 1912 Hail Insurance Act, the 1913 Agriculture Co-operative Associations Act, and the 1917 Saskatchewan Farm Loans Act. The legislation contributed to the further development of farming production. Homestead entries in the west increased from 8167 in 1901 to 44,479 in 1911.9 In 1906 alone, Saskatchewan recorded 27,692 homestead entries, accounting for 66 percent of all homestead entries in Canada for that year.10 The rapid settlement in Saskatchewan turned it into a major wheat-producing province. In 1901, there were 13,445 occupied farms in Saskatchewan with an average size of 285 acres and a cultivated area of 0.6 million acres; by 1911, the number of occupied farms in the province rose to 95,013, averaging 295 acres per farm and covering a total 9.1 million acres of field crops, mostly wheat, in the province; and by 1916, the number of occupied farms further increased to 104,006, and the total cultivated area of field crops rose to 14 million acres.11

People of the Land

Jack Stabler and Rose Olfert describe the years between 1879 and 1929 as the period of great expansion and dramatic change, although they also note that the pattern of expansion was not uniform.12 One of the uneven patterns of development, as Robert Bone points out, is the concentrated settlement in the southern part of Saskatchewan where land tends to be more fertile, and a north that has been largely ignored until recent times.13 Undoubtedly, the expansion of the wheat economy in the first two decades of the twentieth century created the prosperity of the Prairies and contributed to the growth in population in Saskatchewan. Rising wheat prices and farm productivity and declining transportation costs in the first decade of the twentieth century turned Saskatchewan into one of the great wheat-exporting regions of the world. The agricultural prosperity produced optimism and stimulated towns and cities to grow rapidly; many cities were experiencing real estate booms, such as the one in Saskatoon between 1910 and 1913.14 Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, settlers from other parts of North America and immigrants from abroad, mainly Europe, moved to Saskatchewan because of its agricultural prosperity and economic opportunities. Between 1911 and 1915, of the 1.3 million new immigrants who came to Canada, 76,100 or 5.9 percent went to Saskatchewan; and between 1916 and 1920, another 25,921 new immigrants, or 6.2 percent of all new arrivals, arrived in Saskatchewan.15 In 1926, those who were born outside Canada made up 36 percent of Saskatchewan’s total population, but accounted for 66 percent of all farm operators in the province.16 It is clear that immigration played a major role in building up the population of Saskatchewan in the 1910s and 1920s. As well, the relatively young age profile of Saskatchewan’s population in the 1910s meant that even if migration to Saskatchewan slowed down, there would be sufficient young people already present to ensure that the population and the labour force would continue to grow by natural means for a number of years. The “youthful” population of Saskatchewan is evident in the age pyramid of 1921 (Figure 3). As much as 78 percent of the male population and 83 percent of the female population were under forty years old, in contrast to only 4 percent of the male population and 3.7 percent of the female population that were over fifty-nine years of age. In fact, those who were under twenty years old accounted for 45 percent of the male population and 52 percent of the female population. Thus, Saskatchewan had a relatively large pool of young workers in 1921 and an even larger cohort of children who would succeed and expand the working population as they moved into adulthood. As indicated in





Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Figure 3, the broad base of the age pyramid meant that within ten to fifteen years from 1921 those under fifteen years of age would move up in larger numbers to succeed the cohorts before them. Figure 3: Percentage Population by Age and Sex, Saskatchewan, 192117 �������

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Economy and Population, 1921–1991

Given the expansion of the wheat economy in the first two decades of the twentieth century, there was no reason for the people of Saskatchewan to doubt the province’s ability to continue to grow in the future. There was even less reason for the Saskatchewan farming population to turn away from the very enterprise that made the province prosperous. The preoccupation of Saskatchewan’s population in farming is evident from census data of 1921 and 1941 (Table 1). By 1921, as much as 65 percent of Saskatchewan’s labour force, compared to less than one-third of Canada’s labour force, was in agriculture. Twenty years later, in 1941, the continuous industrialization of Canada resulted in only a quarter of its workforce engaging in agriculture, but in Saskatchewan, the farming sector still accounted for over half of its workforce. In contrast, manufacturing industry was expanding in Canada between 1921 and 1941, as it accounted for 16 percent of Canada’s workforce in 1921 and 23 percent in 1941. In Saskatchewan, the manufacturing industry only made up 2.5 percent of its labour force in 1921 and 5.1 percent in 1941. In retrospect, it becomes clear that since Saskatchewan’s economic production and workforce depended heavily on agriculture, the province’s capacity to

People of the Land

enlarge its population also depended on the growth capacity of agriculture; whereas for the rest of Canada, growth potentials hinged increasingly less on agriculture and more on industrial production. Between 1921 and 1941, the work force increased 1.4 times for Canada and 1.3 times for Saskatchewan. In 1941, Saskatchewan’s workforce still made up about 8 percent of Canada’s entire workforce. The recovery from the Great Depression brought back a strong farming economy to Saskatchewan, and by 1941 every one job lost during the period from 1921 to 1941 was made up by 122 new jobs; whereas for Canada the ratio was only 1 to 43. On the surface, it would appear that despite the impact of the Great Depression, Saskatchewan was able to maintain a rate of growth that was comparable to or even better than the national level. In reality, as much as 31 percent of Saskatchewan’s growth between 1921 and 1941 was based on agriculture as compared to only 6 percent for Canada as a whole. In contrast, almost 39 percent of Canada’s growth in jobs was created by the manufacturing sector, but in Saskatchewan manufacturing accounted for only 15 percent of the province’s growth. It is evident that as agriculture declined in importance relative to manufacturing and other industrial production in the makeup of the gross domestic product, Saskatchewan would be unable to grow at the same rate as the rest of Canada. The dependence on agriculture also meant that Saskatchewan was harder hit during the Great Depression than other parts of Canada. Data on aggregate income indicate that personal income declined by only about 11 percent for Canada between 1926 and 1936 and then climbed 174 percent between 1936 and 1946.18 But personal income in Saskatchewan declined 50 percent between 1926 and 1936 and rebounded at a lower rate of 134 percent between 1936 and 1946. After World War II, further consolidation of corporate capitalism and restructuring of the labour market brought many changes, including a continuous decline of jobs in agricultural and primary production, a relative decline in manufacturing, and a corresponding expansion in employment opportunity in the service sector.19 In 1951, about 16 percent of Canada’s workforce was in agriculture, but by 1991 it was down to less than 4 percent (see Table 2). For Saskatchewan, agriculture remained the key sector that employed about 49 percent of its workforce in 1951, but it too declined to 18 percent by 1991. The continuous erosion of agriculture as a sector of employment meant that





Perspectives of Saskatchewan

the impact of job loss between 1951 and 1991 was heavier in Saskatchewan than the rest of Canada because of Saskatchewan’s heavy dependence on agriculture. Between 1951 and 1991, Saskatchewan lost 59,572 jobs, of which 56,561 came from agriculture. Even though for Canada as a whole the agriculture sector was also mainly responsible for most of its job loss, other sectors in the Canadian economy were able to create large numbers of new jobs to drive a robust growth in employment. Between 1951 and 1991, there were twenty-nine new jobs created for one job lost in Canada, but the ratio was only four to one in Saskatchewan. As a result, the size of Saskatchewan’s workforce made up an increasingly smaller proportion of Canada’s workforce. In 1941, Saskatchewan accounted for 8 percent of Canada’s entire labour force, but it made up only 6 percent by 1951 and 4 percent by 1991. At the same time, Saskatchewan continued to rely more on the agriculture sector and less on manufacturing and other industrial sectors to create employment than did Canada as a whole. In 1951, manufacturing still accounted for about one-quarter of Canada’s workforce, but by 1991 it made up only 14 percent (see Table 2). In contrast, jobs in finance, health, education, government services, and other services rose from 24 percent of the workforce to 48 percent in 1991. In Saskatchewan, manufacturing made up only 6 percent of its workforce in 1951 and 5 percent in 1991, whereas jobs in finance, health, education, government services, and other services increased from 25 percent of its workforce in 1951 to 45 percent in 1991. As noted earlier, jobs gained in non-agricultural sectors were heavily discounted by jobs lost in agriculture in Saskatchewan. The opening of the west and the expansion of the wheat economy were responsible for Saskatchewan’s growth and prosperity in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Ironically, the same agricultural economy that drove its rapid population increase in the 1910s and 1920s was also responsible for Saskatchewan’s slower population growth in the period after World War II. Saskatchewan’s continuous heavy dependence on agriculture and its slow entry into manufacturing and other industrial sectors were mainly responsible for its lagging behind the national growth in labour force and population in the fiftyyear period after World War II. As noted earlier, even though Saskatchewan’s population stayed at roughly the same level in the post-war period, it declined

People of the Land

relative to the national population. In 1941, Saskatchewan accounted for 8 percent of Canada’s population, which was only marginally lower than its population proportion in Canada in 1921 (see Figure 2). But by 1951 Saskatchewan’s population of 832,000 only made up 6 percent of Canada’s population; by 1991, it was down to 4 percent; and by 2001, it was further reduced to 3 percent. The Future of Saskatchewan’s Population

If the same economic forces that differentiated Canada’s economic development and that of Saskatchewan were to persist, then Saskatchewan’s labour force and population could be expected to continue to grow at a slower rate than the rest of the country. Despite a slightly higher fertility rate in Saskatchewan than in other provinces, it is still at a level which is below the replacement level of 2.1.20 Thus, the capacity of Saskatchewan’s population to increase naturally, like that for the rest of Canada, will be rather limited. Demographic projections suggest that natural increase will add about three thousand people to Saskatchewan every year in the 2010s, but this capacity will decline to only several hundred by the mid-2020s, and thereafter, again like the rest of Canada, the number of deaths will exceed the number of births. Immigration will continue to play only a small part in its population change as Saskatchewan has been attracting an increasingly lower number of immigrants to the province since 1980. In the 1980s about 2 percent of the total annual immigration to Canada came to Saskatchewan, but by the end of the twentieth century, less than 1 percent of the total immigrant arrivals chose the province as their destination.21 There is little reason to expect the immigration pattern to Saskatchewan will change drastically unless there is a strong policy shift. Thus, if the same patterns of demographic factors in the past were to be maintained, Saskatchewan’s population is expected to decline slightly from its peak of 1,027,000 in 2007 to 1,012,300 in 2026 (see Figure 4).22 But it looks like the slow decline with continue thereafter. Much of the population loss would be due to net interprovincial migration, and neither natural increase nor international migration would be sufficiently large enough to offset the population loss due to migration to other parts of Canada.



Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Figure 4: Projected Population of Saskatchewan, 2000–2001 to 2025–202622 1,030,000

1,025,000

1,020,000

Number

1,015,000

1,010,000

1,005,000

1,000,000 20 00 20 01 01 20 02 02 20 03 03 -0 20 4 04 20 05 05 -0 20 6 06 20 07 07 -0 20 8 08 20 09 09 20 10 10 20 11 11 20 12 12 -1 20 3 13 20 14 14 -1 20 5 15 20 16 16 20 17 17 -1 20 8 18 20 19 19 20 20 20 20 21 21 20 22 22 20 23 23 -2 20 4 24 20 25 25 -2 6

10

Period

Table 1: Changes in Distribution of Work Force by Industy, Saskatchewan and Canada, 1921-1941 Labour Force Job Gained 1921-1941 1921 1941 Saskatchewan Canada Industry Sask. Canada Sask. Canada No. % of Gain No. % of Gain % % % % or Loss [-] or Loss [-] 32.8 58.4 25.2 20,937 30.7 80,221 6.2 Agriculture 65.4 Forestry, fishing, and trapping 0.3 2.2 1.2 3.4 3,014 4.4 83,559 6.4 Mining 0.1 1.6 0.4 2.3 911 1.3 49,139 3.8 16.4 5.1 23.1 10,406 15.2 504,879 38.7 Manufacture 2.5 5.8 2.2 5.3 314 0.5 50,469 3.9 Construction 2.6 Transport and storage 5.7 7.8 5.9 6.4 4,572 6.7 37,696 2.9 Retail and wholesale trade 6.4 9.8 8.2 11.2 10,228 15.0 186,240 14.3 Finance, insurance, and real estate 1.7 1.9 1.2 2.2 -560 [-100.0] 35,630 2.7 Public administration 2.1 3.0 2.6 3.4 2,983 4.4 54,606 4.2 Professional service 4.3 5.7 5.4 6.1 6,563 9.6 90,606 6.9 Other service 7.3 8.5 7.7 9.0 6,305 9.2 130,938 10.0 Other industries 1.6 4.4 1.9 2.5 2,019 3.0 -30,378 [-100.0] 100.0 100.0 100.0 Total 100.0 Size of workforce (in thousands) [267] [3,173] [335] [4,447] Number of job gained 68,252 1,303,983 Number of job lost -560 -30,378 Number of job gained for one job lost 122 43

Source: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Sixth Census of Canada, 1921, Vol. IV-Occupation; and Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Eighth Census of Canada, 1941, Vol. VII-Gainfully Occupied by Occupations, industries. Note: Other industries include utilities, clerical, other and unspecified.

People of the Land

All demographic projections appear to suggest that Saskatchewan will continue to make up 3 percent or less of Canada’s population in the future. These projections do not take into account the prospect that Saskatchewan might further diversify and intensify its economic production to other non-agricultural sectors, including the knowledge economy. Over the hundred years since the province was formed in 1905, Saskatchewan’s economic prosperity and its population growth have been heavily tied to the land. The future of Saskatchewan’s population growth will now depend on how rapidly and extensively it can diversify from the agriculture economy to other growth sectors, especially in view of the fact that Canada’s economy is increasingly becoming technologybased, information-driven, and globally dependent. Saskatchewan will continue to be Canada’s strong wheat-producing province, but the farming economy alone is insufficient to retain Saskatchewan’s population and to attract new arrivals from international and domestic migration. To do so, Saskatchewan has to open up new frontiers of economic development, as it once did in the 1910s and 1920s, and develop educational, social, and physical infrastructures that are conducive to such economic development. Notes

1. See Figures 1 and 2. 2. For Saskatchewan’s population, data for 1901 to 1920 are from Historical Statistics of Canada, Table 11-516-XIE, available at ; for 1921 to 1925, CANSIM/D22, Population by Province at June 1 / Saskatchewan; for 1926 to 1970, CANSIM/D31243, Population of Canada, by Province / Saskatchewan; and for 1971 to 2001, Saskatchewan Population Components of Growth, July 1, available at . 3. For Canada’s population, data for 1901 to 1920 are from Historical Statistics of Canada, Table 11-516-XIE, available at http://www.statcan.ca/english/ freepub/11-516-XIE; for 1921-1970, CANSIM II Table 075-0001, Historical Statistics, Estimated Population and Immigrant Arrivals, Annual Survey; and for 1971–2001, CANSIM/C892268, Population by age by sex Canada/population, all ages, both sexes, Canada. For Saskatchewan’s population, see n. 2. 4. See W.T. Esterbrook and Hugh G.J. Aitken, Canadian Economic History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 390; and J.F.C. Wright, Saskatchewan: The History of a Province (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1955), 60–62. 5. See John H. Archer, Saskatchewan: A History (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1980), 56; and Norman Gergus Black, History of Saskatchewan and the North West Territories, Volume II (Regina: Saskatchewan Historical Company, 1913), 724–25.

11

12

Perspectives of Saskatchewan

6. See Archer, Saskatchewan: A History, 56. 7. James S. Frideres, Native Peoples in Canada: Contemporary Conflicts (Toronto: Prentice-Hall, 1988), 52. 8. See Chapter 4. 9. Esterbrook and Aitken, Canadian Economic History, 484. 10. Wright, Saskatchewan: The History of a Province, 128. 11. See 1916 Census of Prairie Provinces, Population and Agriculture (Ottawa: Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, 1918); and Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1926 Census of Saskatchewan, Population and Agriculture (Ottawa: Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, 1927). 12. See Chapter 6. 13. See Chapter 2. 14. R. Rees, “The ‘Magic City on the Banks of the Saskatchewan’: The Saskatoon Real Estate Boom, 1910–1913,” in D.H. Bocking, ed., Pages from the Past: Essays on Saskatchewan History (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1979), 158–69. 15. Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1926 Census of Saskatchewan, Population and Agriculture (Ottawa: Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, 1927), Table 37; and Statistics Canada, Historical Statistics of Canada, 2nd ed. (Ottawa: Supply and Services of Canada, 1983), A-350. 16. Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1926 Census of Saskatchewan, Population and Agriculture. 17. Constructed from data in Canada Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1926 Census of Saskatchewan, Population and Agriculture, 74. 18. Statistics Canada, Historical Statistics of Canada, F76-90 and F91-102. 19. See Peter S. Li, The Making of Post-War Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996). 20. The fertility rate of a given year measures the number of children a woman would have if she were to go through her entire reproductive years in accordance with the reproductive patterns set by all women of that year. Saskatchewan’s fertility rate is expected to be around 1.77 in the first quarter of the twentieth century, using a projection model of medium assumption. See M.V. George, Shirley Loh, Ravi B.P. Verma, and Y. Edward Shin, Population Projections in Canada, Provinces and Territories 2000–2026, Cat. No. 91-520-XIB (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2001), 8. 21. Calculated from data file Landed Immigrant Data System, 1980–2001 (Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada). 22. See George et al., Population Projections.

S a s k at c h e w a n ’ s F o r g o t t e n N o r t h : 1905 to 2005 Robert M. Bone

Saskatchewan’s North remains a forgotten region. For most Canadians, Saskatchewan conjures up an image of the Canadian Prairies with vast wheat fields interspersed with small rural towns and villages. Without a doubt, the Canadian Prairies forms the heartland of Saskatchewan’s economy and population. Saskatchewan’s North has no agricultural base and, as Keith Bell demonstrates in Chapter 13 in the present volume, early landscape painters, especially those from Britain, focussed their attention on the vastness of the rolling and treeless prairies and embellished this landscape from memories of their English homeland. At that time, few were aware of another Saskatchewan that existed beyond the Pioneer Fringe. Indeed, the North was ignored by Euro-Canadians until its forest and mineral wealth caught their attention in the post-World War II period. Yet, Saskatchewan’s North remains a forgotten region because of its geography and history. In the early days, homesteaders were drawn to the rich soils of the Canadian Prairies, leaving the boreal forest to its original inhabitants and the fur trade. Lying on the northern margins of Saskatchewan’s ecumene, the North was a prisoner of its geography. With too short a growing season for grain and far too little soil for other crops, the North was left untouched by the

14

Perspectives of Saskatchewan

massive wave of immigrants that swept across the Canadian Prairies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The North gained some recognition during the economic boom following the post-World War II period when American demand for resources increased significantly. This recognition called for an improved transportation system to reach this resource wealth. The first phase took place in 1948 when a gravel road reached the Aboriginal community of La Ronge, thus beginning the process of providing access to its forests and minerals. Since then, the incorporation of the North into the global economy has proceeded in accordance with the demand for its primary products. In doing so, workers were attracted to its mines and forests but many commuted to their workplace, thus keeping their family and home in the cities of southern Saskatchewan. For that reason, the northern population remains both small and culturally distinct. Most can trace their ancestry to the original peoples of the Boreal Forest—the Cree, Dene, and Métis. Defining the Region

In this chapter, our attention is first focused on population change in Saskatchewan’s North, then on the role of demographic forces in shaping the contemporary population of northern Saskatchewan, and finally on the population of the Woodland Cree of the Lac La Ronge Band. But first we must answer the question, what are the geographic dimensions of the northern half of the province? Its geographic dimensions are defined in three ways: • by its natural vegetation, the Boreal Forest, which is strikingly different from the southern grasslands; • by its statistical unit, Census Division 18, which is an administrative unit of Statistics Canada; and • by its resource-based economy. The boreal forest consists primarily of coniferous trees such as black and white spruce. The boreal forest is sometimes described as a green belt that extends across Canada’s mid-North and beyond the sixtieth parallel. In this sense, the Saskatchewan North is, from the perspective of natural vegetation, part of the magnificent natural ecological system that stretches from Newfoundland and Labrador to the border with Alaska. Within Saskatchewan’s North, a land of rugged, rocky terrain predominates along with extensive areas of muskeg and seemingly unlimited lakes and rivers.

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

The boreal forest lies within an administrative unit of Statistics Canada known as Census Division 18, which corresponds exactly with the provincial Northern Administrative District (Figure 1). In this chapter, the population and demographic figures describing northern Saskatchewan are based on the statistical data available for Census Division 18. In 2001, northern Saskatchewan had a population of 32,029 scattered over a vast forested area of some 252,000 km2 (Table 1). The vast majority of its residents live in small, isolated communities with populations under 1000. The town of La Ronge is the largest centre with a population of just over 2700 (2001), followed by the village of La Loche with 2100 (Figure 1). Creighton, a suburb of the Manitoba mining town of Flin Flon, has a population 1560 (2001). Figure 1: Northern Administration District (NAD)

15

16

Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan’s North, like the rest of the Canadian North, serves the global industrial system as a resource hinterland where its primary economic activities, uranium mining and logging, are dependent upon global demands and where the local economic interests are subservient to those in the industrial centres of the world. This spatial framework, known as the Core/Periphery Model, is described in more detail in The Regional Geography of Canada.1 Contrasting Population Characteristics

The characteristics of northern Saskatchewan’s population are strikingly different from those found in the rest of the province. These two regions of Saskatchewan have approximately the same geographic area, but their population size and therefore their population densities vary by about thirty times. In 2001, northern Saskatchewan had a population density of 0.1 persons per square kilometre compared to three persons per square kilometre in southern Saskatchewan (Table 1). Moreover, their basic demographic characteristics form opposites. For example, the North has witnessed a steady growth of its population, a high rate of natural increase, youthful population, and a majority of Aboriginal people, while the South has the opposite characteristics. A full account of Saskatchewan’s population change over time and current demographic characteristics can be found in Chapter 1 in the present volume, Peter Li’s “People of the Land: Population Changes in Saskatchewan.” We begin our discussion with an examination of the North’s steady increase in population. Table 1: Populations of Saskatchewan’s Two Regions Region 2001

Population

Percent (km2)

Land area

Percent density

Population

Saskatchewan’s North

32,029

3.3

268,499

45.8

0.1

Saskatchewan’s South

946,904

96.7

318,062

54.2

3.0

Saskatchewan

978,933

100.0

586,561

100.0

1.7

Source: Statistics Canada, 2001 Census, on-line .

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

Steady Population Growth While northern Saskatchewan has a relatively small population, its numbers have has increased steadily over the years. In 1871, the North’s population was approximately 4500. Over the next 100 years, the region’s population grew each year, reaching 32,000 in 2001 (Figure 2). Natural increase from within the Aboriginal population accounts for the bulk of the population increase. Figure 2: Population Change in Northern Saskatchewan 35000

30000

25000

20000

15000

10000

5000

0

1871

1881

1891

1901

1911

1921

1931

1941

1951

1956

1961

1966

1971

1976

1981

1986

1991

1996

2001

Source: Atlas of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon: PrintWest, 1999); and Statistics Canada, 2001 Census, on-line .

In sharp contrast to northern Saskatchewan, the rest of the province followed a different demographic path over the last 120 years. As Peter Li pointed out in the previous chapter, the populations changes for the province were marked by two phases: (1) a dramatic jump in population from 1901 to 1931 due to the settling of the land by Europeans, Americans, and Canadians from Ontario, Atlantic Canada, and Quebec; and (2) an irregular population pattern of change from 1931 to 2001 due primarily to rural out-migration (Figure 3). The massive wave of immigrants that swarmed into the Prairies at the turn of the twentieth century had, by 1921, propelled Saskatchewan into the third largest province in Canada. At the same time, the North’s population growth was due almost exclusively to natural increase among the Aboriginal peoples of the region.2

17

18

Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Figure 3: Population Comparison: Saskatchewan and Northern Saskatchewan 1200000

Saskatchewan Northern Saskatchewan

1000000

800000

600000

400000

200000

0

71

18

81 891 901 911 921 931 941 951 956 961 966 971 976 981 986 991 996 001 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 18 1

Source: Statistics Canada.

Natural Increase Natural increase remains the key demographic factor keeping the northern population growing at rates well above the provincial average. Yet, the northern demographic components have changed over time. In fact, three phases can be identified. The early phase (pre-1953) took place while most Indians and Métis were still living on the land and access to medical services was limited. At this time, both birth and death rates were high, with annual birth rates exceeding thirty births per thousand persons and annual death rates over ten deaths per thousand persons. Sharp fluctuations in both annual birth and death rates took place, and, upon a few occasions, the annual death rate jumped over twenty and even thirty deaths per thousand persons. At these levels, the death rates either exceeded or came close to reaching the level of the birth rate for that year. The second phase (1954 to 1985) took place after Aboriginal peoples began to live in settlements. While the birth

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

rates remain above thirty per thousand for much of this phase, the death rate dropped quickly to less than ten per thousand due to access to public health services and other urban amenities. No longer was the annual death rate subject to fluctuations, and it reached the level of the provincial figure. Towards the end of this phase, the birth rate began to fluctuate downward. The most recent phase (1986 to 2002) was distinguished by a steady decline in the birth rate and a death rate that was below the provincial rate. The decline in fertility may be attributed to a cultural change whereby Aboriginal women remained in the education system longer and more and more women entered the wage workforce. The demographic consequences were that Aboriginal women were having fewer babies and Aboriginal families were forming smaller units. The low death rate was due to the youthful nature of the northern population. For comparison purposes, Canada’s current birth rate is 10.5 births per thousand persons, while the rates in developing country would range between thirty and forty births per thousand persons. As shown in Figure 4, northern Saskatchewan had such very high birth rates until the late 1980s. During that time, the annual birth rate was more than three times the provincial average. Since then, both the northern and provincial birth rates have declined, though a substantial gap remains with northern birth rates more than double provincial ones. At the same time, the northern death rate is below the provincial figure. Why is this so? The low death rates are explained by the youthfulness of northern population—a larger proportion of the northern population is younger than sixty years of age compared to the provincial population. The high birth rate is a different story—the North has a high birth rate while the South has a lower rate. The explanation for such a wide variation is due to the large Aboriginal population in northern Saskatchewan, which has retained a high fertility rate. In the nineteenth century Canada had high fertility rates, but as Canada became an industrial urban nation, its birth rate declined sharply. A similar decline in the northern fertility rate may occur. In fact, the birth rate in northern Saskatchewan began to decline in the 1990s, and this decline may continue until it reaches the provincial figures (Figure 4). Why is this so? The socio-economic factors that are associated with the process of urbanization, family planning, and women’s participation in the workforce have radically transformed the non-Aboriginal society and, in doing so, greatly reduced the fertility rate, but such factors have just begun to make an impact on the Aboriginal society. Since 1990, the birth rate has declined steadily from thirty-two births per thousand persons to twenty-two births in 2002.

19

Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Figure 4: Birth and Death Rates 50

Birth rate Death rate

40

30

20

02

99

20

19

94 19

89 19

84 19

79 19

74 19

69 19

64 19

59 19

54 19

49 19

44 19

39 19

19

29

0

34

10

19

20

Source: Statistics Canada.

Age/Sex Composition The North’s youthful population is an outcome of its high fertility rates. In 2002, the proportion of residents under the age of fifteen formed nearly 36 percent of the North’s population, while the comparative provincial figure was 21 percent.3 With such a bulge in the bottom cohorts of the current age/ sex population pyramid, considerable pressure is placed on community infrastructures and their economies, which have been unable to absorb those entering the labour force. As this bulge passes through the life cycle, three areas will be especially affected. They are: • housing, because of an increase in family units and the tendency for large families; • schools, because of an expanding school age population; and • job market, because an ever-increasing number of people wanting to enter the workforce.

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

Migration Two distinct patterns of migration are found in the North. One is associated with the Aboriginal population and the other with the non-Aboriginal population. The movement of Aboriginal peoples follows a different path and, for that reason, can be considered strongly affected by Aboriginal culture, which includes the concept of the North as their homeland. On the other hand, the influx of southerners was driven by economic factors. The first migration movement focuses on Aboriginal peoples. First Nations and Métis began moving from the land into villages in the 1950s, but few left the North. However, once the link to the land was broken, the next generation became more mobile, largely because some had a command of English and sufficient schooling to enter the wage economy. These more educated younger people tended to leave their settlements and reserves for southern cities. While the exact number is not readily available, the discussion of the Lac La Ronge Band reveals that most band members began to move off-reserve in the late 1980s. This movement continued to accelerate, and by 2002 those living off-reserve formed 36 percent of the total band population. While some off-reserve band members reside in the town of La Ronge, most have moved to southern cities such as Prince Alberta, Saskatoon, and Regina. However, some have relocated outside the province. For some, the initial move was for economic reasons. However, a substantial number relocated to southern cities because a family member required post-secondary education/ training or specialized medical services. Métis and First Nations people who now reside in southern cities often retain strong ties to their communities and reserves. Some return home. The pull of their community or reserve is due to social factors such as their relatives and friends; to cultural factors such as the opportunity to speak Cree or Dene; and to economic factors such as the availability of band housing or employment in the band administration. Economic opportunities drive the second migration, which consists of two groups—farmers and wage employees. Led by homesteaders as early as 1911, followed by those fleeing from the great drought of the 1930s, farmers cleared the forest on the southern edge of the boreal forest. Named the Pioneer Fringe, this wooded land attracted those who came too late for homesteading

21

22

Perspectives of Saskatchewan

on the prairies and those who abandoned their homesteads in the drought and who still wanted to stay on the land. By the post-World War II period, farmers realized that the Pioneer Fringe was also a hard land to farm and a massive retreat from the Pioneer Fringe began. Over the next fifty years, farmers abandoned their marginal land and most relocated to urban cities in western Canada where they could find employment. While the Pioneer Fringe was losing population, industrial workers and government officials moved North because of the job opportunities associated with the resource industry and the provincial government. By 1956, southern workers and their families reached a peak with a total of nearly 9000, forming 45 percent of the total population. The mining town of Uranium City was expanding and by 1976 was the largest urban centre in northern Saskatchewan with a population of nearly 1800. In the 1980s, the resource boom came to an abrupt end for two reasons. First, the closure of the Eldorado mine signalled a massive out-migration from Uranium City. Uranium City lost most of its population of 2500 over a three-year period (nearly 10 percent of the North’s population in the early 1980s). Second, the uranium industry, which was developing mines in northern Saskatchewan, chose to employ an air commuting system to supply its mines with workers rather than house its workers in new towns near the mines sites. This decision ended the era of resource towns in northern Saskatchewan. The consequence of these demographic shifts has been a net loss of population. Since 1986, more people have moved out of northern Saskatchewan than into the region. While new mines opened, companies chose to transport their workers to and from the mining sites on a sevenday rotation system (seven days at the camp and seven days at their home community). With Saskatoon and Prince Albert serving as key origin/ destination points for the air commuting system, many northern workers and their families chose to reside in those two cities rather than in the much smaller northern centres. Since 1986, a continuous movement of people out of the North has amounted to a loss of some 2500 residents from northern Saskatchewan. Most have relocated to cities in southern Canada, while those in the mining industry tend to relocate in other mining towns (Table 2).

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

Other reasons for this net out-migration fall into three categories: • Since the 1980s, resource companies have increased productivity through the substitution of capital (often machinery) for workers. In this way, companies have reduced the size of their labour force while maintaining or increasing their production. Companies chose this strategy to offset rising wages. • The Government of Saskatchewan ceased to expand its administrative operations in northern Saskatchewan, thereby bringing an end to the creation of new public service jobs in the North. The concept of a separate northern administrative region with its capital at La Ronge was born in 1972 with the creation of the Department of Northern Saskatchewan, but this bold venture designed to give northerners more of a say ended with a whimper in the early 1980s. Since then, the province has returned to a more traditional and southern-based approach to governance in the North. • First Nations residents began moving off-reserve in greater and greater numbers. A similar pattern appeared among Métis. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, approximately one-third live off-reserve with most residing in cities in southern Saskatchewan or in other parts of Canada. The impact on the ethnic composition of Saskatchewan cities has been dramatic. In 2001, for example, Aboriginal peoples in Prince Albert and Saskatoon comprise 29.2 percent and 9.2 percent, respectively, of the total population of these centres.

23

24

Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Table 2: Net Migration to and from Northern Saskatchewan, 1987 to 2002 Year Migration

Net Interprovincial Migration

Net Intraprovincial



1987

-66

-174



1988

-222

-479



1989

-140

133



1990

-22

-169



1991

-216

-516



1992

-118

-478



1993

15

-119



1994

16

136



1995

41

76



1996

83

6



1997

91

-296



1998

107

-173



1999

110

-69



2000

-114

93



2001

-30

-44



2002

43

-44



Total

-422

-2,117

Source: Derived from data obtained from the Saskatchewan’s Bureau of Statistics.

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

Demise of Resource Towns During the economic boom of the post-World War II period, mining activities in the northern Canadian hinterland expanded rapidly with the building of resource towns in remote areas to supply the labour for these mines. At the same time, these resource towns served as points of instant population growth. Following the slowdown of the global economy in the 1980s, the northern Canadian hinterland saw its economy contract and its population decline. Two mining towns in northern Saskatchewan demonstrate this point. Uranium City and Creighton (a residential area of the mining town of Flin Flon, Manitoba) attracted workers and their families from southern Canada, causing the two mining towns to grow in size. With a slowdown in the global economy, resource towns with their predominantly non-Aboriginal populations were one of the first casualties. Uranium City was particularly hard hit. With the closure of the Eldorado uranium mine in 1982, Uranium City lost its raison d’être, causing the community of 2500 to dwindle to less than 200 inhabitants by 1986. The same harsh economic winds affected the mine and smelter at Flin Flon. While both continued to operate, the process of restructuring at Flin Flon reduced the number of mine workers. In 1996, Creighton has a population of 1713, but by 2001 it had declined to 1556, a loss of 9.2 percent. Flin Flon also saw its population drop from 6572 in 1996 to 6000 in 2001, a loss of 8.7 percent.

Aboriginal Majority Northern Saskatchewan is the homeland of the Cree, Dene, and Métis. All three were closely involved in the fur trade and a hunting economy that kept them on the land for most of the year. Consequently, fur-trading posts had tiny permanent populations—often fewer than twenty persons—and these nonAboriginal people included fur traders, missionaries, and police. Prior to 1905, the population of northern Saskatchewan was approximately 5000 with fewer than 200 white residents. At that time, the Aboriginal population comprised over 95 percent of the population. Over the next fifty years, the North’s population jumped to 20,000. By 1956, some 11,000 were of Aboriginal descent while nearly 9000 Euro-Canadians were recent arrivals. The large in-migration of non-Aboriginal peoples caused the percentage of Aboriginal people to decline, dropping from over 95 percent prior to 1905 to 55 percent in 1956. However,

25

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Perspectives of Saskatchewan

since then, many non-Aboriginal people have left the North and, coupled with high rates of natural increase among the Aboriginal population, both the size of the Indian and Métis population and its share of the total population have grown. By 2001, the Aboriginal population nearly reached 27,000 while the non-Aboriginal population had fallen to 5000. The percentage of First Nation and Métis families increased from 55 percent in 1956 to 83 percent in 2001. We now turn to an examination of the historical growth in the population of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band. First Nations people in northern Saskatchewan were affected by the same socio-demographic and political forces emanating from the global economy. During the twentieth century, the traditional economy based on hunting and trapping came to an end with declining fur prices and the relocation of Aboriginal peoples to settlements. From that time on, the population of Aboriginal peoples increased rapidly. At the same time, other changes were occurring, such as the rise in band members living off-reserve, and former band members regaining their band membership with many returning to their reserves. The Lac La Ronge Indian Band

The Lac La Ronge Indian Band is the largest band in Saskatchewan. By 2005, its population will exceed 8000. Most band members live in six reserves: Grandmother’s Bay, Stanley Mission, La Ronge, Morin Lake, Little Red River, and Sucker River (see Figure 6). The demographic statistics for the Lac La Ronge Indian Band are based on the Federal Band Registry that, each year, records the vital statistics and geographic location of band members. Until the 1990s, few band members lived off-reserve. Now a significant number— around one-third—reside in the town of La Ronge and in southern cities, especially Prince Albert, Saskatoon, and Regina.

An Overview The Lac La Ronge Indian Band has experienced rapid population growth (Figure 5). In 1889, the band’s population was 435. By 2002, its population had jumped to 7459. Population increase was due to two factors: (1) the high rate of natural increase and (2) the return of former band members. Bill C-31 (1985) required that the band accept former female band members who had

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

lost their status by marrying non-Aboriginal partners. Furthermore, female band members who marry a non-Aboriginal person no longer lose their band membership. Reserve communities have lost some members as a growing number of band members have chosen to live off-reserve. Figure 5: Population Size of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, 1889 to 2002 8000

8000

7000

7000

6000

6000

5000

5000

4000

4000

3000

3000

2000

2000

1000

1000

02 20

98 19

92 19

85 19

76 19

69 19

58 19

47 19

36 19

20 19

19

18

09

0 89

0

Source: Factum of Lac La Ronge Indian Band, 2001; and Registered Indian Population by Sex and Residence 2002 (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada), on-line .

Since 1889, the band has undergone three changes in its population growth. These changes fall into the following periods: (1) the period of slow rate of increase, 1899 to 1947; (2) the period of rapid rate of increase, 1948 to 1995; and (3) the period of slowing increase, 1996 to 2002.

The Period of Slow Increase (1899 to 1947) The first accurate population figures came from treaty censuses when each band member was named and recorded in the federal band registry. The Lac La Ronge Indian Band provides a microcosm of these unfolding demographic events from the time of taking treaty to the present day. For example, both the Aboriginal population of northern Saskatchewan and the Lac La Ronge Indian Band have seen their populations increase steadily over the years,

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Perspectives of Saskatchewan

though signs of a decrease in the birth rate and an increase in band members living off-reserve appeared in the 1990s.4 After the Lac La Ronge Indian Band took treaty in 1889, information about this band appears in government records. At that time, its population was 435. Band members chose lands (reserves) near their traditional hunting areas. Since the band was composed of at least seven extended family units, each chose reserves near their traditional hunting and trapping areas. By 1947, the population of these scattered and semi-nomadic clusters of people had reached 932. While the population had increased, natural forces, such as epidemics, starvation, and high child mortality rates, kept its population in check. A small but still important population loss was due to Aboriginal women marrying outsiders and thereby losing their own status and that of their children. For these reasons, the population of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band increased very slowly from 1889 to 1947 when its average annual rate of natural increase was around 0.2 percent.

The Period of Rapid Increase (1948 to 1995) A demographic shift from slow to rapid population increase began in the 1950s when both the provincial and federal governments encouraged treaty Indians to become settlement dwellers. From 1948 to 1995, the band’s annual population increase was nearly 11 percent. Encouragement took the form of public programs ranging from family allowance, old-age pension, and disability payments, which put cash in the hands of band members each month. Such income had a powerful impact for two reasons: (1) the annual value of these payments greatly exceeded those derived from trapping and thus altered the power structure of Aboriginal life; and (2) these payments allowed band members to purchase more goods from the local stores, thus enlarging their demand for and dependency on store foods and goods. The two levels of government also brought forward housing, training, and employment programs that drew more and more Aboriginal families into the Canadian economic and social system, and that caused Aboriginal people to stay in settlements. Material change came along with these increases in income. With cash in their pockets, they could buy many store foods and goods like snowmobiles that were previously beyond their reach. This material change replaced traditional foods and goods. The Cree language, the main pillar of their culture, was weakened by more regular contact with outsiders but mainly through the

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

Figure 6: Lac La Ronge Indian Band Communities

schools where the subjects were taught in English. Role models for the children came from mainstream society. These economic, social, and psychological changes combined to alter their demographic characteristics. Death rates declined while birth rates increased, causing the band population to explode.

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Perspectives of Saskatchewan

From 1948 to 1970, the birth rate nearly doubled from around twenty births per thousand persons to forty births per thousand persons. Settlement life meant a secure food supply at the store, medical assistance at the nursing station, and welfare available from the Indian agent. Religious beliefs played a role too as the Anglican clergy were lukewarm to family planning. At the same time, the federal government introduced family allowance payments (a payment to the mother for each child) and these payments encouraged larger families. For First Nation families, these payments amounted to more and more reliable cash each month than trapping ever provided. Three vital rates describe these demographic changes. The first was the sharp drop in the death rate due to better access to health services. The second was the return of former band female members who had lost their status because of marrying a non-Aboriginal man. They and their offspring regained band status as a result of Bill C-31.2 Since 1985, the Lac La Ronge Indian Band has received over 1200 Bill-31 members. The third was a growing number of band members relocating to off-reserve locations (Table 3). For example, in 1969 only 11.3 percent lived off-reserve, but by 2001 the figure has jumped to 35.9 percent. Frequently, these off-reserve locations were towns and cities, such as Prince Albert and Saskatoon.

The Period of Declining Increase (1996–2002) In the 1990s, the band’s rapid rate of population increase slowed due to a decline in the fertility rate and the drop in new Bill C-31 members. The annual rate of population increase from 1996 to 2002 was 2.4 percent, and the downward trend is expected to continue. By 2005, the rate for the Lac La Ronge Indian Band is expected to fall to 2 percent.

Growing Numbers Residing Off-Reserve In both absolute and relative terms, the number of Lac La Ronge Indian Band members living off-reserve has increased over the last forty years. In the early 1960s, over 90 percent of band members lived on reserves. Fewer than 200 band members lived off-reserve. Today, this figure has jumped to 2700 with 61 percent living off-reserve and, for the most part, living in the three cities, Prince Albert, Saskatoon, and Regina. By 2005, the number of urban people

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

from the Lac La Ronge Indian Band is likely to reach 3000, forming 62 percent of the band’s total population. What are the factors drawing members of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band to southern cities? One factor is employment/business opportunities. Reserves are simply too small to provide a sufficient market for most service industries and too far from major markets to attract manufacturing businesses. For that reason, members of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band seeking either employment or business opportunities are drawn to larger urban centres. This trend is particularly true for those band members who have post-secondary education, training, and trades certificates and who wish to take advantage of the affirmative-action hiring practices by the three levels of government, Crown corporations, and other publicly funded institutions. Assuming that the widespread correlation between education level and propensity to relocate for economic opportunities exists among members of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, then it follows that as more and more young band members graduate from high school, the number seeking employment in off-reserve locations is likely to rise sharply in the coming years. This offreserve shift has two implications: (1) it is likely to weaken their ties to their band, the Cree language, and other aspects of Cree culture; and (2) it represents a loss of the more able, better educated members of the band, which constitutes a “brain drain.” Of course, if these members, after gaining experience in the workforce, found employment on their reserve, then such a movement would represents a “brain gain.” Given the weak economic state of reserve economies, such a trend is not likely to involve many young adults. A second factor is that large cities offer a wide range of goods and services not available on reserves, including medical facilities that provide specialized care, and post-secondary education institutions that offer advanced degrees and trade certificates. Often such relocations involve the entire extended family, and family members often take advantage of opportunities in these larger centres, whether in terms of employment, education, or training opportunities. Certainly, the band’s off-reserve numbers have increased. As Table 3 reveals, in 1985, the number off-reserve was 425, which formed 13 percent of the band’s total population. By 2002, the off-reserve population had reach 2674 or 36 percent. At times, such relocations are encouraged and funded by different levels of government. For example, the federal government program providing post-secondary funding for First Nation students has resulted in some thirty

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Perspectives of Saskatchewan

students from Lac La Ronge attending the universities in Saskatoon and Regina. A similar number attend trade schools in Saskatoon and Prince Albert. Off-reserve band members are eligible for public housing and other social services available to residents of Saskatchewan. A critical question is, will these students return to their reserves when they have completed their education? A third factor is the establishment of First Nation’s presence in urban centres, such as the gambling casino and the headquarters of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations operations in Prince Albert. Back in 1981, the Lac La Ronge Indian Band recognized this geographic mismatch between its reserves and economic opportunities found largely in Saskatchewan’s urban centres. The band responded by embarking on a new economic strategy designed to enable it to participate in the market economy for the benefit of its members through the Kitsaki Development Corporation (later renamed the Kitsaki Management Partnership Ltd.). This strategy has led to establishment of a number of business enterprises, often in partnership with well-established companies whose headquarters and business activities are located off-reserve. Originally, these business activities were associated with the mining industry in northern Saskatchewan, but in recent years, most investment has taken place in cities in southern Saskatchewan. In fact, their acquisitions take the form of purchasing a share of existing businesses, such as hotels in major cities in Saskatchewan and in new enterprises, including part ownership of a new golf course and country club on the property of the Whitecap Dakota First Nation, located twenty-five kilometres southeast of Saskatoon. These acquisitions have permitted band members to live and work within an urban environment in a band company. In December 2001 in a personal communication to the author, Kitsaki’s ceo Ray McKay stated the company mandate as: “to generate wealth for the Lac La Ronge Indian Band by starting or acquiring profitable businesses to create jobs and training opportunities for our band members, and other Aboriginal people.” As 2005 approaches, the attractiveness of these factors is expected to increase, thus attracting more and more band members to urban settings. However, some return to their reserves because of changing economic circumstances such as the availability of band housing and job opportunities; because of dissatisfaction with urban life; and because of the pull of family and culture to return home.

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

Table 3: Population Size of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, 1969 to 2002 Year

On-reserve



Off-reserve

On Crown Land Population

Total



1969

1,757

228

25

2,010

1972

1,962

260

38

2,260

1976

2,097

318

110

2,522

1981

2,400

373

103

2,876

1985

2,729

432

113

3,274

1988

3,030

916

115

4,061

1992

3,385

1,727

186

5,298

1995

3,802

2,127

211

6,140

1996

3,911

2,220

219

6,350

1998

4,137

2,388

232

6,757

2002

4,536

2,674

249

7,459

Sources: Registered Indian Population by Sex and Residence 2002 (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada) on-line .

Conclusion

Saskatchewan divides neatly into two strikingly different and separate natural and cultural areas. While each has its own set of economic, demographic, and social challenges, only one—the Saskatchewan Prairies—is well-recognized across Canada. The North remains a peripheral, forgotten area of Saskatchewan. While the North is homeland for Aboriginal peoples, First Nations and Métis are making their presence known in the cities of southern Saskatchewan. These Aboriginal newcomers are struggling to put down roots in these urban environments, and, at the same time, are transforming Saskatchewan cities as First Nations from the North buy land and buildings, and establish businesses in the South. In both an individual and collective sense, the North, by coming to Saskatchewan cities, is refusing to be forgotten.

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Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Notes 1. Robert M. Bone, The Regional Geography of Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2003), 18–25. 2. Another data set derived from the administrative records of Saskatchewan Health reveals a similar trend, but, on average, its figures are some 5 to 10 per cent greater than those from the census (see Saskatchewan Health Covered Population, 2001, on-line http://www.health.gov.sk.ca/info_center_publications_ covpop2001/CovPopBook2001.pdf). For example, in 2001, Statistics Canada reported that the population of northern Saskatchewan was 32,029, while Saskatchewan Health stated that northern Saskatchewan had a population of 34,078 (Table 1 and Saskatchewan Health Covered Population). What causes these differences? First of all, Statistics Canada employs census data, which records people at their residences on a certain day, and this system leads to undercounting, i.e., missing to record residents. A special problem for the North is that many Aboriginal people are on the land when the June census takes place. Saskatchewan Health uses administrative records which, for various reasons, overcount the number of people residing in an area. Until the late 1990s, overcounting in northern Saskatchewan was especially high because Registered Indians were recorded by band affiliations rather than by place of residence. Another reason is that the Saskatchewan Health officials must wait to purge its records of people who have died or who have moved out of the province until the official documentation reaches their office. 3. Statistics Canada, Annual Demographic Statistics 2002, Catalogue no. 91-213-XPB (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry, 2003), 158–60. 4. In their selection of reserve lands, the band adapted the strategy of identifying areas where key traditional activities took place. These sites were often places where different groups of the band gathered in the spring, or sites close to a fur-trading store. Little Red River Reserve (IR 106D) lies just outside of the southern boundary of Census Division 18 (Figure 4). Since the 1980s, the band is following a different economic development strategy, namely establishing a business presence in Prince Albert, Saskatoon, and other cities in Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan’s Forgotten North

Works Cited Bone, Robert M. “Population Characteristics of Northern Saskatchewan 1996,” in Ka-iu Fung, ed., Atlas of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon: PrintWest, 1999), 196–198. Bone, Robert M. “Socioeconomic Characteristics of Northern Saskatchewan 1996,” in Ka-iu Fung, ed., Atlas of Saskatchewan, 199–200. Bone, Robert M. Geography of the Canadian North: Issues and Challenges. 2nd ed. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2003. Buckley, Helen. Trapping and Fishing in the Economy of Northern Saskatchewan. Saskatoon: Centre for Community Studies, University of Saskatchewan, 1962. Buckley, Helen, Kew, J.E.M., and John B. Hawley. The Indian and Metis of Northern Saskatchewan. Saskatoon: Centre for Community Studies, University of Saskatchewan, 1963. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Registered Indian Population by Sex and Residence 2002. Available at , retrieved 2004. Saskatchewan Health. Saskatchewan Health Covered Population, 2001. Available at , retrieved 2004. McKay, Ray. Personal communication with Ray McKay, CEO of Kitsaki Management Partnership Ltd., 4 December 2001. Saul, John Ralston. Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century. Toronto: Viking, 1997. Statistics Canada. Population Counts, Land Area, Population Density and Population Rank, for Canada, Provinces and Territories, and Census Divisions, 2001 Census. Available at http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/standard/ popdwell/Table-CD-P.cfm?PR=47&T=2&SR=1&S=1&O=A>, retrieved 2002.

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S a s k at c h e w a n : A D i s t i n c t P o l i t i c a l Cult u r e David E. Smith

Saskatchewan is easy to ignore. In the south, its boundaries are invisible lines imposed on prairie and parkland, while north of Prince Albert the Laurentian Shield comprises over half the province. A vast terrain of rock, lakes, and trees, the Shield is Canada’s most pervasive geological feature; it embraces Hudson Bay and makes northern Saskatchewan indistinguishable from the northern reaches of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. Saskatchewan’s more settled, agricultural, south, long identified with the grain industry, visually shares much in common with its prairie neighbours. Once the site of enormous demographic change—in the twenty-year span from provincehood to 1926, the province’s population increased from 257,763 to 829,738 persons, making it Canada’s third most populous province—Saskatchewan’s population has stagnated since the 1930s. In the seventy intervening years, the total has increased by only 11 percent, from 921,000 to 1,023,000. At the beginning of the province’s second century, demographic predictions offer no reason to expect a change in this trend. Perhaps, for this reason, national media treat Saskatchewan, when they consider it at all, as a prairie New Brunswick, of little importance to the national scene. Except in one respect, its politics. Excluding Quebec, Saskatchewan’s politics are predictably singled out among provincial politics for comment. Invariably,

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Perspectives of Saskatchewan

the source of that recognition is the province’s social democratic tradition, which began with the Regina Manifesto (1933) and the founding of the Farmer-Labour Party, soon renamed the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which thirty years later re-emerged as the New Democratic Party.1 In a country where social democrats have formed governments in a minority of provinces for a minority of their history, Saskatchewan, where social democrats have governed for more than forty of the last sixty years, stands alone. For these reasons Saskatchewan is seen by those outside its boundaries as unique. And it is, but its uniqueness is more substantial than this one-dimensional perspective allows. In no way is this qualification intended to detract from the province’s distinction as the home of North America’s first socialist government (and for that matter a year ahead of Great Britain’s first majority Labour government), nor as the birthplace in Canada of state hospitalization and medicare programs. Indeed, these policy innovations, which later became extremely popular national programs under, respectively, the Diefenbaker and Pearson governments, reinforced the Canadian view that Saskatchewan is politically different from the rest of the country. But to depict Saskatchewan’s politics in social-democratic terms only is to fail to see the whole picture. It ignores what went before and, in so doing, misrepresents the true nature of the province’s distinct political tradition. Over the century the most prominent characteristic of electoral politics in the province—and at this point in the discussion the focus is on electoral as opposed to other (for instance, interest group) activity—is the continuity of parties and their alternation in power. While there have been long periods of one-party dominance in Saskatchewan—for example, the Liberals in office without interruption between 1905 and 1929 or the ccf between 1944 and 1964—there has also been alternation—the Liberals out for five years (1929– 1934) and back for another ten years, or the ccf-ndp out for seven years (1964–1971) and back for another eleven years. (After 1982, alternation acquired another meaning, for as the Liberals declined, first the Progressive Conservatives and, then, the Saskatchewan Party stood ready as the government-in-waiting.) The political cycles may not have been as short as democratic theorists might have wished, but at least alternation occurred. To cite an extreme but not invidious counter-example: Alberta, created as a province at the same time as Saskatchewan, inheritor of the same territorial political tradition, never witnessed an alternation of parties in government. Instead, the Alberta pattern was one of sequence: Liberals in power from 1905 to 1921,

Saskatchewan: A Distinct Political Culture

United Farmers of Alberta from 1921 to 1935, Social Credit 1935 to 1971, and Progressive Conservatives since 1971. Whether Saskatchewan’s practice leads to a better form of government is for others to judge, although Saskatchewan voters obviously think that it does. That it leads to a different form, and not only in comparison with Alberta, is evident. The first time in half a century a British Columbia party formerly in power was returned to power was when Social Credit, defeated in 1972, formed its second government in 1975.2 The comparable date in Manitoba was 1977.3 Until Dalton McGinty led Ontario Liberals to power in 2003, the Ontario Progressive Conservatives stood alone over the past sixty years in having lost and then regained voter support to form a new government. In Quebec, alternation is between the Parti Québécois, who first took power in 1976, and the Liberals. Only in the four Atlantic provinces is the textbook example of the same two parties periodically moving from one side of the legislature to the other the pattern. In short, nowhere else but in Saskatchewan are the features of continuity and change so evident in provincial politics. But is the Saskatchewan case no more than a distinction without a difference? Are the contrasts between it and the other provinces being overdeveloped to make a point, and perhaps, even, a point of no importance? The argument that follows answers no to both of these questions; it maintains that for most of its first century Saskatchewan politics have been different from those of the other provinces, and for a definable reason. Monocausal explanations are always suspect. In every province demography, economy, and history, for example, play a part in explaining local political attitudes and practice. For that matter, so too does the personality of party leaders. Yet, taken together, these factors do not adequately explain why the two-party system of Liberals and Progressive Conservatives holds in some parts of the country but not others, or why, where it does hold, third-party alternatives experience such varied success, either being in power for decades or only once for a few years. No single explanation may satisfactorily account for the contrast, but the primary reason appears to lie in the condition of party organization. Not, it should be emphasized, in the state of organization of all parties. Rather, it is the depth and breadth of one party’s organization that moulds a political system and demands of those who would challenge that party, comparable organizational skills if they are to succeed. Here, and not in the ideology of its parties—although this has been important—is where Saskatchewan is different. Without an organizational base,

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Perspectives of Saskatchewan

ideology could never have been translated into policy, nor the policy implemented into programs. Nor, in the absence of organization, could the continuity in power required to alter permanently the political culture of a province be sustained. What distinguishes political Saskatchewan from other provinces is that at the end of the first century, it appears much as it did at its beginning. And this despite the triumph of socialism sixty years ago. Arguably, continuity helps explain another, less remarked feature of Saskatchewan politics: its increasing conservatism. In every direction, there is resistance to change. Organization may be the heart of the matter in explaining the pattern of Saskatchewan politics, but in itself that piece of information is inadequate. Political organization of remarkable thoroughness is as old as the province, and actually pre-dates autonomy by a couple of years. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Saskatchewan Liberals are a spent force. It was not always like this, and, indeed, for more than half of the province’s history, quite the reverse.4 So much was this the case that the Liberals’ superior organizational skills, which saw them win six straight victories between 1905 and 1929, and another two in 1934 and 1938, were raised to a mythic level. In 1936, Escott Reid, later to have a distinguished career as a Canadian diplomat, published an academic article entitled “The Saskatchewan Liberal Machine Before 1929.”5 Although accurate in its description of party organization, it was deceptive in the conclusions it drew. The tireless attention to electoral detail, and the “inspectors” on the public payroll who travelled with railroad passes around the province attending to party affairs were all true. So, too, was widespread use of patronage. But the inference that these practices were reprehensible or a deviation from some less partisan-centred administration was Reid’s alone. What singled out the Liberals for comment at the time was the apparently effortless and limitless victories the Liberals might amass. In 1934, the Liberals were back in power, holding fifty of fifty-five seats; the “quints,” as the opposition was sometimes called, were members of the ccf, the party destined to replace the Liberals as the organizational fulcrum of provincial politics. Superior organization, as well as Liberals in government in Ottawa in 1905, had helped the provincial Liberals, led by Walter Scott, a Member of Parliament for Assiniboia West (Regina and district), to win Saskatchewan’s first election. In the years after that, the party organization became centred, first, in the railways and, then, in the highways department. Maintenance of the party organization required mobility, and the minister responsible for transportation in its successive political guises became its accepted head. James

Saskatchewan: A Distinct Political Culture

Calder created the organization, and when he bolted to join the Union or wartime coalition government in Ottawa in 1917, his place was taken by James G. Gardiner, a backbencher since 1914 but an ambitious organization man. He became highways minister in 1922 (the five-year hiatus is explained by the decision of the then premier William Martin to suppress overt partisanism in an attempt to keep the organized farmers of Saskatchewan from entering electoral politics as their counterparts successfully had done in Alberta and Manitoba). When Gardiner became premier in 1926, he took command of the organization with him; it was of the party under Gardiner that Reid wrote. As already alluded to, a feature of the Saskatchewan Liberal organization was its attachment to the federal Liberals. It is in the nature of successful Canadian political parties that they are federated bodies in fact if not always in name. The Bloc Québécois and the Parti Québécois are exceptions to that generalization, but such as to prove the rule. Gardiner’s organizational talents, which saw him win every contest he personally entered between 1914 and 1957, and every general election except one in the same period, also saw him secure and keep William Lyon Mackenzie King’s Prince Albert (federal) seat between 1926 and 1945 (a feat the prime minister himself never equalled since elsewhere he always lost when running as an incumbent). Gardiner also campaigned on behalf of federal and provincial Liberalism in Alberta and Manitoba, an experience that demonstrated to him and to students of political parties just how distinctive Saskatchewan was, since Gardiner’s electoral magic did not travel well across provincial boundaries. The last straight Liberal government left power in Alberta and Manitoba in 1921 and 1922, respectively.6 The point of this excursion into federal party matters is to underline another dimension of Saskatchewan’s distinctiveness: its Liberal connection. This is the reason why Liberals hung on as realistic electoral contenders long after they had become no more than a rump, and not even a continuous rump, in Alberta and Manitoba. Here again is a part of Saskatchewan’s distinct political culture—the continuous vigour of major party sentiment. While there are secondary reasons for this development and while vestigial Liberal parties have hung on elsewhere, the continuity of Liberalism is an important explanatory feature of Saskatchewan politics. The United Farmers of Alberta and Social Credit in that province might disappear from the political spectrum and necessitate new electoral constellations. That was not necessary in Saskatchewan. It was also the case that Liberals were in power in Ottawa—for seventy of Saskatchewan’s

41

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Perspectives of Saskatchewan

100 years. The succour the federal wing offered its provincial namesake was denied to Conservatives for most of the time. And in a system of one-party dominance, such as in Saskatchewan, the local Conservatives could not expect to replace the ruling Liberals. Liberal dominance for the first four decades of the province’s history paralleled a succession of Liberal, Conservative, farmer, Social Credit, and coalition governments in Alberta and Manitoba. Fundamental change occurred in 1944, with the election of a Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government led by Tommy Douglas and a massive shift in legislative seats. In the election, the Liberals were reduced to five seats, while the ccf captured forty-seven. Here is where a seismic (political scientists sometimes call it a regime) shift took place. The ccf was a very different entity from the Liberals, most obviously in its ideological persuasion. As Escott Reid anatomized the Liberals, so Seymour Martin Lipset probed the appearance of a socialist government in North America’s most agrarian locale.7 Lipset maintained that regardless of the policy distinction between old and new governing parties, the explanation for ccf success lay in its mobilization of community leaders, found, for instance, in the hundreds of cooperatives, credit unions, and grain elevators scattered throughout the province. Contrary to the socialist and anti-socialist rhetoric that dominated Saskatchewan elections for decades after 1944, the source of ccf success lay in its organizational superiority. In light of the fact that the ccf had no federal government allies to bolster its cause, the victory was all the more astounding. To understand what had happened it is necessary to re-examine Liberal history. The Liberal organization under Gardiner had adopted an electoral stance that vulgarly might be described as one that took no prisoners. When the organized farmers entered electoral politics, as the Progressive Party did nationally and as the United Farmers of Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario provincially, Gardiner tirelessly opposed any suggestion of cooperation or accommodation. Farmers who went into elections as a group must be defeated. Neither in Ottawa, nor Edmonton nor Winnipeg nor Toronto was his counsel followed: King spent most of the 1920s co-opting Progressive leaders and policies, so that by the end of the decade, the farmers’ revolt was an electoral memory. The story is more complicated in the other Prairie provinces but the outcome the same. In Saskatchewan, things were different. The Saskatchewan Grain Growers Association (sgga) debated but did not enter electoral politics. The governments

Saskatchewan: A Distinct Political Culture

of William Martin (1916 to 1922) and of Charles Dunning (1922 to 1926) placated the farmers and suppressed partisanism. Martin brought J.A. Maharg, a past president of the sgga for eleven years, into his government in 1921 as minister of agriculture, while Dunning was a former general manager of the sgga. Gardiner opposed this policy, and for this reason spent eight years on the backbenches before entering the Dunning government in 1922 as highways minister and, thus, head of the party organization. From this point on, cooperation with the farmers, either in their 1920s form as Progressives (by whatever label) or in their early 1930s guise as the Farmer-Labour Party (composed mainly of farmers but with a small urban contingent), ended. Gardiner was as much an ideologue as the socialists, except the object of his passion was the party first, last, and always. Only with a united, majority party could “representative, responsible government” flourish. This was not an empty phrase for him; he believed until his dying day that socialism spawned regulation and administration, both of which were inimical to political responsibility. Moreover, third parties limited Saskatchewan’s ability to influence the federal government since their electoral success reduced the numbers of old-party mps sitting in Parliament and, more to the point, in the government caucus. Given this philosophy, had the 1929 election been an ordinary election in which economic issues dominated, it is unlikely Gardiner would have acted any differently from what he did. But 1929 was an exceptional, unprecedented event. The Ku Klux Klan had entered Saskatchewan in the late 1920s, and had focused its venom on the non-English (that is, the settlers from central Europe), the Roman Catholic Church, and the Liberals’ administration of separate schools. The result was a campaign of bigotry that inflamed the electorate. Whatever Gardiner’s faults as a “machine” politician, his platform style can best be described as pedagogic. He met fire with statistics: there were, he said, fewer separate schools in 1929 (and of them, fewer with religious symbols on display) than five years earlier. The rebuttal was ineffective and the Klan, in league, Gardiner always believed, with the Conservative Party, the Orange Lodge, and the Anglican Church, rallied anti-Liberal sentiment to such a degree that the Liberals lost their majority, though they won more seats and votes than any other party. A Cooperative government led by J.T.M. Anderson (a former school inspector and thus a Liberal public servant) succeeded the Liberals. The election of 1929 was Gardiner’s only electoral defeat, and it was one in which he took pride: the Liberal cause, he believed, had been “noble” and the defeat “honourable.”

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Much has been written about that campaign, and it is interesting in the way that episodes of mass hysteria are interesting—how could racism of such ferocity arise, and how could it be so potent? But for the thesis of this chapter, the lesson of 1929 is quite different. The Liberals had been defeated, but just. They returned to power in 1934, at a time when drought and depression had quashed concerns about separate school administration. And when they came back, it was “business-as-usual” for Gardiner. That meant crushing the new Farmer-Labour Party with its five mlas and re-establishing an old-party alignment that had not been seen for twenty years since the initial farmers’ revolt. From the point of view of Liberal organization and Liberal policy, 1929 might as well never have happened. With the federal Liberals in power, the provincial Liberals had nothing to fear from their handful of opponents in the legislature. Electoral defeat, followed by a sweeping electoral victory that saw all the government candidates rejected by the voters, blinded the Liberals to the ccf’s potential. Unlike the old sgga, the ccf was first and foremost an electoral organization.8 And as Lipset illustrated, it was an electoral organization that reached into every community in the province. Here, then, is another fundamentally distinctive feature of Saskatchewan’s political culture. Alongside the original, massive, successful, federally supported provincial Liberal Party, another ultimately massive and successful but provincially based party rose up as a rival. While many ccfers had supported the Progressive cause, the ccf did not result from the capture of some pre-existing electoral organization. The ccf built its own electoral organization using skills of hundreds of community leaders honed in an array of economic, social, and voluntary groups. The ccf policies and the administrative cadre hired to implement them, as well as the leadership of Tommy Douglas, were unique to Saskatchewan. Nevertheless, the context in which they took form moulded the attitudes and priorities of the ccf. And that context was marked by intense competition. It would be an exaggeration to say that the ccf had the Liberals to thank for their success in 1944—but only an exaggeration. In a two-party system, which is what Saskatchewan had become by 1944, each party existed in dynamic tension with the other. The gains of one were the losses of the other. Unique among the provinces, Saskatchewan possessed a two-party system that saw, admittedly only twice (1964 and 1971), the parties exchange power.9 In the 1970s, this alignment of opposites, so to speak, underwent a fundamental transformation. The Liberals ceased to be one of Saskatchewan’s two

Saskatchewan: A Distinct Political Culture

parties; it became essentially what Gardiner had so opposed—a provincial third party. Why this happened and what its consequences were help explain the province’s politics at its centenary. Next to their record of electoral success, the feature of the Saskatchewan Liberals that distinguished them from parties in the other western provinces and in Ontario was their close ties to the federal Liberal Party. The first four premiers—Scott, Martin, Dunning, and Gardiner—all sat in Parliament either before or after they became premier. Gardiner’s long career as federal minister of agriculture (1935 to 1957) meant that that tradition carried on for over half a century. The linkage between federal and provincial Liberals persisted through federal leaders and their policies designed to serve the needs of the province. The Prairie Farm Assistance Act, 1939, for instance, introduced the principle of federal government responsibility to aid Prairie farmers on the rationale that federal settlement policies and federal retention of the Prairie provinces’ natural resources until 1930 had created an obligation on Ottawa’s part to intervene in bad times. This was not the first example of federal legislation designed to help the region: the Crow’s Nest Pass rates, which provided for reduced freight charges on goods (“settlers’ effects”) destined for the West and on east-bound grain, had grown out of an agreement with the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1897 but had become statutorily guaranteed in the 1920s. The Prairie Farm Assistance Act was different, however, in that it established the principle and expectation of periodic federal intervention when grain farmers faced adverse economic conditions. The dominance of grain in the regional and national economies (it was, until the post-war years, Canada’s principal export) helped explain Ottawa’s responsiveness. But so too did a strong regional voice in Cabinet; and that voice belonged to Saskatchewan’s ministers, men like W.R. Motherwell, who was federal minister of agriculture throughout the 1920s, and Gardiner after 1935. The federal-provincial linkage was based on more than leaders and policies; it extended to the voters as well. For decades, as Reid had demonstrated in his otherwise critical article, a Liberal was a Liberal was a Liberal. The electoral phenomenon of the 1950s, which accelerated in the 1960s, was the disengagement of federal and provincial Liberal voters.10 That phenomenon coincided with Gardiner’s diminishing influence in the government of Louis St. Laurent, most notably his failure despite tireless campaigning to secure federal commitment to build the South Saskatchewan River Dam. The best he got was a Royal

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Commission on whose report St. Laurent temporized, but John Diefenbaker, St. Laurent’s successor, acted immediately. Diefenbaker also aggressively pursued sales of wheat abroad, and especially to countries like China hitherto ignored by the Canadian Wheat Board. The new Progressive Conservative government in 1957, led by a man identified with the West, and more specifically, Saskatchewan, finally ended the electoral bond that Gardiner had fought to maintain between Saskatchewan and the federal government. Over the next thirty years in eleven federal elections (1958 through 1988), the Progressive Conservatives took 112 of the available 177 seats. More than that, the new Liberal leaders, Lester Pearson, and, even more, his successor, Pierre Trudeau, demonstrated no interest in western agricultural matters. The rebuilding of the Liberal Party after the Diefenbaker defeat in 1963 focused on an urban, indeed a metropolitan, constituency in an economy that rapidly turned its attention from agriculture.11 Today, the attention that the great wheat sales of the 1950s and 1960s received seems anachronistic not only in national but in regional terms. In this new climate, the Saskatchewan Liberal Party looked inward for the first time in its history. There was another reason for this reorientation. The government of Lester Pearson (1963 to 1968) was a minority government and the federal Liberals, philosophically progressive in social policy in any case, looked for support in Parliament from the New Democratic Party. But in Saskatchewan, there could be no mimicking of this strategy, since the Liberals and ndp were adversaries. Indeed, in these same years competition between the two had intensified. Ross Thatcher, a former ccf and then Liberal Member of Parliament, had become Saskatchewan Liberal leader. His strategy to defeat the ccf-ndp was to rally the “antisocialist” vote. The introduction of medicare and the doctors’ strike of 1962 played a role analogous to the Ku Klux Klan’s intervention in the late 1920s by uniting, at least for a time, anti-ccf sentiment. The Liberals formed the provincial government between 1964 and 1971, removing the ccf from power for the first time in two decades. But, like Anderson’s Cooperative government, the Thatcher government proved to be a momentary rejection of the now-dominant ccf-ndp. The Liberals were soundly defeated (losing twenty seats for a total of fifteen versus the ndp’s forty-five), in part because the voters expressed their rejection of federal policies such as Lower Inventories for Tomorrow, which would pay farmers not to grow wheat. A month after the election, Ross Thatcher, the architect of Liberalism’s short revival in Saskatchewan, died. Like the Liberals, who returned to power in 1934 and continued

Saskatchewan: A Distinct Political Culture

to dominate Saskatchewan politics for another decade, this time the ndp, under Allan Blakeney, returned to power for eleven years. The Liberals, with whom this chapter claims Saskatchewan’s political distinctiveness originated, were now, after nearly three-quarters of a century, to decline as an electoral force. Significantly, however, Saskatchewan has not evolved into a system like Alberta’s, where there is no alternative government in waiting. Laboriously, and disastrously in some respects, a new second governing party has emerged. The consequence of that development has been to maintain a distinctive political culture, only this time the distinction lies not as it did in the past with a provincial party closely allied with a federal party but rather in the abandonment of all federal allegiances. The re-election of the ndp in 1971 made clear, if there was doubt any longer, that the socialists provided the province with the political continuity the Liberals once assumed they embodied. Events in the opposition’s ranks reinforced that conclusion. Not only were the Liberals unable to form a government, they were unable to monopolize the opposition. A new antisocialist challenger emerged in the form of a revived Progressive Conservative Party. By the early 1980s, the Progressive Conservatives had found a young leader, Grant Devine, whose authority rested as much in his occupation—he was a farmer and an agricultural economist—as it did in his party position. The ndp had been born a farmer-labour organization, but it had become, as Lipset predicted it would, a party and government strongly committed to policies and administration, and to inevitable bureaucracy. That may be the fate of all parties once in power; it is a preordained outcome for one that believes in social standards, economic planning, and redistribution. The Liberal defeat in 1944 and the Progressive Conservative defeat in 1991 proved devastating for the respective provincial parties, although more so for the pcs, since the collapse of the federal Progressive Conservatives followed in 1993. The only other defeat of a governing party to rival these was the unexpected rout of the ndp in 1982, when it won only nine seats compared to forty-four at the previous election. By contrast, the Progressive Conservatives, who had captured one seat in 1964, seven in 1975, and seventeen in 1978, now took a spectacular fifty-five. In some respects, the 1982 outcome was the most interesting in Saskatchewan’s electoral history. Where the size of other defeats may not have been predictable, at least they were explicable. Passions raised by bigotry or scandal, or fatigue of an exhausted government, made

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sense of the massive shift in voter support. What happened in 1982 was not anticipated nor, after the fact, were its causes obvious. As it had in the 1950s, and would later in the 1990s, the ndp in 1982 stood for active government and sound administration (as they saw it). All Saskatchewan governments have sought to moderate the peaks and troughs that result from an economy based on natural resources. Most have looked to ways to diversify the economy in order to break free from dependency upon farmbased incomes in particular. The ndp had followed this strategy, but, in the 1970s, it did something different—it set out to moderate the economy less by diversification than by direction. The instrument employed was the familiar Crown corporations; the difference was that this time the Crown corporations were used to develop natural resources (as, for instance, with Sask Oil, the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, and the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation) to give the province greater control over its economy. Earlier conflict with the Trudeau government over the taxation of natural resources explained in part the new emphasis, but only in part. At most it was a stimulus and not a determining factor: the ndp, and the ccf before it, was a social democratic government committed to improving society and the economy through public policy. The lesson of the 1970s, and the difference between health care policies of earlier decades and economic policies later on, was that the former conferred benefits on everyone—the principle of universality—while the latter involved choices and had a differential impact. Money spent on nationalizing potash meant money not spent on other programs. Nor did everyone, whatever the larger public interest arguments advanced for nationalization, see him- or herself directly benefiting from the decision. Thus the economic strategy created a residue of opposition, and one that grew throughout the decade, even among individuals who for ideological or socio-economic reasons might have been expected to see themselves as ndp supporters. It is not the purpose of this chapter to examine the fortunes of particular parties in individual elections. Nonetheless, the election of 1982, like those of 1944 and 1991, had special significance. It too was a realigning election in the sense that provincial politics were fundamentally altered as a result of the outcome. Only this time it was not, as in 1944, the arrival of an ideologically defined and organizationally superior party that replaced the province’s dominant electoral force. Rather, the results of 1982 revealed a latent weakness of governments committed to social-democratic ideals—which is that they

Saskatchewan: A Distinct Political Culture

appear, because of the goals they seek, to be insensitive to and distant from immediate public concerns. Perhaps it is unfair to attribute this feature (or failing, some would say) to social democrats, since Liberal governments in Ottawa have had the same character flaw attributed to them.12 Fair or not, this attitude toward governing, as revealed in Saskatchewan in 1982, separates those in power from those they claim to represent. For the voters, the immediate economic problems of the early 1980s were galloping interest rates and fuel costs; and the Progressive Conservatives, reborn less than a decade earlier, quickly seized the opportunity that the gap between governor and governed now presented. Thus, neither a decade of balanced budgets nor a legacy of activist policies intended to strengthen the economy could repel the electorate’s discontent. Experience in government, the quality ndp candidates most often cited in seeking voter support, had become a liability. Significantly, too, the results of 1982 were the last in which the winning party carried both urban and rural centres. In 1986, the ndp took twenty-one of the twenty-eight urban seats (those of Regina, Prince Albert, and Moose Jaw) and only three rural seats. In terms of popular vote, the ndp won a fraction of a percent more than the pcs, but a cleavage between city and country had emerged, one that would continue to be evident in subsequent elections, and which for the first time in the province’s history was mirrored in the alignment of the parties in the legislature. In this time of adjustment the Progressive Conservatives claimed to speak for rural Saskatchewan. The next nine years, during the last seven of which there was a Progressive Conservative government in office in Ottawa, saw a return to the political pattern of the Gardiner era, that is, with a provincial government who claimed a special and sympathetic relationship with the more powerful and wealthier federal government. A series of federal programs intended to assist grain farmers followed. Whether judged good or bad, the programs helped solidify rural Saskatchewan behind the ndp’s opponents. The scandals that eventually tarnished the reputation of the Devine government did not alter the rural-urban split that coincided with the party division in the province. In fact, the scandals actually accentuated the cleavage, for when the Progressive Conservatives succumbed to a crushing defeat in 1991 that saw only ten candidates (all rural) returned, the stage was set for yet another shift in Saskatchewan politics of a magnitude comparable to what had happened after 1934 and, again, after 1971.

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The birth of the Saskatchewan Party through the coalescence of the remaining Progressive Conservative mlas and a rump of dissident Liberal mlas produced for the first time since 1934 and the emergence of the FarmerLabour group a stand-alone provincial party. To some extent that is an exaggeration because the ccf set out to become a national party, but it was a national party with a difference: from the beginning, it depended on the Saskatchewan provincial wing for assistance and not the other way around. Although the Saskatchewan Party shared some personnel and policies with the Reform Party, formed in 1989, it had no federal parent organization (as did the early Liberals) on which to build or depend for support; nor was there a spectrum of community organizations (pools, cooperatives, credit unions) to transform into an electoral organization (as the old ccf had done). Support for the Saskatchewan Party came from old Tories, disaffected Liberals, and, even, from those who, Lipset argued, once were natural ndp supporters. The era of agrarian socialism seemed to have passed. Adapting Richard Hofstadter’s famous aphorism about United States politics, the ccf, born in the country, had moved to the city.13 The tone of Saskatchewan politics was changing, beginning with the deterioration of its massive organizational battalions—no longer the Liberal organization that had once seemed so permanent; no longer rural Saskatchewan with its rich organizational life (the decline of the powerful Wheat Pool was symptomatic of the transformation). These changes imperilled the ndp in particular, whose roots in the country withered. In consequence, and in marked contrast to its determination to balance the budget, the ndp government of the 1990s appeared to lack conviction when making hard choices affecting rural Saskatchewan. Nearly a century after it was created as a result of recommendations by the province’s first Royal Commission in 1907, the local government structure underwent extensive examination at the end of the century but survived unscathed, thanks to vigorous opposition from the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (sarm), before which the government of Roy Romanow bowed.14 It is a measure of how much the political landscape of Saskatchewan has changed that in the elections of 1991, 1995, 1999, and 2003, the ndp emerged victorious (although in 1999 it had to coalesce with three, and then two, Liberal mlas to achieve a majority), and the Saskatchewan Party, established in 1998, carrying all but one or two rural seats in subsequent elections, could not form the government. The explanation lies in the decline of agriculture. Even

Saskatchewan: A Distinct Political Culture

though the livelihood of many is affected by the fortunes of agriculture, cultivated crops are no longer central to the provincial economy. Nor to its politics. With fifty-eight seats in the legislature and twenty-seven of those in the four major cities and two more in northern Saskatchewan, the ndp has only to win these and one more seat for a majority. When, as in 2003, it lost three Saskatoon seats, it was able to compensate by unexpected, tight victories in a handful of rural seats. Moreover, while the province’s population is stagnant, that of the major cities is growing, a situation that presents further opportunity for the ndp, all things remaining as they are. That phrase is probably the most accurate description of the Saskatchewan politics at the end of the province’s first century. All things, indeed, appear set to remain exactly as they are: the total population continues the same, although there is a substantial intraprovincial migration from rural locales and Aboriginal reserves to the cities; there is an out-migration of non-Aboriginal population in the form of the young, and often the best educated, people; while the needs of the retired elderly (Saskatchewan is home to the country’s oldest population) bulk large for any government and are expensive to support on a contracting base of taxpayers. For voters the prevailing concern is security, in the form of health care and income, and in any controversy where an alternative value (say, economic growth) is advanced, the ndp possesses an edge as protectors of the status quo. In large part this happens because the ndp and the ccf before it were the originators of Saskatchewan’s present condition. What defines Saskatchewan to local residents and to other Canadians are policies and practices such as medicare, Crown corporations, and government insurance. Whatever metamorphoses time has wrought, these programs remain in the public mind (and in the mind of the party) the property of the ndp. So much so, that only the ndp is trusted to alter them. The thesis of this chapter is that to understand Saskatchewan politics it is necessary to appreciate the central importance of party organization. The ccf-ndp achieved its record of electoral successes only by duplicating the commitment the Liberals once paid to this subject. Ideology, in short, was not determinative of ccf-ndp electoral success. Still, it was important, although not in the way some might think. As far as the ccf-ndp in Saskatchewan was concerned, ideology was less a question of fervour than it was of programs. More than any other party in the province’s history, and more than any other Canadian party, save the Parti Québécois with its nationalist agenda, the ccfndp in Saskatchewan has fixed its attention, devoted its energies, and set its

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purpose on an object, usually in the form of a program, the most obvious being the twenty-year realization of medicare. Anticipated, delayed, postponed—still it came to fruition. The same elongated process accompanied policies to secure the control and development of natural resources in the 1970s or the crippling deficit two decades after that. The Saskatchewan ndp is one of the most pragmatic parties in Canada, and because of its electoral prowess, the province’s politics continue to be highly structured. Opposition, that is, anti-socialist parties like Ross Thatcher’s Liberals and Grant Devine’s Progressive Conservatives, have tried to seize the initiative and alter that structure. But they have failed, not only in the sense that they lost power within a decade but also in the sense that they were never able to discard the assumptions and values the ccf put in place in 1944. It is no exaggeration to say that these anti-socialist challengers destroyed themselves. And for that reason the original version of partisan alternation in Saskatchewan has changed, so that now the ndp finds itself challenged by a reconstituted alliance of opponents of which the Saskatchewan Party is the most recent manifestation. Regardless of the partisan label, these opponents of the ndp invariably find themselves denying that they contemplate change to the policies the ccf set out in 1944 and which, with modification in detail but not principle, continue to direct ndp action. Thatcher on medicare, Devine on privatizing Sask Oil, or Hermanson (the leader of the Saskatchewan Party in the 2003 election) on sale of the Crown corporations, all recanted as misrepresentations of their policies proposals critics said challenged programs that lie at the heart of Saskatchewan’s distinctive political culture. The legislature that was returned following the 2003 election enjoyed a double distinction: it was the only one in the country in which sat no member of the traditional parties of Canadian politics (that is, the Liberal and Conservative parties), and thus, it was the first Saskatchewan legislature in nearly a century in which the original dominant party of provincial politics (the Liberal) played no part. Homegrown parties, which had either low visibility, in the case of the ndp, or no visibility, in the case of the Saskatchewan Party, comprised the government and opposition. Observers might be forgiven for concluding that the province had turned its back on national politics. If that supposition proved true, it would represent a significant departure from tradition. In their prime, the Saskatchewan Liberals constituted a powerful force in federal as well as provincial politics. Perhaps the ccf-ndp played less of a role in national party politics, but

Saskatchewan: A Distinct Political Culture

through its leaders—T.C. Douglas, Woodrow Lloyd, Allan Blakeney, and Roy Romanow—and their policies it occupied centre stage in national debates, whether the subject was social programs, constitutional reform, or federal-provincial relations. As a result, during its first century Saskatchewan exerted an influence in national affairs out of proportion to its population or economic rank. Thus, as a political culture Saskatchewan’s distinction is two-fold. It has exploited the potential of federalism, benefiting from and contributing to national politics on the one hand and experimenting and innovating within its invisible boundaries on the other. In this respect no better example can be cited than Saskatchewan for the creative power of provincial politics.

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Notes 1. The socialist nomenclature in Saskatchewan is awkward and forgettable: the Farmer-Labour Party until 1934, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation 1935 to 1961, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation–New Democratic Party of Saskatchewan, 1961–1967, and the New Democratic Party thereafter. For simplicity’s sake, the term Co-operative Commonwealth Federation or CCF is used for the period after 1935 and New Democratic Party after 1964. 2.

During the first thirty years of British Columbia’s history, there were no organized parties. From 1903 until 1941, the Liberal and Conservative parties dominated the province’s politics, with an alternation in office in 1916, 1927, and 1928. In 1941, in a move to keep the CCF from power, the Liberals and Conservatives united in a coalition that lasted until Social Credit formed a government in 1952. The Liberals next formed a government in 2001.

3. Organized parties appeared in Manitoba in the late 1870s; alternation took place in 1900 and 1915. Between 1922 and 1958, governments were formed by the United Farmers of Manitoba or the Liberal-Progressives. 4. For a political history of the party, see David E. Smith, Prairie Liberalism: The Liberal Party in Saskatchewan, 1905–71 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), and Norman Ward and David Smith, Jimmy Gardiner: Relentless Liberal (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990). 5. Escott Reid, “The Saskatchewan Liberal Machine Before 1929,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 2 (1936): 27–40. 6.

Gardiner’s labours on behalf of Liberalism outside Saskatchewan are recounted in Robert A. Wardhaugh, Mackenzie King and the Prairie West (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).

7. Seymour Martin Lipset, Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968). 8. On the founding of the CCF, see Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association, “Political Materials, 1932–1934” file, Frank Eliason to members of the U[nited] F[armers] of C[anada] Board, December 31, 1934, reprinted in David E. Smith, ed., Building a Province: A History of Saskatchewan in Documents (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1992), 369–71 and 44–45. 9. See John C. Courtney and David E. Smith, “Saskatchewan Party Politics,” in Martin Robin, ed., Provincial Party Politics, revised ed. (Toronto: Prentice Hall, 1978), 283–316. 10. John C. Courtney and David E. Smith, “Voting in a Provincial General Election and a Federal By-Election: A Study of Saskatoon City,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 32 (1966): 338–53. 11. See David E. Smith, The Regional Decline of a Party: Liberals on the Prairies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981).

Saskatchewan: A Distinct Political Culture

12. John Meisel, “Howe, Hubris and ’72: An Essay on Political Elitism,” in John Meisel, Working Papers on Canadian Politics (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1975), 217–52. 13. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 23. 14. Saskatchewan, Department of Municipal Affairs Culture and Housing, Task Force on Municipal Legislative Renewal, Options 2000: A Framework for Municipal Renewal, Rural and Urban Sectors, Final Report (Regina, 2000).

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T h e M y t h o f M ult i c ult u r a l i s m i n E a r ly S a s k at c h e w a n 1 B i l l Wa i s e r

In September 1986, Saskatchewan formally adopted the provincial motto Multis e gentibus vires (“from many peoples, strength” or “out of many peoples, strength”). It seemed a particularly fitting description of the province. After all, Saskatchewan was home to John Diefenbaker, Canada’s first prime minister of neither French nor English descent. The province also gave Canada its first Governor General of Ukrainian descent, Ray Hnatyshyn, in 1990. One year later, another Saskatoon kid of Ukrainian descent, Roy Romanow, became premier. There are many other examples of Saskatchewan’s diversity outside the realm of government and politics. Guy Vanderhaeghe, a graduate of the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan, is a two-time Governor General’s Literary Award winner for fiction. And up until 2007, Roy Shivers and Danny Barrett of the Saskatchewan Roughriders football team were the only black general manager and coach in professional football— anywhere at anytime. This diversity is often cited as one of the defining characteristics of the cultural make-up of Saskatchewan.2 Ethnic pluralism has made the province and its history distinct from that of the rest of Canada. Indeed, the late Manitoba historian, W.L. Morton, once spoke in terms of a third national identity

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rooted in the immigrant groups who settled in western Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.3 That distinctiveness is expressed today in any number of ways—from annual cultural festivities, such as Folkfest in Saskatoon, to activities such as Ukrainian stage dance to Cree language training at the University of Saskatchewan. But this multicultural ideal, as expressed by Saskatchewan’s motto, is a relatively recent development. In fact, multiculturalism was never part of the original social blueprint for the new province of Saskatchewan (nor, for that matter, the other two Prairie provinces of Alberta and Manitoba). It was actively resisted throughout the first third of the twentieth century and only embraced in the last few decades. In other words, multiculturalism—and, with it, the acceptance and accommodation of diversity—was never championed in Saskatchewan in the first part of the twentieth century even though it is widely regarded today as part of the region’s historical identity. Secondly, even though Saskatchewan was the destination for tens of thousands of non-British immigrants in the early twentieth century, the province remained first and foremost a British province. People of Anglo-Canadian descent constituted the majority of the population and continued to dominate the region’s political, economic, and social elite through much of the twentieth century. Settling the Land of Opportunity

If Canadian expansionists in the mid-nineteenth century were to be believed, the North-West Territories were to be the future home of countless millions of Anglo-Canadian farmers, a land where the best features of British civilization would take root and flourish. Doug Owram has documented this ideal in his book, Promise of Eden. Western Canada was to be a kind of agricultural wonderland based on one dominant culture (Anglo-Canadian), engaged in one dominant activity (wheat farming) in one dominant region (the southern Prairies).4 The reality by the 1890s, however, was quite disappointing. Despite glowing reports about the unparalleled fertility of the soil and the ready availability of homestead land, the forecast flood of Britons to the western interior never materialized. In 1881, four years before the Canadian Pacific Railway was finally completed, the entire territorial population was just over 25,000. Ten years later, it had reached nearly 67,000—but that was well below expectations. Part of the reason for the failure to attract settlers was the sluggish growth

The Myth of Multiculturalism

that kept the country in the doldrums for the better part of the 1880s and early 1890s. But an even bigger factor was competition from the United States. As long as land could be secured there, the American frontier captured the lion’s share of immigrants who came to North America. This pull even extended to Canada. During the last four decades of the nineteenth century, the country lost an estimated two-thirds of a million people. It was not until 1901 that more people came to Canada than left.5 What turned this bleak situation around was the return of prosperity. The United States had also exhausted its homestead land, prompting historian Frederick Jackson Turner to declare in 1893 the end of an era in American history. Almost overnight, the Canadian Prairies were transformed into “the last, best West.” An advertiser could not have asked for a more enticing image. But it took one other crucial ingredient—the appointment of Clifford Sifton as the new Liberal minister of the interior in 1896—to make western Canada one of the most desired destinations for immigrants in search of land. Sifton looked upon settlement of western Canada as the last, great national task facing the young dominion. The region would be the engine driving Canada’s growth and future well-being, and to make that engine work, the West needed settlers. Sifton’s promotional efforts paid handsome dividends. More settlers applied for homesteads in western Canada in the first decade of the twentieth century than during the entire previous century. In fact, so many immigrants began pouring into western Canada, especially in the early twentieth century, that Prime Minister Laurier stepped outside the normal census cycle (every ten years) and ordered a special census of the three Prairie provinces in 1906 to serve as a kind of statistical snapshot of the phenomenal growth. The statistics told a remarkable tale of expansion. In Saskatchewan alone, the 1891 population (41,522) grew 127 percent by 1901 (91,279) and then another 182 percent just five years later (257,763). For the years 1906 to 1911, three out of every five homestead entries in the three Prairie provinces were in Saskatchewan. These immigrants effectively swamped the First Nations population. The 6358 Aboriginal people counted in 1906 now represented less than 3 percent of Saskatchewan’s population, down from just over 8 percent at the start of the century. The chief census officer predicted that Canada would never be bedevilled by “the native problems that affect South Africa and other countries in the British Empire.”6 And for good reason—it was widely believed at the time that Aboriginal peoples were not to be part of the region’s future and that they would simply disappear.

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One statistic from the 1906 census was particularly striking: over 80 percent of Saskatchewan’s population was rural. The federal Department of the Interior believed that agriculture would be the backbone of the new western society and had consequently sought immigrants with practical farming experience. What this policy meant, however, is that certain groups were unwanted. Sifton had no use for Blacks, Asians, Jews, and southern Europeans, especially Italians. He simply assumed that they would never stay on the land, but migrate to cities and towns where they would take away jobs from Canadian workers.7 Instead, the Department of the Interior not only continued to advertise western Canada in Great Britain, but significantly expanded and improved promotional efforts in the United States. Sifton’s most controversial move, however, was his bold decision to seek people of peasant stock from central Europe, from what had traditionally been regarded as “non-preferred countries.” These groups, from Doukhobors to Russian Germans to Ukrainians, were exactly the kind of immigrants Sifton believed were best suited to the challenging task of turning the prairie wilderness into productive farms. And by the start of World War I, almost half the provincial population had been born in another country. Not everyone shared Sifton’s appreciation of these non-Anglo-Saxon settlers. They may have made good farmers, but would they make good citizens with their unpronounceable last names, pauper-like appearance, strange customs (eating garlic), and different religious beliefs? Indeed, central Europeans at the time were popularly associated with poverty, crime, ignorance, and immorality. One newspaper likened their immigration to a “grand ‘roundup’ of European freaks and hoboes.”8 Critics of Sifton’s policies were genuinely worried that these foreign groups threatened to weaken, perhaps even ruin, the Anglo-Canadian fabric of the country. They also questioned why the backward dregs of European society were more welcome than English workers. Was not western Canada supposed to be home for the sons of Britain? Race, not agricultural experience, should have governed entry into Canada. Sifton shrugged off this opposition and continued to champion the virtues of these immigrant farmers of peasant stock. It would be a mistake, however, to portray Sifton as an advocate of a multicultural West. Although he aggressively pursued what might generously be described as an “open-door” immigration policy, he fully expected immigrants to accept and embrace the ways and traditions of their new country, to be “Canadianized,” according to the popular terminology at the time. And the only way to bring about this transformation

The Myth of Multiculturalism

was to get them established on the land and interacting with British institutions. Settlement and assimilation, in Sifton’s thinking, went hand in hand.9 A White, Protestant Anglo-Canadian Province

This idea that Saskatchewan was to be a bastion of British values and traditions was the dominant theme at the Saskatchewan inauguration ceremonies. The rapid settlement of the North-West Territories had accelerated the demand for provincehood, and in 1905 the federal government created the new western provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Yet, despite the growing presence of non-British immigrants, the talk at the Saskatchewan inauguration party was of a British province peopled by British immigrants. Lord Grey, Canada’s Governor General, for example, observed that Saskatchewan seemed “destined to become the happy and prosperous home of millions of Britons.”10 Grey’s 1905 comments would appear to have been contradicted by the settlement record of the past decade. Indeed, because of the notoriety generated by Ukrainians and other immigrant groups, it is often assumed that the bulk of the settlers who came to Saskatchewan during this period were from continental Europe. But according to the 1906 census, slightly more than half (128,879) of the new province’s population was born in Canada, over 40 percent in Ontario. The British (35,518), meanwhile, topped all other immigrant groups during this period—a simple consequence of the interior department spending more money promoting western Canada in Great Britain than anywhere else. In 1902–03, for example, over $200,000 went to promotional literature in Britain, more than three times the amount for the rest of Europe. Most of the immigrants from English Canada or the British Isles settled throughout Saskatchewan in small groups or as individuals. Given their numerical dominance, there was little need to congregate together. Still, their sense of continuity between the world they had left behind and their new home was evident in the naming of villages, rural municipalities, school districts, and local churches, such as Runnymede or Balliol. Among the foreign-born population (excluding Great Britain), those from the United States were clearly the majority at 35,464; they made up almost 40 percent of the population born outside Canada and Great Britain.11 The next two largest “foreign” groups were Austro-Hungarians (21,188) and Russians (16,551). Together, they represented only 15 percent of the total provincial population. Clearly, then, the number of central European immigrants was

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significantly smaller than those from Great Britain and the United States.12 But it wasn’t necessarily the number of “foreigners” that mattered, but their very presence and how that presence raised concerns about the region’s future. Saskatchewan and the other two Prairie provinces were supposed to be bastions of British values, traditions, and institutions, not some multicultural amalgam. Yet, the growing ethnic diversity of prairie society was totally at odds with the Anglo-Canadian ideal for the prairie west. Some even went so far as to suggest that Saskatchewan’s spectacular settlement story had jeopardized its Britishness.13 Continental Europeans threatened to drag down Saskatchewan society and destroy forever the British character of the province—the exact opposite of “from many peoples, strength.” Assimilation consequently replaced immigration as western Canada’s new necessity. As Methodist minister J.S. Woodsworth argued in Strangers within Our Gates, “Language, nationality, race, temperament, training are all dividing walls that must be broken down.”14 Many confidently assumed that the breaking down of these walls was not only desirable but possible, and that the newcomers would readily integrate over time. Until that time, the host society took steps to ensure the dominance and persistence of the British ideal. An Angry Provincial Atmosphere

Most overt discrimination—in fact, racism—before World War I was directed at visible minorities. In August 1911, for example, a federal order-in-council temporarily banned black immigration. The government order stated that “Negro race . . . is deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada.”15 The Chinese were also persecuted. Numbering less than 1000 in Saskatchewan in 1911,16 they were still reviled as a “yellow peril,” a threat to the moral fibre of white Canada. In 1912, in response to mounting public prejudice, the provincial government introduced An Act to Prevent the Employment of Female Labour in Certain Capacities, which essentially forbade white women from working for an Oriental employer or visiting, except as a customer, any building owned or operated by an Oriental person. It was an unprecedented piece of racial legislation in Saskatchewan, one that was soon challenged by Quong Wing, a Moose Jaw restaurateur and naturalized British subject who was fined for employing two white waitresses. Quong Wing decided to fight the legislation, first before the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal

The Myth of Multiculturalism

in 1913 and then before the Supreme Court of Canada the following year, but his conviction was upheld.17 The coming of World War I added a new menace to Saskatchewan society—the enemy alien. While Germans immigrants were generally tolerated before the war, there had always been doubts about the suitability of immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian empire, in particular Ukrainians, and their ability and willingness to assimilate to the British-Canadian way of life. Oxford-educated Elizabeth Mitchell, who toured the Prairies in 1913, voiced this unease when she asked, “Can Canada . . . afford to base herself on an ignorant, non-English-speaking peasantry, winning a bare living by unceasing labour? . . . The immigration of the last few years has been really overwhelming and cannot be met with a careless ‘Everything will come right.’ The need for the moment is for a pause and time to think and rearrange.”18 Any acceptance of these non-British immigrants was now overridden by World War I. Before 1914, it was confidently assumed in Saskatchewan that the assimilation and integration of foreigners would proceed apace. But any generosity of spirit, any patience with the newcomers as they adjusted to their adopted home, eroded with coming of the war. As one historian has aptly observed, an “angry atmosphere” came to dominate public life.19 The day the war started, the Saskatchewan premier called for public calm and restraint, reminding citizens that Germans and Ukrainians were their neighbours. But such assurances did little to ease public concerns about foreigners’ loyalty. Ottawa responded with an enemy alien registration and internment policy proclaimed under the provisions of the new War Measures Act. Germans and Ukrainians living in cities or their immediate vicinity were required by law to register and report monthly. Those considered a security threat were sent to work camps throughout western Canada.20 As the Swift Current Sun smugly summed up the operation, “This has been brewing for a long time, but the war has brought it to a head, and Anglo-Saxons to their senses.”21 Those Germans and Ukrainians living in rural Saskatchewan, meanwhile, quietly went about their lives. But the strain often proved too much and some immigrants deliberately substituted one nationality for another. According to census data for the years 1911 and 1921, the number of people in the three Prairie provinces who gave their birth place as Germany fell from 18,000 to 13,000 during the ten-year period. Those born in Sweden, Norway, and Holland, on the other hand, increased from 34,000 to 39,000, or roughly by the same number as the German decline during the same period.22 Several

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Saskatchewan communities also changed their names in response to the war. Prussia, for example, was dropped in favour of Leader, while Kaiser became Peebles and Schultz renamed Prelate.23 The treatment of enemy aliens was only one example of how attitudes towards non-British immigrants had hardened because of World War I. In fact, the need for Anglo-conformity in Saskatchewan society became one of the most emotionally charged issues at the time and ignited an all-out assault on the province’s ethnic minorities. Critics could not comprehend, let alone appreciate, how continental European immigrants could hold multiple loyalties, how they would keep their language, religion, and culture, while developing into Canadian citizens. Consequently, they called for an end to separate schools in the province and an end to instruction in any language other than English. One Presbyterian minister declared in 1915: “Shall freedom be defended on the fields of Flanders and slain upon the plains of Saskatchewan?”24 Whither Saskatchewan?

This debate over the place of non-British immigrants in Saskatchewan society did not go away at war’s end but continued to be an issue into the next decade. Whereas the British-Canadian majority had once grudgingly tolerated the settlement of non-traditional immigrants, like Doukhobors, Mennonites, and Ukrainians, in the expectation that they would eventually embrace the AngloCanadian way of life, any patience with the pace of assimilation had dissipated with World War I. By the 1920s, many had begun to regard the persistence of ethnic identities as a blight on the province’s great future and actively pushed for cultural uniformity. There would be no compromising, no backing away from the assimilationist demands of the World War I period. In fact, the antiforeigner sentiment in Saskatchewan actually became more caustic, more strident, in the 1920s. It was a distinguishing feature of provincial life. Post-war labour unrest suggested that radical aliens were at work in Canada, and it did not take much to reach the larger conclusion that people from eastern and central Europe carried the communist virus and would infect their host society unless checked. Even immigrant children were singled out. Ethel MacLachlan, the first Juvenile Court judge in the province and Saskatchewan’s first female judge, drew a direct link between juvenile delinquency and ethnicity, and argued that assimilation of the new Canadian was one sure way to reduce the number of young offenders.25 For many at the time, it seemed as if the

The Myth of Multiculturalism

province had reached an important fork in the road: one led to greatness as an Anglo-Canadian society, the other to certain ruin as a polyglot catch-all. The days of accommodation were long past. This emphasis on the need for conformity was shared by many Protestant church leaders in the province who steadfastly maintained that foreigners had to be Canadianized if the region was to remain solidly British in outlook and values. And the best way to bring about this assimilation to the Canadian way of life was for the church to become actively involved in the daily lives of the immigrant population. Forget about service in Africa or Asia for the time being. The Saskatchewan frontier had become more important. This home missionary activity was carried out in places known for their large concentrations of continental European immigrants. It took several forms: mission hospitals, where medical personnel were also ordained in the ministry and attended to patients’ spiritual needs as well as their physical ailments; settlement homes or social settlements, where a couple offered night classes and generally served as role models of the Anglo-Canadian way of life; and homeschools, where immigrant children would be remade into good little Canadians. All these church-run institutions expected the immigrant to meet and adhere to “appropriate” standards of Anglo-Canadian citizenship.26 The Saskatchewan government also took steps to speed up the assimilation of non-British immigrants by appointing a provincial Director of Education Among New Canadians in 1918. Dr. J.T.M. Anderson was convinced that the “foreign element” represented the greatest threat to Canada’s future well-being, not necessarily because there were so many nonBritish immigrants, but because they were “deficient” or culturally inferior. It was therefore the special role of the English-only public school to serve as the training ground for Canadian norms, values, and institutions, to break the children’s attachment to their home cultures and traditions, and offer them a better, brighter future as Canadian citizens loyal to the British flag and the British empire. In his 1918 book on the subject, The Education of the New Canadian, Anderson bluntly argued that Saskatchewan had reached “a critical period” in its history and that its destiny would be determined by how it responded to the great educational problem it faced. “They [foreigners] are endangering our national existence . . . making us the laughing stock of enlightened peoples,” he gravely warned.27 This questioning of the role and place of non-British immigration would become quite strident once another wave of settlers began pouring into the

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province again in the mid-1920s. After the war, Ottawa initially concentrated on securing immigrants from Great Britain, the United States, and northwestern Europe. But the expected numbers never materialized, and the federal government once again turned to central and eastern Europe to fill the remaining vacant lands of western Canada. This influx of non-British immigrants accelerated under the September 1925 Railways Agreement, which empowered the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railways to recruit agricultural immigrants from central and eastern Europe. Over the five-year period of the Railways Agreement, more than one-third of a million continental European immigrants entered Canada. The impact on Saskatchewan was reflected in the census figures for 1911 and 1931. The percentage of people of British origin in the province dropped from 54.7 to 47.5 percent over the twenty-year period. The continental European population, on the other hand, now stood at 20 percent in 1931, an increase of more than 5 percent since 1911. The non-British population was also younger than its British counterpart and predominantly rural. What seemed to get lost in these statistics was that Saskatchewan, despite being the most ethnically diverse province in Canada, was still an Anglo-Canadian stronghold, whose political, economic, and social life were dominated by people from British backgrounds.28 The growing number of non-British immigrants precipitated a vicious backlash. The new immigrants were accused of taking jobs from British labourers by working for lower wages and taking land away from so-called better-qualified settlers. They were also blamed for the increase in crime and for spreading communism. Their greatest sin, though, was destroying the Anglo-Saxon character of the province.29 It was one thing to see Saskatchewan by the end of the 1920s become the third-most populous province (921,785) in Canada, but some wondered whether it came at too heavy a cost. NonBritish immigration had to be severely curtailed, if not completely halted, or the province and its once great future would be lost. One of the most outspoken critics of federal immigration policy was George Exton Lloyd, the Anglican bishop for Saskatchewan. Known as the “fighting bishop,” Lloyd believed in a British West and was prepared to do whatever was necessary to realize this vision, no matter whom he offended. Under the banner of the National Association of Canada, Lloyd publicly claimed that he was not against foreigners as long as their numbers remained manageable, but he feared that the current flood of “dirty, ignorant, garlic-

The Myth of Multiculturalism

smelling continentals” posed a real danger.30 He also maintained that too many races were being mixed in Canada, that the country was becoming a “mongrel nation.” As part of his anti-immigrant crusade, Lloyd reportedly cranked out an astounding 70,000 letters in 1928,31 many published by local papers, as well as engaged in an extensive speaking tour. “The real question at stake,” he declared, “is not whether these people can grow potatoes, but whether you would like your daughter or granddaughter to marry them, that is, will they develop into good loyal citizens of Canada and the Empire?”32 Bishop Lloyd’s anti-immigrant tirade was backstopped by a new organization in the province, the Ku Klux Klan. Reinventing itself as a British, Protestant, patriotic organization in the early twentieth century, the fabled Klan entered Saskatchewan from the United States in the fall of 1926 and had no difficulty finding members. Part of the Klan’s appeal was its spirited attack on continental European immigration. It accused Ottawa of subverting the British character of the province by opening the doors to people who could never be assimilated. As one hate-mongering Klansman told a Saskatoon audience, “I am not loyal to a Canada composed of men who jabber all the tongues . . . men who crowd out our own people . . . by offering to work for ten cents an hour, men who come to Canada with tags on them telling you their destination. God deliver Canada from men of this character . . . let us see that the slag and scum . . . is skimmed off and thrown away.”33 What made the Klan’s message even more seductive, though, was its rabid anti-Catholicism. It attributed all the problems of post-war Saskatchewan—from immigration to education to immorality—to the Roman Catholic “menace” and warned that Catholics could not be trusted because they owed their allegiance to Rome. It even charged that the federal Liberal government was a mere puppet of the Catholic hierarchy that sought to create a second Quebec in the West.34 One of the first Klan organizers later admitted that he “fed the people ‘antis’ . . . whatever they could be taught to fear.”35 The Ku Klux Klan ideology found a receptive audience in Saskatchewan by exploiting already existing prejudices and anxieties. The Anglo-Protestant majority had always been uneasy about the settlement of “non-preferred” immigrants in the province, and the recent influx under the Railways Agreement only made the situation more worrisome, if not alarming. Many were distressed by the changes that Saskatchewan society was undergoing and wanted comforting answers. The Klan’s arrival in Saskatchewan, then, could not have come at a more opportune time. And by aggressively articulating the grievances of those

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who believed that the British character of the province was under attack, it became a force in the province.36 By 1929, the Klan boasted 25,000 members in some 125 locals or klaverns; by comparison, the Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association never numbered more than 35,000 at the peak of its popularity in the early 1920s. In 1929, the Klan, together with nativists like Bishop Lloyd and Dr. Anderson, helped to topple the Liberal government that had held power in Saskatchewan for an uninterrupted twenty-four years. This defeat marked the highwater mark of the anti-immigrant crusade. Up to then, despite the antiimmigrant rhetoric, the Liberals had shrewdly governed Saskatchewan since the creation of the province by deliberately cultivating the immigrant vote. In fact, Premier Jimmy Gardiner had a keen appreciation of the province’s cultural pluralism. Reflecting back on his school-teaching days in the Lemberg district before World War I, he once observed that in the classroom “one could learn first-hand the characteristics of almost every European nationality.”37 This wooing of continental Europeans had helped keep the Liberal party in power for almost a quarter-century. But that attachment had now become a liability.38 During the 1929 election campaign, Premier Jimmy Gardiner maintained that the new immigrants, given their numbers, did not constitute any threat to the province’s British institutions. He also vigorously attacked the Klan as an alien growth on Saskatchewan soil, the work of extremists spewing bigotry and misinformation. But this stand was out of step with the public mood at the time. Bishop Lloyd said as much when he denounced the Gardiner government as “non-British, if not anti-British.”39 And for the first time since 1905, the Liberals were denied a majority in the legislature. Accepting Diversity

The defeat of the Gardiner government coincided with the start of the Great Depression in Saskatchewan. Any talk of a more selective immigration policy that gave British settlers preferential treatment had to be shelved while the province tackled the twin scourge of record low commodity prices and record low rainfall levels. In fact, the Depression proved to be the great leveller in Saskatchewan. Everyone, regardless of their ethnic background, suffered. It was the common denominator in people’s lives and helped create a common sense of survival in the face of unprecedented adversity. And Sifton was right.

The Myth of Multiculturalism

Many of those who persisted were continental Europeans who were either too poor to move on or who refused to give up the land they lovingly owned. Concerns about the place of non-British immigrants and their loyalty resurfaced during World War II. One commentator quipped that people were “going goofy” about the presence of enemy subversives in the first few weeks of the war.40 But it readily became apparent that immigrant groups were more than willing to do their part to help win the war. Indeed, the public outpouring that King George and Queen Elizabeth experienced during their visit to Saskatchewan in June 1939 suggested that the province was prepared to stand by Great Britain as Europe descended into war again. This public outpouring was nowhere stronger than in Melville, Saskatchewan, whose mostly central and eastern European population turned out in force during the royal tour to turn the community of 4000 into a city of 60,000 for one day.41 Come the 1940s and 1950s, Saskatchewan faced a new challenge—retaining people. Whereas the province, with its tens of thousands of homesteaders, had once been considered Canada’s future, those days were past. Unlike half a century earlier when the “last, best West” captured the imagination of prospective settlers, few of the new immigrants in the post-war period chose to make Saskatchewan their home, heading instead to the country’s larger cities. This small immigration rate, when combined with out-migration from the province beginning in the mid-1930s, changed the demographic character of Saskatchewan. The percentage of the population born within the province’s borders steadily increased, giving Saskatchewan a strong local identity and a distinctly regional outlook.42 In other words, where continental Europeans were once seen as a blight on Saskatchewan’s future, people with names like Gesiorowski and Hounjet were the province’s future by the 1940s. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (ccf) government headed by Tommy Douglas reflected this new reality in both the Saskatchewan legislature and the bureaucracy. It also pursued a progressive legislative agenda, which included a 1947 Bill of Rights—the first in Canada—which prohibited discrimination on racial and religious grounds. This kind of legislation could not by itself end decades of discrimination against non-British groups in Saskatchewan. Nor did it make the province, or the major cities of Moose Jaw, Regina, and Saskatoon, any less British by mid-century. But as children of immigrants integrated into society at large, ethnic differences gradually became less pronounced, less significant. Historian Gerry Friesen, who came to Saskatoon from Prince Albert in 1961, assumed that heritage mattered little

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during his undergraduate days at the University of Saskatchewan.43 Future ndp premier Roy Romanow, on the other hand, had a much different recollection. Although educated as a lawyer at the University of Saskatchewan and working part-time for ckom radio and cfqc television, Romanow still felt like an outsider whenever he left the familiar confines of the west side. It would take time before immigrants’ kids fit in.44 Still Some Distance to Go

In a paper read before the Royal Society of Canada in May 1926, E.H. Oliver, the first historian appointed at the University of Saskatchewan, reviewed the contribution of continental European immigrants to Saskatchewan society. “We need the artist, the poet, the thinker, the musician, and composer quite as much as the sewer-digger and the track-layer,” he concluded. “It is high time we encouraged these people to bring their best to us. Some of them possess rare genius.”45 What Oliver did not seem to appreciate at the time is that there were poets, thinkers, and musicians among the people who had decided to make the new province their home, but that they faced outright prejudice and heated calls for assimilation—from respected people just like him. Indeed, he was speaking just before the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan stormed through the province. It was not until after World War II, after the province had survived the crucible of depression and then war, that “foreigners” with strange-sounding names were accepted as part of provincial society and had the opportunity to make the kinds of contributions to the wider Saskatchewan community that Oliver had been talking about. Perhaps the real turning point was 1970 when surgeon and decorated war hero Stephen Worobetz was appointed lieutenant-governor. Premier Ross Thatcher claimed that it was long overdue in a province with a large Ukrainian population.46 In retrospect, then, “From Many Peoples, Strength” is not simply a motto for Saskatchewan today. It also represents the distance that the province has come in embracing non-British immigrants as part of its identity, part of its distinctiveness. That in itself may be more important. Just ask the citizens of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, who are struggling today to come to terms with large, ethnically diverse immigrant populations. In fact, it could be argued that Saskatchewan has earned the motto, especially given the early history of the province. At the same time, there is still some distance to go. There are

The Myth of Multiculturalism

striking parallels between the immigrant experience of yesterday and the place of Aboriginal peoples in Saskatchewan today. And unless the province addresses that distance in a meaningful way, then the motto will have a hollow ring.

Notes 1. A version of this article was given as a keynote address at the University of Bristol “British World” conference in July 2007. The author wishes to thank Jim Miller and Merle Massie for their helpful comments on the paper. 2. This article is deliberately restricted to the experience and reception of non-British immigrants (with only occasional references to the Aboriginal population). This is not to imply that the Aboriginal story is not important in Saskatchewan history, but rather concede that it could be a separate paper on the same theme. For a fuller treatment of the immigrant and Aboriginal stories, see B. Waiser, Saskatchewan: A New History (Calgary: Fifth House Publishers 2005). 3. W.L. Morton, Manitoba: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1957), vii–ix. 4.

D. Owram, Promise of Eden: The Canadian Expansionist Movement and the Idea of the West (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1980).

5. W.P. Ward, “Population Growth in Western Canada, 1896–1905,” in J. Foster, The Developing West (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press 1983), 158. 6.

Canada, Census of Population and Agriculture of the Northwest Provinces: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1907), xix.

7.

D.J. Hall, “Clifford Sifton: Immigration and Settlement Policy,” in H. Palmer, ed., The Settlement of the West (Calgary: University of Calgary Press 1977), 77.

8. Ibid., 79. 9. Ibid., 78–81. 10. Regina Leader, 6 September 1905. 11. R.L. Widdis, With Scarcely a Ripple: Anglo-Canadian Migration into the United States and Western Canada, 1880–1920 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998). 12. The 1906 aggregate census data does not provide a population breakdown according to racial origin. Canada, Census of Population and Agriculture, 86; Hall, “Clifford Sifton,” 71. 13. J.H. Thompson, Forging the Prairie West (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998), 77. 14. J.S. Woodsworth, Strangers within our Gates (Toronto: F.C. Stephenson, 1909), 234. 15. R.B. Shepard, Deemed Unsuitable (Toronto: Umbrella Press, 1997), 100.

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16. According to the 1911 census, there were 957 Chinese people in Saskatchewan (0.2 percent of the total provincial population); 268 (or roughly 25 percent) lived in the Moose Jaw district, the highest concentration in western Canada after Winnipeg and Calgary. Fifth Census of Canada, v. II (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1913), 371. 17. J. Walker, Race, Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997), 51–121; C. Backhouse, Colour Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900–1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 132–50. 18. E.B. Mitchell, In Western Canada Before the War (London: J. Murray 1915), 167 and 188. 19. G. Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1984), 355. 20. See B. Waiser, Park Prisoners: The Untold Story of Western Canada’s National Parks (Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1995). 21. J.H. Thompson, The Harvests of War: The Prairie West, 1914–1918 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1978), 94. 22. Thompson, The Harvests of War, 76–77 and 81. 23. For a list of name changes, see E.T. Russell, What’s in a Name: The Story behind Saskatchewan Place Names (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1984), 170–71. 24. R. Huel, “Pastor vs. Politician: The Reverend Murdoch Mackinnon and Premier Walter Scott’s Amendment to the School Act,” Saskatchewan History 32 (1979): 66. 25. K. Marschall, “Raising Juvenile Delinquents: The Development of Saskatchewan’s Child Welfare Laws, 1905–1930,” MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 2003, 62–63. 26. M. Owen, “Building the Kingdom of God on the Prairies: E.H. Oliver and Saskatchewan Education, 1913–1930,” Saskatchewan History 40 (1987): 22–34; K. Kaiser, “Protestant Home Missionaries in Saskatchewan and the Concept of Applied Christianity, 1918–30,” MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1988. 27. J.T.M. Anderson, The Education of the New Canadian: A Treatise on Canada’s Greatest Educational Problem (Toronto: Dent, 1918), 25. 28. J.W. Brennan, “A Political History of Saskatchewan,” PhD thesis, University of Alberta, 1976, 677–679; A.S. Whiteley, “The Peopling of the Prairie Provinces of Canada,” American Journal of Sociology 38 (1932–33): 240–52. 29. D. Avery, Dangerous Foreigners: European Immigrant Workers and Labour Radicalism in Canada, 1896–1932 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1979), 101–12. 30. C.J. Kitzan, “The Fighting Bishop: George Exton Lloyd and the Immigration Debate,” MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1996, 59–61.

The Myth of Multiculturalism

31. This statistic comes from J.E. Lyons, “George Saskatchewan,” Vitae Scholasticae 7 (1988): 432. 32. Kitzan, “The Fighting Bishop,” 82. Thirty years earlier, Agnes Deans Cameron, a Victoria school principal, said much the same thing about the “yellow” peril in British Columbia. “In their picturesque dresses and striking colouring they make pictures which please the eye and stimulate the imagination,” she wrote in the 1901 pamphlet, “To Young British Columbians.” “But we today are not picking out a costume for a masquerade party: we are choosing a race and a nation to be born into . . . the British nation.” 33. M. Robin, Shades of Right: Nativist and Fascist Politics in Canada, 1920–1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1992), 36. 34. H. Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice: A History of Nativism in Alberta (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1982), chap. 3; R. Huel, “J.J. Maloney: How the West was Saved from Rome, Quebec, and the Liberals” in J. Foster, ed., The Developing West: Essays in Honour of L.H. Thomas (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1983), 219–41. 35. Brennan, “Political History of Saskatchewan,” 679. 36. W. Calderwood, “Pulpit, Press, and Political Reactions to the Ku Klux Klan in Saskatchewan,” in S.M. Trofimenkoff, ed., The Twenties in Western Canada (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1972), 191–229. 37. Brennan, “Political History of Saskatchewan,” 679. 38. D.E. Smith, Prairie Liberalism: The Liberal Party in Saskatchewan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 194; Brennan, “Political History of Saskatchewan,” 706 and 761. 39. Brennan, “Political History of Saskatchewan,” 760. 40. D.E. Smith, “A Period of Waiting Is Over: The Prairies in 1939,” in N. Hillmer et al., eds., A Country of Limitations: Canada and the World in 1939 (Ottawa: Canadian Committee for the History of the Second World War, 1996), 102. 41. P. Dederick and B. Waiser, Looking Back: True Tales from Saskatchewan’s Past (Calgary: Fifth House, 2003), 87–91. 42. M.L. Szabo, Demographic Trends in Saskatchewan, 1921–1959 (Regina: Saskatchewan Department of Public Health, 1962). 43. Gerald Friesen to Bill Waiser, 28 September 2004 (e-mail communication). 44. G.P. Marchildon, “Roy Romanow” in G.L. Barnhart, ed., Saskatchewan Premiers of the 20th Century (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2004), 336–37. 45. E.H. Oliver, “The Settlement of Saskatchewan to 1914,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1926, 87. 46. D.M. Jackson, “Political Paradox: The Lieutenant Governor in Saskatchewan” in Leeson, ed., Saskatchewan Politics into the Twenty-First Century (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 2001), 60–61.

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maskêko-sâkahikanihk: O n e Hu n d r e d Y e a r s f o r a S a s k at c h e w a n F i r s t N at i o n 1 M a r y E l l e n Tu r p e l - L a f o n d

The telling of Saskatchewan stories in honour of the provincial centenary is a noble endeavour. It is also presents unique challenges. There are those who would take issue with a single “Saskatchewan” identity, experience, or history. Or, to put it another way, there could be several different versions of the political, social, economic, and cultural development of Saskatchewan. The conventional history points to certain events in the life of the province that are often said to be formative and cohesive—the birth of medicare, the creation of a socialist democratic political movement, the pioneer experience of farming in a difficult climate, the cooperative efforts to survive the dirty thirties, and the diaspora of residents over the past several decades. For First Nations and Métis peoples looking back over the past 100 years, events other than 1905 are watershed, such as the taking of Indian lands in the post-1905 period, the denominational residential school experience, the confinement to reserves by the pass system, and more recently the renewal of rights and settlement of historic claims. While we take special care to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Province of Saskatchewan, First Nations people in Saskatchewan may meet the celebratory spirit with dampened enthusiasm. Most First Nations and Métis people do not consider 1905 as an event that involved them as partners. First Nations elders view the

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creation of Saskatchewan and the transfer of all lands and resources to the Crown in right of the Province twenty-five years later (in 1930) as contrary to their understandings of the treaties. First Nations peoples see the treaties as the first instruments of Confederation, even though the rights stemming from the treaties were not explicitly recognized as part of the Constitution of Canada until the Constitution Act, 1982. The treaties created the code for friendship and peaceful coexistence, sealed with the solemnity of the sacred pipe ceremony for perpetuity—“for as long as the sun shines and the rivers flow.” One point is certain, the chiefs and headmen of Saskatchewan were not passive and defeated people who marked an “X” on whatever was placed before them. They were shrewd negotiators who argued among themselves over treaty terms and presented a coordinated and persuasive position. They won several major concessions from the treaty commissioners. Reconciliation of treaty issues between governments and First Nations, not to mention between citizens and First Nations, has been an unfinished task since 1905 and continues to require attention and understanding. At the same time, it is important to respect cultural, linguistic, and political differences.2 The First Nations protest of Indian policy and provincial policies galvanized Indians in Saskatchewan into formal organizations to advance their concerns from as early as 1910. From 1905 to 1909, Indian elders were concerned over breaches of their treaties. Elders from the Cowesses First Nation came together in 1910 because they believed Treaty 4 was being violated, and they met to discuss their concerns, eventually sending a delegation to Ottawa to meet with the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs of the day, Frank Oliver, in 1911.3 Oliver was notoriously unsympathetic to Indian claims. As he told the House of Commons in 1906, “Of course the interests of the people must come first and if it becomes a question between the Indians and the whites, the interests of the whites will have to be provided for.”4 Organizational efforts to advance treaty issues spread throughout Saskatchewan, and the dynamic leadership of John B. Tootoosis of Poundmaker First Nation must be given particular credit in the formation of a distinct Indian political movement in Saskatchewan. John B. Tootoosis was the grandson of Yellow Mud Blanket, who was the brother of Chief Poundmaker. His father, John Tootoosis Sr., was highly knowledgeable in Cree language and culture and had the oral history of the treaty negotiations. Chief Poundmaker was one of the most prescient negotiators of Treaty 6 at Fort Carlton in August 1876.

Maskêko-sâkahikanihk

John B. Tootoosis learned from his father and the treaty elders the oral history of treaty negotiations and the sacred customs associated with the treaties. He was sent to residential school because his father wanted him to learn the “cunning of the white man.” He was a gifted advocate in Cree and English and used his organizational skills, iron will, and determination to build a lasting movement for treaty implementation. He saw the nascent organization of Indians elsewhere in Canada and petitioned to bring the newly formed League of Indians of Canada to the Thunderchild First Nation in 1921. John B. Tootoosis was a critical bridge between the elders, with their knowledge, traditions, and understanding of the treaties, and the mainstream political world. John B. Tootoosis, along with others trained in the oral history of treaties by their elders, eventually formed the Union of Saskatchewan Indians in 1946, the precursor to the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, which continues to have as its core purpose treaty advocacy.5 The advocacy for Indian treaties was a significant factor in the political development of Saskatchewan, even if most of it happened under the official radar. Through public delegations to Ottawa and other strategies, Indian leaders protested land removals and consistently reiterated their oral historical understandings of the treaty promises, politely chastising the government that the treaties were mostly being observed in the breach in Saskatchewan. Indian political advocacy in the political mainstream would be a long time coming. First Nations people spent most of the first century of Saskatchewan history with no right to vote. In 1960 the federal and provincial franchise was extended to Indians under the direction of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s government. Diefenbaker had represented Indians in his law practice in Prince Albert and was appalled when Indian veterans of two world wars told him they could not vote in elections because they were not citizens of Canada. In addition, First Nations bands were saddled with a prohibition on hiring legal counsel to defend their treaty or other claims in 1927 until after the Indian Act underwent a major renovation in 1951. Legal redress for Indian claims was virtually unheard of until after the 1970s, when the claims were taken far more seriously than in the past.6 It is fair to say that even with consistent political activity and organization from 1905 to 2005, First Nations have only recently emerged as an acknowledged political and economic force in Saskatchewan. Apart from the treaties, other events pre-dating 1905 stand out as significant for First Nations people—the rise and collapse of the subsistence and

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commercial buffalo hunt, the devastating outbreaks of smallpox in the 1830s and again in 1870 (with nearly one-third of the First Nations population in the Fort Carlton region perishing that year alone), the uprising of 1885 and ensuing trials, and the impact of this on government policies and settler attitudes for the early decades of life in Saskatchewan. After the trials of Louis Riel, Chief Big Bear, and Chief Poundmaker, several Indian bands were stripped of their chiefs and headmen, in some cases for more than thirty years, based on disloyalty of one or more of their members on the mistaken view that the uprising was a full-fledged Indian–Métis military insurrection.7 Saskatchewan celebrated its triumph of local governance in 1905 when many First Nations were stripped of their political leadership. The political climate toward the First Nations and Métis people leading up to 1905 could best be described as pursing an objective of containment for the benefit of orderly non-Indian settlement. Indians were a constant fear to settlers who believed they might harass them, and governments did not want to dissuade peasant farmers from immigrating or staying in Saskatchewan. Government policies regulated Indian activities, contained Indians to a reserve base, and removed from reserved lands many good farmlands in order to give them to non-Indian farmers. The following excerpt from an article in the Prince Albert Times and Saskatchewan Review on 19 June 1885 sums up the public attitude towards Indians in the region of central Saskatchewan: the bands should be much more concentrated, instead of as in the case of Beardy, One Arrow, Okemasis, Chekastapasin, etc., etc., who have only a few lodges, being allowed to deprive white settlers of occupation of some of the best farming country in reasonable proximity to each other. The Muskeg Indians and those about Battle River are also needlessly scattered about.… As to the Indians not liking to work, probably most of us have the same objection, but none the less are by various means compelled to do so, and habit becomes a second nature. For the children the provision of schools is absolutely necessary, and if the influence of the parents prove bad, the schools should be removed from the reserves; but in all cases their education should include farming or some trade, and in the case of the girls, household economy. Lastly, on no excuse let any Indian found off his reserve escape punishment.

After treaty making, parcels of lands were reserved for Indians based on treaty formulas adjusted by population factors. Some of the lands reserved by 1905 were under successful cultivation by Indian farmers. From 1905 to 1920,

Maskêko-sâkahikanihk

there were numerous acquisitions of lands reserved for Indians via government surrenders that have in recent times been seen as dubious, even fraught with coercive strategies to obtain Indian lands (such as deceiving the Indians as to the value of the land, bribing and pressuring them to surrender lands through inappropriate government influence, and encouraging members of the clergy to persuade the Indians it was God’s will to sell their land). These land surrenders, which also involved the complete relocation of some bands, were done to appease provincial officials and non-Indians by quickly making available at auction farmland in prime agricultural areas. Nearly a century later, settlements are being reached to compensate Indian bands for their economic losses from this era. The federal government has accepted that the actions of its officials in obtaining surrenders were improper and contrary to their trust obligations to act only in the best interest of Indian bands.8 From 2002 to 2003 alone, there were three settlements totalling $200 million for claims from the early post-1905 period. The largest of these was the Kahkewistakaw First Nation claim. Kahkewistahaw First Nation farmed over 90,000 acres of fertile land in southern Saskatchewan. Indian farmers were cultivating the land and enjoying increasing self-sufficiency in the transition to farming, taking a prominent place in a local agricultural economy. From 1885 to 1904 there were six petitions to get the Kahkewistahaw land for white settlers. The Indian Act was even amended in 1906 to allow the Indian agent authority to distribute up to 50 percent of the value of the sale immediately to the Indians (previously only 10 percent was allowed to prevent agents from buying votes from poor people).9 The Indian Act was further amended to allow a judge to make a court order that a reserve be seized from the Indians if it was “expedient to do so,” meaning without band consent. The Kahkewistahaw band members eventually relented under great pressure from federal agents, even after they voted once to reject surrender. Members were each paid ninety-four dollars to obtain a positive vote to surrender in 1907. In the end, the Kahkewistahaw band surrendered over twothirds of its best land and what remained was of limited value for farming. The surrendered land was sold to white farmers in two sales in 1908 and 1910, with a small amount disposed of following the end of World War I through the Soldier Settlement Board. The Kahkewistahaw claim was settled in 2002 and the band received $95 million compensation for economic loss.

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The year 2002 was also occasion for the settlement of the Moosomin First Nation claim. This claim was for loss of use of twenty-five square miles of land that it surrendered to the federal government in 1909. The entire reserve was sold at auction to farmers in the North Battleford region in 1909 and 1910. Before the surrender, Moosomin band members enjoyed three decades of successful farming on the lands. With rail lines running through the reserve, the Indian farmers were able to get their produce to market and had made the transition from subsistence to market agriculture. Following seven years of unremitting pressure by local farmers, government, and clergy, including instances of outright bribery, Moosomin band members surrendered their original reserve land and were relocated to far less valuable land thirty-five kilometres north of their original reserved lands. Compensation in excess of $41 million was awarded to Moosomin First Nation to make amends for the deprivation of their valuable land base. The third example of a recent claim settlement derives from a surrender in 1908 of valuable reserve lands belonging to the Thunderchild First Nation near Delmas, a parcel that was adjacent to the Moosomin land. The Thunderchild First Nation members had over twenty years of cultivation of their reserved lands and were enjoying significant success because the land was suitable for mixed farming. The chief and headmen of the band were targeted by local politicians, Indian agents, and respected members of the clergy and persistently lobbied to surrender their land. Each time they refused, the strategy became more pressured. Federal officials extracted a favourable vote after paying each member two years’ rations and an immediate cash payment (records show that 107 band members were paid $120.00 each to surrender). The Thunderchild band was relocated to a new reserve that proved unsuitable for farming. Contrary to promises of even better farmlands, the reserve they were resettled on had not even been selected when they were given assurances that things would be as good if not better for them on their new reserve. The Thunderchild First Nation received $53 million in 2003 as compensation for their economic loss. In each of these conversions of Indian lands, the lands were sold to nonIndian farmers who gained some of the best land in Saskatchewan. While the injustice of these land acquisitions is apparent, and subject to modern redress, what is noteworthy here is the widespread perception that Indians would not help build an agricultural economy and that good land had to be placed in the

Maskêko-sâkahikanihk

hands of non-Indian farmers for the province to secure its economic destiny— agricultural development of the land by settlers and non-Indian immigrants.10 The further injustice of these land surrenders is that they were obtained while the government was expanding the denominational residential school system and tutoring Indians in techniques of settled farming and domestic service.11 The treaties also provided for the provision of farm implements and agricultural training in order to provide a new economy to First Nations with the depletion of the buffalo. Relocating First Nations to less arable lands in order to appease the demand for good agricultural lands for the settlers contradicts the treaty and educational policies of the day aimed at providing First Nations with the resources, tools, and skills to have a new economy. Parallel to these land acquisitions have been the Indian claims that the full allocation of reserved land was not made pursuant to treaty formulas, leaving bands with a smaller land base than was promised. After over a century of petition and advocacy, a framework treaty land entitlement agreement was entered into in 1992 that to date encompasses twenty-six First Nations and the federal government. This framework allows for First Nations to acquire additions to its reserve lands to make up the shortfall by allowing the bands to purchase land on a willing buyer/willing seller basis, with designated lands to be converted to reserve status after provincial and municipal agreement, depending on the location of the land. Treaty land settlements, and other claims, have totalled over three-quarters of a billion dollars to date, with acquisitions of 500,000 acres of lands. During a period of diminished farmland values in the 1990s, the real estate transactions have been a measurable boost to the Saskatchewan economy, with continued spin-off benefits for all citizens. At last count, 110 claims in Saskatchewan remain outstanding,12 and many claims for self-government, harvesting, and other treaty rights are being pursued through political and legal avenues, as are over 2000 civil claims for physical and sexual abuse of Indian students at the government-funded denominational residential schools. Critical issues for the future of Saskatchewan are mired in historic dealings, and inter-societal relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal residents require care and attention, careful explanation, and historical sensitivity. Many citizens of Saskatchewan have had little opportunity to be educated on Indian policies.13 When historic claims are made, the non-Indian public at times characterizes them as frivolous or as stale matters from a bygone era in which the citizenry today has no obligation or financial means to resolve.

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At the same time, government and corporate policies have replaced the old attitudes, and First Nations communities have been identified as important partners in the project of building the provincial economy and society. For members of Saskatchewan’s First Nations, the legacy of land removals, poverty, residential schools, and the exclusion of First Nations peoples from the project of building a province still linger in the social and economic conditions that fall substantially below those of the non-Indian residents of the province. What fascinates me about the past 100 years is that First Nations people wanted to play a significant role, and had begun to enjoy success in farming in certain regions of the province, as they had previously excelled with fur trading, buffalo hunting, and seasonal cycles of self-sufficient harvesting. Their leadership savvy was impressive as was their willingness to work hard and build the province, but opportunities were limited by government policies excluding First Nations from partnership in the enterprise. The best way to appreciate the juxtaposition of the willing and capable First Nation with the exclusionary policies is look at a micro level at the workings of First Nations families in various bands to see how they reflected a character and culture that actively resisted poverty and exploitation and embraced new technologies. This history may not yet be recorded in the conventional history books, although with the recent inclusion of First Nations peoples in the academy, and greater interest in First Nations oral histories, literature is being produced that presents a more nuanced history of Saskatchewan. I would propose to briefly describe some of the key events of the past in the life of one community. This approaches focuses on individuals and families, situating each within a context that acknowledges they are gifted with language, and living in history, possessed of intentions, visions, memories, hopes, dreams, moods, passions, and judgements.14 It is frustrating to see Indians repeatedly portrayed in quantitatively based studies accompanied by unflattering and often inaccurate connotations (in the theme that Indians form a permanent underclass and a financial burden on taxpayers, etc.). These statistical depictions do not give hope to people, nor do they capture the pool of strength available in the history of our own families and communities. The stories I want to share are those of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, or, in Cree, maskêko-sâkahikanihk, a community of which I am a member. My knowledge of this community comes from the families and their oral history, along with my research in written and archival sources for the reflections of outsiders regarding Muskeg Lake Cree people.15 Situated in central Saskatch-

Maskêko-sâkahikanihk

ewan, the main Muskeg Lake reserve is located ninety-three kilometres north of Saskatoon, and the towns of Blaine Lake, Marcelin, and Leask have grown up around the reserve. After the Dominion survey in 1881, the total acres set aside for the band was 26,880, but this was reduced in 1919 after a land surrender of one-third of the band’s land so that the Soldier Settlement Board would have land grants for returning non-Indian veterans in the region. The band rejected sales from 1911 to 1913 and was pressured for eight years to surrender its land, suggesting circumstances of undue influence by Indian agents who expanded a list of benefits the band would get if they agreed to surrender. The Muskeg Lake Cree surrendered 8083.3 acres of prime agricultural land to the government in 1919.16 Cash was paid out at the time of the vote ($100.00 for every member present with another $50.00 per member promised for the winter of 1920). However, the payment of cash and receipt of promised benefits from the land transfer were inconsistent. Members of the band felt pressured, deceived, and misled regarding the sale, and some, like James Greyeyes, were reduced to tears at the outcome when the vote was tallied on 25 September 1919. Some families lost very nice homes and farms under cultivation, including J.B. Lafond, who had been the unrecognized chief of the band (from 1900 to 1914). He voted against surrender and was removed from his farm. The surrender stipulated that 50 percent of the proceeds of the sale be placed in a capital account and used “to provide rations for the old, sick and destitute members of the Band” who should also be given “suitable houses, furniture and clothing.” The band was promised interest-free loans to returning soldiers to help them put up houses, stables, horses, cattle, or farming implements. The band members were promised that their reserve would be fenced. Finally, members were promised that the interest accruing from all funds held in trust by the Department of Indian Affairs would be paid out to them annually in the first week of February and distributed on a per capita basis.17 Despite these terms, which were almost like supplementary treaty terms, the band never received the benefits promised. After two years of internal meetings and intense dissatisfaction with their treatment by the Indian agent, twenty-three Muskeg Lake families signed a lengthy letter of protest to the Superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs on 15 September 1921, detailing concerns over the surrender and how they were being treated like children with no say in their affairs and no accounting as to their benefits. The band requested more information and

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control over its own affairs and a full accounting of how its money was handled by Canada. The twenty-three men were frustrated that despite repeated requests, no improvements were made to the reserve, no fence was provided, and the payment to individual members of the reserve was only to those who were at the vote. Like the oral history, the written record paints a picture of broken promises and callous disregard for the requests for information, and a copy of the surrender document was not even acquired by the band until the 1970s.18 After receiving the letter and numerous and persistent protests from members of the band (many of these were veterans, who could only watch in frustration as their fellow non-Indian soldiers built farms and received settlements to erect barns and infrastructure on their former reserve lands), a short note is included in the files from an Indian Affairs official. It states: “I do not think it is necessary to send Indians a reply to letter of Sept 15 last unless they bring the matter up again.”19 With the prohibition on hiring legal counsel in effect at the time, the band could do little but sit by in utter frustration, as their concerns did not even merit the courtesy of a response. The nine Muskeg Lake Cree veterans who returned from voluntary service in World War I were among the signatories of the 1921 letter. They did not receive soldier settlement land grants from the surrendered parcel. They were given allotments in their own band, another point of contention to this day as the government took from the band’s remaining reserve base and parcelled it up for the veterans, thereby introducing ideas of individual ownership of communal land, and the band was given no compensation for its loss of use of these common lands. This happened again after World War II. This would be akin to a non-Indian veteran returning to the farm in Blaine Lake and the government giving him part of the land of his parents as a gift, without bothering to compensate the parents. The individual allotments to veterans (who saw these pass out of their hands through purchase, in many instances) have been strongly opposed over the years by many band members and leaders such as the late Alphonsine (Alpha) Lafond, who was the first female chief from 1960 to 1962, a councillor prior to that, who worked over the years with John B. Tootoosis at the provincial level. Chief Alpha Lafond was the only female senator in the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations and was widely respected for her knowledge of Cree language, culture, and history. She led the Senate of Elders until her death in 2000.20 Two events stuck out foremost in her mind as being most

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divisive for the band in the past century—the “botched” 1919 land surrender and the allocation of individual certificates of possession to band members from the common lands of the band: In the way I was raised, I used to hear my father say, “All the people that are band members here they all own the reserve.” Many times do I remind them when we sit here on council, for today there’s much disagreement about the land, there is a desire to own it. It should not happen that way, that this land, which is being farmed all over, should be parcelled out to each individual person, with everyone getting something of it … I would kick them in anger. I feel that way many times. I have spoken of it in many ways, but one day when I am dead, they will remember that I have said this, that I have always reminded them of this.21

The remaining parcel of reserve land today covers nearly 18,000 acres of prime agricultural land. In 1988, the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation added a parcel of urban land in the light industrial area of City of Saskatoon, known as the “Sutherland Selection,” an additional 33.5 acres.22 This acquisition of vacant railway lands was made possible through the first treaty land entitlement agreement (a precursor to the 1992 framework), and the land was given reserve status in 1991. This once-empty parcel has been transformed by the efforts of the band into a thriving commercial centre, including forty-five businesses employing over 400 people with nearly $20 million of capital invested in infrastructure above and below ground. The urban reserve is called asimâkaniseekan askiy, or “soldiers land” in Cree. Muskeg Lake families have a remarkable story of military service and do not want their veterans to be forgotten soldiers, particularly those who never made it home.23 Over 10 percent of the young men of the band volunteered for service in both world wars (and the women too for World War II) and served with great distinction. One family alone, that of Louis Arcand (a veteran of both wars), saw nine sons enlist and serve in World War II and the Korean conflict.24 So many men were gone to fight that band members like Richard Greyeyes remember the grass grown up over the old road because no one travelled anywhere while the men and women of Muskeg were gone. David Steele Greyeyes’s life (1914–1996) exemplifies for Muskeg Lake Cree families the talent, public service, and commitment they want to continue in the community. David was born on the Muskeg Lake Reserve on 31 December 1914, the son of George and Sarah (Arcand) Greyeyes. Tall,

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handsome, and gifted in athletics, David enlisted for service with the Saskatoon Light Infantry on 1 June 1940 at the age of twenty-five and served in seven European countries. He excelled at demanding military duties, as did two of his brothers and a sister who also enlisted. David proved a master of the machine gun and rifle, was a drill instructor, and was commissioned from the ranks to the status of First Lieutenant, commanding a mortar platoon in Italy for seventeen months. Highly decorated for his service,25 David Steele Greyeyes was an outstanding leader on and off the battlefield and his life after discharge saw a continuation of these leadership qualities. David had many recollections of the war but liked to recall the time his platoon was on the road to Rimini during the Italian campaign. It was a desolate, battered wasteland from the intense battle. On his way into Rimini, whom should he meet up with but two young men from Muskeg Lake, Albert Lafond26 and Francis Xavier (“Patchy”) Arcand?27 He always smiled to remember this meeting in the scorched theatre of war in Europe and how they enjoyed a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, speaking in Cree of the families back home, sharing news, and looking forward to getting back to the reserve. A champion athlete, David Steele Greyeyes played competitive soccer and was inducted into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame in 1977. Known by his nickname “Big Coach,” he and Father Paradis coached the famed Aldina Pro Lites hockey team, comprising members of the Muskeg Lake Cree band, to victory in 1947, and helped to solidify a hockey tradition that continues fifty-five years later, with many good prospects for the future. In 1946, he married Flora Greyeyes, who served with the rcaf Women’s Division in Canada (one of the first Indian women to sign up), and they had eight children, two boys and six girls, who have gone on to distinguished careers in policing, public service, social work, and education.28 He served as chief of Muskeg Lake from 1958 to 1959, as regional director of Indian Affairs (one of the very first Indians to take on senior management in the public service), and was inducted as a member of the Order of Canada in 1977 and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 1987. During his term as chief of Muskeg Lake, David Greyeyes helped his people in many ways. He started negotiations to get electrical power on the reserve. He played a role in ending the permit system so Indians would no longer need a permit from the Indian agent to sell their produce. He made numerous contributions to improve the situation for Saskatchewan veterans, as he worked with the Legion and the Saskatchewan Indian Veterans Association his entire life. In

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1991 he returned with a delegation to Italy and visited former battlefields, making a point to stop at the known gravesites of those from Muskeg Lake who did not return, like Joseph Okemasis (killed in action, 7 December 1943, buried in the Morro River Cemetery in Ortona, Italy). With this history, the addition of the “soldiers land” urban reserve is a point of deep pride for people from the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, who are determined to build it into a successful urban commercial reserve. There are many other achievements by the families of Muskeg Lake, including the fact that of 1600 members, over 220 have post-secondary training in a range of trades and professions, and many are currently pursuing post-secondary training. As well, the families of the band have outstanding athletic and leadership traditions, fielding sports teams for over sixty years in hockey, soccer, and baseball, with young people today involved in all sports and competing for excellence alongside non-Indians in collegiate, semi-professional, and other teams across North America.29 The community also boasts two winners of the prestigious National Tommy Longboat award for athletic prowess in fastball and boxing, Bruce Wolfe in 1972 and Marcel Greyeyes in 1976, and the first Treaty Indian to be accepted into the National Ballet School, dancer and actor Michael Greyeyes. More recently, another parcel of land, approximately one and one-quarter square miles in size, has been purchased and is awaiting conversion to reserve status. This is a lake north of the original reserve, which the band renamed Petequakey Lake in honour of the beloved second chief, who was a brother to the first chief. This new reserve will be developed as a resort destination, with eco-tourism and conservation of the lake and woodlands in order to preserve the environment in a form that families of old would have used in their seasonal cycles of fishing, hunting, and harvesting. Why would a band of Cree families make these kinds of choices and express these values? Why did this band have the highest number per capita of volunteers for military service in the two great wars and the Korean conflict, and even have a member enlist in the us army airborne division30 and serve in Vietnam? The past will tell you a great deal about the present, and will profile families who not only wanted to play a role but also used their own devices to carve out a place in Saskatchewan and Canadian history. These are families of strength, persistence, intelligence, and independence who are unwavering in their belief of their rightful place in Saskatchewan history, having defiantly resisted paternalism while pragmatically making friendships and alliances for

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generations. From the very first dealings with government and the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Muskeg Lake Cree people have demonstrated remarkable leadership. Chief Kitowêhâw31 and his brother, the headman Petihkwahâkêw (whose name is usually transcribed Petequakey),32 led a band of approximately twelve families with 164 members when he sat with the chiefs Poundmaker, Mistawasis, Ahtahkakoop, and Sweetgrass, and the others, in August 1876 at Fort Carlton to negotiate a treaty with Alexander Morris’s delegation. Kitowêhâw’s band had extensive and successful dealings with the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Factor Clarke at the fort told Kitowêhâw about the treaties. After the negotiations in 1876 at Fort Carlton, Kitowêhâw and his headmen agreed to come under the terms of Treaty 6. However, his vigilance in ensuring his people were given their full provisions was tenacious. Described as handsome, stout, and vigorous-looking, Kitowêhâw insisted on full compliance with the treaty terms for his members and argued forcefully with the Indian commissioners that his people were not “simple” and would not be taken advantage of by the government officials who were giving only partial treaty provisions and inadequate agricultural supplies after 1876.33 Kitowêhâw proved a formidable leader, respected by his peers, who sought to include him in their dealings with government officials after the treaty. Along with chiefs Ahtahkakoop and Mistawasis (his allies), and his brother, the headman Petequakey, the forty-five year-old Kitowêhâw told Commissioner Dewdney at a meeting at the fort on 1 September 1879 that he was not satisfied that the treaty promises were being honoured. The breadth of his understanding and knowledge, and the force of his concern for his band, was impressive and even today speaks volumes of his character: I understood the treaty in the same way that the others who have spoken understood it. When we asked for the yoke of oxen for each three families, although we were not told we should get them, we understood we would. If we had been told that we were not to get them, we would not have complained. It was the expectation of them that made us feel that we could live by breaking up ground. Every chief, we understood, was to get four oxen and six cows for himself; and we did not understand that they were to be used for the whole tribe. I think the aid from Government was very slow in coming. With a band of a hundred families it would be perfectly ridiculous that we could get on with four oxen, and I agree with what has been said about the cattle. I was away when my tribe took them, or I would not have

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accepted them. We are not used to cattle, and when we were promised milk cows we expected they would be tame animals, that could be handled. We know why these Montana cattle were given us; because they were cheaper, and the Government, thinking us a simple people, thought we would take them. The cattle have all died. If we had got cattle of the country, and they had died, we would think it was our fault, and we would not have asked to have them replaced. We had plenty of hay, but the cattle were so poor that it did them no good. We were promised pigs and sheep and chickens, the first were promised in the treaty. We wanted a copy of the treaty at the time it was made, but did not get one until the winter before last. I know the pigs are mentioned in the treaty, but we are not yet in a position to support them, and we don’t want them now. The chickens and sheep we understood we would get. We got some flour and ammunition from Major Walker, and an ox to kill. We do not want to kill the ox, we want to keep him for work in putting in the crops in the spring. It is a good ox, trained to work, and I advised the band not to kill him, as he would be of more use to keep. If it had been one of those wild Montana cattle I would have killed him. I hear of buffalo on the plains, and I am going off to see if I can get some food to pass the winter with. We would like to have some help in the shape of provisions in the meantime, and we wish to know what we can depend upon. The help which the Government and the Hudson’s Bay Company have given us had kept us alive until now. Mr. Clarke always gives us something when we come to the post. We hear that the Government are sending instructors. They are all from below, and if I am to have one, I would rather have one from the country, who understands the language, and with whom I could speak face to face, without an interpreter. There are not enough of instructors sent up, and if more are needed, I hope half-breeds will be selected, as it will help them, too. There are a lot of half-breeds who want to take the treaty and join the reserves, and who would be of assistance; but they were told that they could not come in, as they had white blood in their veins. Some of the families of the half-breeds were in the treaty, and the men would like to come in. . . . Hitherto everything we have asked has been promised to be represented to the Government, but we have never got any answer, and we want now an answer. The chiefs were promised in the treaty a horse and wagon. I have never got a horse or wagon, and I want one.35 (emphasis added)

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Kitowêhâw did not beg or admonish Dewdney. Using his knowledge of the facts, he insisted on what he believed his people were due, pointing out the deficiencies in implementing and honouring the recent treaty promises, and noting that he would not sit back and wait for answers to his concerns. The qualities that Kitowêhâw demonstrates resonate throughout the generations. Kitowêhâw and Petequakey wanted a written copy of the treaty so he they could check it against their understanding of what was agreed to in 1876, just as the twenty-three men of Muskeg Lake wanted a copy of the land surrender in 1921 to check it against their understanding. This is leadership with pride and the courage to speak to anyone in the warrior and hunter tradition (perhaps farmer tradition as well) and collaborate with allies. In 1889, Kitowêhâw told the government that his people are not simple or feebleminded. In 1921, Chief Andrew Lafond sent the letter from twenty-three families to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in which they express their frustration that the Indian agent is treating them like children. Kitowêhâw and his brother Petequakey, who was with him at the meeting in 1879, saw themselves as providers for the band. He told Commissioner Dewdney that he would hunt buffalo to survive the winter. Kitowêhâw’s words had an impact on Dewdney, who wrote to John A. Macdonald that these were the first Indians he had met with face to face in the North West and that they had substantial grievances. He reported that he found their grievances perfectly correct regarding the shortfall in treaty provisions and agricultural supplies. Kitowêhâw, Petequakey, and every generation of leader of the Muskeg Lake Cree have consistently held the government to account for falling short in providing what was promised in the treaty, the land surrender, or according to their inherent rights as the First Peoples of Saskatchewan. Dewdney gave the chiefs provisions (sacks of flour, tobacco, and meat) and promised assistance from farm instructors during the winter.35 Kitowêhâw must have gone away with some satisfaction that his concerns would be addressed. However, lingering disappointment with the failure to honour those promises, and perhaps his own sense that his leadership was inadequate in this regard, made him step back as chief, passing over leadership to his brother in 1880. By this time the band had grown to 220 members, and a mission was planned that would prove instrumental in the instruction of the children of Muskeg Lake families in the skills and cunning of the white man. As a traditional chief, Kitowêhâw saw little distinction between the Indian and the Métis, noting that family, culture, and lifestyle linked them such that

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treaty should be extended to Métis who wished to live as Indians. This too reflects a prevalent Cree attitude that has pertained in the Muskeg Lake Cree community for the past century. The Métis spouses (such as Moreaus and Lussiers) or spouses from other bands, many of whom met at residential school, became part of the band in keeping with Cree traditions of acceptance by families. They spoke or learned the Cree language and also introduced the French language into the reserve, where it is still spoken and understood by members of the band. These inclusive traditions were challenged in the 1950s when a farm instructor instigated a movement to have some of the families of Muskeg Lake struck from the treaty lists on the basis either that they were Métis or they should be sent back to other bands where they had relatives. The instructor, a Mr. Horseman, suggested to the Indian agent that there would be more farmland for a few families if these members could be removed from the band list, identifying the Ledoux, Sanderson, Greyeyes, and Venne families for removal. The targeted families took it upon themselves to raise the funds in 1953 to hire one of the greatest lawyers in Saskatchewan history, Emmett Hall, a colleague of future prime minister John Diefenbaker. Emmett Hall later became chief justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, and eventually took a seat on the Supreme Court of Canada, where he demonstrated remarkable insight into the claims of First Nations.36 Perhaps in some small part his respect and understanding for Indian people were gleaned from his meetings with the intelligent and organized families of Muskeg Lake in a small hall beside the mission church. Emmett Hall reviewed the case and persuaded the Department of Indian Affairs that any attempt to remove these families would be fruitless. In the end, the matter was conceded in favour of the Muskeg Lake Cree families and no one was struck from the band list. True to the style of Kitowêhâw and Petequakey, the families did not stand down to intimidation. To this day, members of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation chafe under Department of Indian Affairs rules in the Indian Act that dictate to them who is or is not part of their community, or how to govern their community, preferring to use traditional rules of family collaboration and Cree custom. These are actively practised, and customary adoptions of children have been celebrated in recent times.37 Kitowêhâw saw merit in the Métis grievances, and a parallel with his own difficulties in getting the Crown to honour the promises in Treaty 6. Kitowêhâw believed that an alliance with the Métis might be an effective strategy to force

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the government to comply with the treaties. It is unlikely Kitowêhâw knew there would be a violent confrontation when he allied with the Métis, and some people have suggested he was pressured to continue once this tactic was followed. The oral history is divergent, perhaps because, after the uprising, Kitowêhâw’s families were punished and thus reluctant to speak of the events of 1885. Members of Kitowêhâw’s band were also in the group led by Gabriel Dumont in 1885. For example, Napolean Venne was a member of the band and the first Indian shot in the uprising, although oral history in the family reports that the bullet went clean through his very large hat, sparing him from serious injury. When he did die (many years later), he was buried at Batoche. Other members of the band were runners who notified neighbouring bands of the advance of a military force under General Middleton. Because of their warning, most of the neighbouring bands went into hiding in the bush to avoid being in the path of confrontation. After the uprising, Kitowêhâw was arrested and charged with treason, along with other Indians and Métis who had joined Riel and Dumont, either through free will or under duress. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in Stony Mountain Penitentiary. When he was released, he never returned to the band, perhaps dishonoured by the turn of events. He went to live with the Métis on the South Saskatchewan River with his wife—who was from a Red River family, a McGillis—and their six children. Kitowêhâw took scrip under the name of Alexander Cayen, which was sometimes recorded in the trade records as Alexander Cadieux. The turn of events in his life bound the families of Muskeg Lake Cree to their Métis relations, who are now spread throughout the province and beyond. Muskeg Lake families still participate in annual Métis celebrations at Batoche and are skilled in jigging and Métis fiddle music. For example, Irene Venne, a member of the band, now in her seventies, is a champion dancer who won at Batoche for many years, even travelling with an Métis dance troupe through western Canada and the United States. She instructs and judges Métis dancing with legendary fiddlers like John Arcand, still winning competitions, beating out dancers twenty years or more her junior. Métis-style dances and celebrations, with jigging and fiddle and accordion music, are part of the history of Muskeg Lake Cree people, with big celebrations for weddings, when the old log houses would be emptied of furniture to make way for merrymaking that usually went through the night until dawn.38 The influence of the

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Métis style of music and dancing on the Muskeg Cree families has been significant, although more traditional forms of entertainment, such as hand games (wager games of skill), powwow dancing, and traditional ceremonies have also continued through the years, at times pushed underground to escape the wrath of the Indian agent or an overzealous missionary. When Kitowêhâw left the band some time in 1880, his brother Petequakey took over as chief, the last of the hereditary chiefs, according to Plains Cree custom. Between 1880 and 1888 membership in the band decreased by more than 50 percent. The band was severely punished for its disloyalty after the Riel uprising, and testimony before the Rebellion Claims Commission by Hudson’s Bay Company employees demonstrated that, with the exception of Kitowêhâw, members of Petequakey’s band were unarmed and were “taken to Duck Lake not of their own accord.”39 During these difficult years, many members of Petequakey’s band died from outbreaks of smallpox, diphtheria, and influenza, despite the medicine chest promised in the treaty. Indians had limited access to health care, with a few receiving medical attention from the residential school staff during diphtheria or other outbreaks of infectious disease. Some families transferred to other neighbouring bands, such as Ahtahkakoop or Mistawasis; a few with Métis relatives left and took scrip (including the Girard family) or sought better opportunities with relations in Montana and the Dakotas. Chief Petequackey’s own daughters died in a drowning accident on the lake while out duck hunting with the second resident priest at the Aldina mission. Petequakey died in 1889 in a hunting accident on the traditional hunting ground of the Muskeg Lake Cree families near the Thickwood Hills. At the time of his death, he was in his early fifties, and had seen treaty negotiations and worked to have the government uphold its promises. He built a close relationship with missionaries and was well regarded by the chief factor, Mr. Clarke, at the Hudson’s Bay factory post in Fort Carlton. He also saw his people accept Christianity and engaged the missionaries in the education of his people so they would become literate in English and French. By 1878, Petequackey’s band was identified as having been completely converted with the exception of one man: On the 20th of July our good Missioner Father Andre brought us word that a great chief called Petequates had come to see us; and a few moments later Father showed him into our little parlour. He was small and had lost one of his hands, his long black hair was divided on one side almost hiding half his face and falling down on his shoulders. He

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wore trousers and a coat of blue serge with brass buttons, the collar as well as his hat was trimmed with a broad piece of gold braid; light blue handkerchief tied round his neck completed his costume. We shook hands according to the custom here and then sat down to listen to the chief, who, as the Father had told us, was most anxious to speak to us. He seemed a picture of gentleness and modesty for during an interview of an hour, he scarcely raised his eyes more than two or three times. Father told us that he was a good and fervent Christian, and that he had succeeded in converting his whole tribe, with the exception of one man.40

The fact that Petequakey’s people would have converted to Christianity may be misunderstood by outsiders, and even by other First Nations people. Cree people are deeply spiritual people with religious traditions practised daily (prayer, thankfulness, cleansing, naming, marriages, deaths, feasts, etc.). A respectful and mutually beneficial relationship formed between the people of Muskeg Lake and the Catholic missionaries, and this relationship was not as oppressive or colonial as is often presumed. Missionaries had contact with Petequakey’s band and the chief asked them to help his people. The first priest to serve the people of Petequakey’s reserve was Father Julien Moulin, O.M.I., who came in the fall of 1878. Father Moulin oversaw the construction of a log house at the Aldina mission site (which remains the centre of the Muskeg Lake Cree community to this day) that would be the chapel. The Mission of Notre-Dame De Pontmain was named after some children in the village of Pontmain saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary in France in 1881. After Father Moulin left in 1880, Father Gerasime Chapelliere became spiritual director, raising money from patrons in France to allow members of the band to build a rectory-chapel. Bishop Vital Grandin travelled to the community to bless the chapel in 1881. Father Chapelliere also organized a school with no financial assistance from the government, starting with twenty pupils who were taught during the winter months. Since he received no help from the government, Father Chapelliere relied on food supplies for his students from another parish and hunted alongside Muskeg Lake Cree people for game and fowl (he drowned on the lake with the chief’s daughters). Petequakey’s band helped the church in numerous ways, including surrendering to the church forty acres of land for the mission in 1888, although, as this was prior to the Orders-in-Council for the reserve in 1889, it was granted by Cree custom. By 1913, the chapel proved too small for the growing number

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of parishioners, and a larger church was completed in 1915. This church was in use until July 1949 when a candle left burning ignited the church and it was destroyed. A new church was rebuilt on the same spot in 1953 under the direction of Father Gerard Fortier. The old rectory was dismantled in the 1960s. The site of the mission and church is central to the families of Muskeg Lake Cree to this day. Rites of marriages, baptism, funerals, and other events of importance to the community had been organized through the church and the graveyard is still used and maintained. The church has also provided a connection between the Muskeg Lake Cree and the neighbouring communities, particularly of Marcelin and Blaine Lake. Antoine Marcelin, founder of the town of Marcelin, was a parishioner at the church on the mission and is buried in the Muskeg Lake graveyard. Parishioners from the reserve and beyond would meet and visit after Sunday mass and gather for an annual picnic. In 1964, a Catholic Women’s League was on the reserve and continued until 1982, after which many joined the league in Marcelin. On 12 December 1997, the mission’s name was changed to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Bishop Blaise Morand presided over the dedication mass that was attended by most residents of the community. The relationship between Petequakey’s band and the church stands out because it was mutually beneficial and placed the community at a crossroads of activity. The church was the post office (from 1893 to 1949) and the priests were the postmasters, travelling by horse and wagon with the mail. Muskeg Lake Cree families were not reluctantly educated by government edict, they had already formed deep bonds with the Catholic Church and saw a value in obtaining what the chiefs at treaty making saw as the cunning of the white man with his pen and paper. Today members of the band hold Petequakey in high regard for his emphasis on education and spirituality. When Petequakey’s band took up Christianity, it coexisted with Cree values and spirituality, even if the resident priest did not approve of these practices. It was never an either/or scenario. Certainly there were periods when the people were encouraged to cut their hair or to take only one wife per family (at least one wife at a time—still a point of humour on the reserve), but the spiritual connection with the missionaries and the shared belief in one great and good God, the Creator, has been a cohesive factor for Muskeg Lake families and the church family. However, in the true independent spirit of Muskeg Lake Cree families, people did chafe under, and reject, some of the church

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doctrine and did not hesitate to point out over the years their right to practise their own rites and ceremonies alongside those of the Catholic Church. Harry Lafond, one of the first post-secondary graduates of Muskeg Lake, received a bachelor of arts degree in 1973 from Carleton University. Destined for the priesthood and a life of spiritual reflection and inspiration, he would not take vows because of his Cree values and belief in family. He married an Métis woman, herself on a path of religious devotion as a nun, and together they have been the lay ministers for Muskeg Lake families, since the resident priests no longer serve the community. Harry earned his education bachelor’s degree and a master’s of education degree from the University of Saskatchewan, specializing in Indian education in the north. His advocacy for Muskeg Lake has been unwavering during ten years as elected chief (1990 to 2000) as well as in a leadership role in education for the band. Harry and Germaine provided a spiritual link between the community and the Catholic Church. In the great tradition of Muskeg Lake Cree families and leaders, Harry reached out beyond the reserve for friendships and alliance and has gently, and with great effect, brought the injustice of First Nations history to light. For example, in 1997 the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops to Rome invited Harry to the Synod for America. He made an intervention on partnership between the Catholic Church and the Aboriginal peoples in which he spoke with such wisdom and passion that it drew the unusual applause of the Pope himself: The relationship in the Christian Churches and the Aboriginal peoples of the Americas has been marred by many things. In simple language, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, despite the grace it brought, was not given to the First Nations Peoples of the Americas in all its purity. Linked as it was to an unconscious European imperialism, the end result was that, by contact with the Church and with Christian culture, the Aboriginal Peoples suffered many losses in terms of their languages, their culture and family lives, and their own spiritual traditions. This marred relationship needs to be radically reassessed. The new millennium provides us with an opportunity to reconcile historical hurts and begin a new journey. This journey of partnership is one that must be charted on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and marked by mutual education, open dialogue, and a mutual solidarity for justice. It must also take some religious risks, especially in terms of marrying Native spirituality with Christianity and in terms of Church organization and rites—dialogue about the place of Elders, the ordination of Elders, and the place of Native ceremonies and rights within the Church.41

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Harry Lafond exemplifies the type of leadership seen for generations in the Muskeg Lake Cree families. He emphasizes mutual education, open dialogue, and solidarity with others, which reflects the core beliefs of the Muskeg Lake Cree people, but does not shy away from suggesting that his people have their own spiritual traditions and practices, which should be respected. In this intervention, we can see that the leadership of Petequakey’s band has not only been local, provincial and national, but also international at times. The missionaries did offer formal education and this was welcomed as a supplement to the education First Nations children received working alongside their families in their seasonal cycles of gathering. Muskeg Lake Cree had traditional medicines, midwives, and seasonal practices of hunting, fishing, and gathering, which continue in some forms down to the current day. When formal education became more organized after the government became involved in 1890, the children were sent to St. Michael’s residential school at Duck Lake. There was a debate whether the school should be built at Muskeg Lake, as the Indians had already been educated there with great success. It was decided that Duck Lake would be most central for the reserves in the area. Father Paquette from the Aldina mission on the Muskeg Lake reserve was designated to set up the school, and after two years of planning and construction, it opened on 10 August 1894 with seventeen children from the bands of Petequakey, Mistawasis, and Ahtahkakoop (the old allies). The teachers at the new school included those with roots in the Cree families of Muskeg Lake, such as teachers Alexander Venne and Aldina Venne (the adopted Cree daughter of Antoine Marcelin). Unlike other residential schools, many of the priests and instructors spoke Cree as well as French and English.42 By 1915, reports to the Department of Indian Affairs describe the St. Michael’s school as doing well with over 100 pupils. Reports attribute the large attendance from some bands like Petequakey’s “due to the fact that the population of these bands is made up to a considerable extent of ex-pupils of this and other residential schools and the parents who are themselves ex-pupils are so anxious to have their children enrolled that they bring them themselves to the Principal as they [sic] soon as they are eligible for admission.”43 The importance of education for Muskeg Lake Cree Nation continues. The Students attended St. Michaels until the 1950s when a movement took hold to open a day school on the reserve and it was completed in 1952. Negotiations to attend school at Marcelin for members of the band started in the late 1950s when David Steele Greyeyes was chief. Parents were anxious for

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their children to stay with them and not be sent to boarding school. Lester Lafond was one of the first pupils driven off the reserve to school in Marcelin. There was no bus transportation and his mother, Eva Lafond (nee Venne), had worked for many years in St. Louis at the G.D. Galloway farm where she learned to drive. She obtained her licence in order to drive her son Lester to the “white” school. She did this for several years until the band made an agreement with the school board and a bus was acquired for band children to be driven to Marcelin for schooling. Lester Lafond became the first Indian to go to school with other children in an integrated setting. He didn’t find this part particularly memorable, but meeting the Sisters of Mary presenting in full habit made a lasting impression. Through his parents’ determination, Lester Lafond went on to receive a certificate in agricultural studies from the University of Saskatchewan in 1974 and served as the first Indian person to be president of a Chamber of Commerce in Canada, in this case the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce, from 2001 to 2002. He became active in politics as well and served in the 1980s as the National Aboriginal President of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, a position he took up at least in part out of regard for former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s extension of the franchise to Indians. The people of Muskeg Lake Cree, Petequakey’s band, have emerged into positions of leadership throughout Saskatchewan and beyond. However, the experiences of the past are not far beneath the surface. Muskeg Lake people could have played an enormous role in building the Province of Saskatchewan had they been openly invited and able to do so. No chief was recognized for twenty years after the uprising, and Petequakey was denied annual chief’s allowance, a chief’s uniform, or full treaty payments. He did wear a chief’s uniform because he knew he was the chief of his people, but it was the worn uniform given to him by his brother when he left the band in 1880. The band was considered to have no chief in the eyes of the federal government until 1914. After 1889, J.B. Lafond became a headman for the band, but he was not recognized by government officials as chief, and not paid chief’s annuities. In the oral history of Muskeg Lake Cree, J.B. Lafond did speak for the community at various times and is viewed as a leader for the families of the band, especially in continually rejecting the proposed land surrender, which was obtained in 1919. In 1914, nearly twenty years after the uprising, Petequackey’s band elected a chief who was recognized by the Crown when the first elections were held according to the Indian Act. George Greyeyes led the community for a

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short period and died in office on 10 July 1917. He was not replaced, and at the land surrender in 1919, there is no chief shown. It is told in the oral history that Petequakey’s band had its chief recognized again only because it was compliant in the surrender. Andrew Lafond then became chief in 1920 for twelve years. The longest serving chief was Joseph Ledoux, who was elected from 1933 to 1956, a twenty-three-year term. The current chief, Gilbert Ledoux, is the grandson of this chief. Gilbert Ledoux is also an individual of great athletic ability who took office in 2000 after retiring from a full career as an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Like George Greyeyes and so many before him, instead of settling in to his own interests in retirement, he serves the people, continuing to build the urban reserve, opening a new school on the home reserve, and completing construction of a seniors’ care home. Muskeg Lake Cree people have enjoyed success in agriculture, including crops, garden plots, cattle ranching, and other mixed farming activities. Muskeg Lake farmers were the first in the region to mechanize when the band acquired a tractor in the 1930s. After World War II there was a significant exodus of band members who took up wage labour jobs in bush camps, domestic service, and other positions in western Canada. Several members returned home seasonally. Many of the veterans were frustrated they could not go to the bars in the neighbouring communities and enjoy a drink with their comrades from the war. As Indians, they were excluded from bars and liquor stores until 1961. If Muskeg Lake Cree people are any kind of bellwether, they have survived with kinship intact through remarkable events, faced challenges, and had to overcome frustration. The community is undergoing a renaissance of sorts, with a new school at which the children will learn their history, language, and culture, along with the standard curriculum. Muskeg Lake families have demonstrated pragmatism and perseverance in the face of difficulty and have risen to the occasion when athletic or other excellence is required. Returning then to the “provincial” view: Saskatchewan history is about many stories, with some, like those of Petequakey’s band, yet to be fully told. First Peoples were bypassed as partners in building the province in 1905. One hundred years later, we can only speculate on what Muskeg Lake Cree families might have further accomplished had they not faced certain barriers. Knowing what I do of the other seventy-four First Nations and numerous Métis communities in Saskatchewan, I believe they have similarly fascinating stories to tell of their own families and communities. It may be a little too early to celebrate Saskatchewan for its inclusion of them in the project of building a province, but

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I do believe First Nations will play a central role in the future, whether by invitation or not. I hope they will remember the ones who came before, like the leaders of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation who so thoughtfully secured a place for their families, despite the changing circumstances in their homeland.

Notes 1. Translation from Cree “at Muskeg Lake” referring to the geographical territory of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation. 2. The federal government and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations have established an Office of the Treaty Commissioner in Saskatoon. Several treaty commissioners have served in recent times, including Lloyd Barber, Cliff Wright, and Hon. Judge David Arnot. Publications regarding treaty renewal can be found at the Web site for the Office of the Treaty Commissioner, . Also, see H. Cardinal and W. Hildebrandt, Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan: Our Dream is That Our Peoples Will One Day Be Clearly Recognized as Nations (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2000). 3. C. Wheaton, “The Role of Treaties in the History of Saskatchewan Indian Politics 1910 to 1992,” Journal of Indigenous Thought 2 (1999). 4. Canada, House of Commons, Debates (30 March 1906), 947–50. 5. For a more complete history of the relationship between the Indian political organization and the mainstream government in Saskatchewan, see F.L. Barron, Walking in Indian Moccasins: The Native Policies of Tommy Douglas and the CCF (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997). 6. This was after the landmark decision of the Supreme Court of Canada that recognized in principle the notion of Aboriginal title and Aboriginal rights based on long occupation, use, and possession of lands. While this decision was in relation to British Columbia, the acceptance of oral evidence, and the willingness, particularly in the judgement of Mr. Justice Hall (one of our most respected Saskatchewan judges) to set aside some of the colonial attitudes toward Indians and their culture. Calder v. A.G. Canada and A.G. British Columbia, [1973] 1 S.C.R. 7. See the examination of this in the works of Blair Stonechild, First Nations historian at the First Nations University of Canada; in particular, Stonechild’s graduate thesis of 1988, “The Indian Role in the North West Rebellion of 1885,” University of Regina. This research was the basis for the book, B. Stonechild and B. Waiser, Loyal till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion (Calgary: Fifth House, 1997).

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8. The work of the federal Indian Claims Commission must be acknowledged here as the commission carefully reviewed these surrenders and the federal government’s rejection of the Indian claims that they were conducted improperly. After several important reports, which make fascinating reading, the Government of Canada relented and settlements were reached. See all reports and related material on their Web site, . 9. SC 1906, c.20, s.1 (amending s. 70 of the Act). Royal Assent was given on 13 July 1906. The objective was to reduce or eliminate Indian reserves in western Canada. 10. For more detailed analysis, see S. Carter, Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government (Montreal and Kingston, McGill-Queen’s Press, 1990). 11. J.R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997). 12. Several of these once completed, such as the recent acceptance for negotiation of treaty land negotiations for Muskoday, Sturgeon, Gordon’s, and Pasqua First Nations, will add significantly to First Nations’ land holdings and economic development in the next ten years. 13. Treaty Commissioner Hon. David Arnot has worked with educators and First Nations experts to create curriculum units on the treaties and First Nations history. These units are being taught in many schools and will be the groundwork for a generation of better educated citizenry. 14. For an explanation of a more anthropological approach to history, see C. Geertz, After the Fact (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 127. 15. I am grateful for the assistance of the families and elders of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation. I was helped by Harry Lafond, chief from 1990 to 2000, and a spiritual and cultural leader for the community. Harry plays a leading role as the archivist for the community with his spouse, Germaine Lafond. Under their direction the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation archives are taking a more organized form at the Kihiw School. Many family members and community members shared recollections and are too numerous to thank, but special recognition goes to Chief Gilbert Ledoux and council who continue to lead the community in the tradition of Kitowehaw and Petequakey; my spouse and armchair historian, George E. Lafond; Carol Lafond, who prepared a booklet on Muskeg Lake Cree Veterans, Nikiskininan [“we remember them”] (Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, 1995), and a superb video on the same subject in 1998. University students Drew Lafond and Joi Arcand worked with me in the summers of 2003 and 2004, respectively, and gave me a renewed sense of optimism by their interest in history. No one can take credit for the oral history of the community, it is shared by everyone and belongs to the community, and each person illuminates it in a different way, as do the written records. Any errors are mine entirely, but I am sure, in keeping with the Muskeg Lake Cree character, they will all be brought to my attention in due time.

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16. The land was transferred to the Soldier Settlement Board for allocation. The Soldier Settlement Act, 1919, R.X.C., c. 71, s. 57. 17. Indian and Northern Affairs Land Registry, Reserve Land Register, Instrument No. X101165, Surrender Document Muskeg Lake I.R. No. 102, 25 September 1919. 18. See the oral history of Rosa Longneck and Alpha Lafond, collected and edited by F. Greyeyes and H.C. Wolfart, Our Grandmothers’ Lives as Told in Their Own Words (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1992), 293. They express the view that the surrender of the land was wrong. 19. National Archives of Canada, RG 10, Volume 7533, file 26. The matter was raised repeatedly but never addressed. 20. In 2001 another Muskeg Lake band member was appointed to the Senate of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, the noted athlete and former vicechief of the federation, Eugene Arcand. 21. Greyeyes and Wolfart, eds., Our Grandmothers’ Lives, 300–01. 22. This was accomplished during the leadership of Chief Wallace Tawpisin (1982 to 1989). Chief Tawpisin’s family came into the band through the Cree customs of adoption. A member of Petequakey’s band, a man who would later himself be chief, Andrew Lafond, met Wallace Tawpisin’s orphaned grandfather Alexander Issac Tawpisin in 1903 at residential school in Duck Lake and adopted him as his own brother, bringing him home, where he was accepted by the rules of kinship. Chief Tawpisin was determined to settle the treaty land shortfall for Muskeg Lake families. Working strategically with others through several years of negotiations with three levels of government, they reached an agreement in 1988. The official transfer took place on 1 October 1988 as the first urban commercial reserve in Canada, a testament to the vision and values of Petequakey’s band 100 years after his death. 23. F. Gaffen, Forgotten Soldiers (Penticton, BC: Theytus Books Ltd., 1985). The first building constructed on the urban reserve was named the McKnight Commercial Centre in honour of the former Minister of Indian Affairs, Bill McKnight, who was instrumental in treaty land settlement and land selection. In Cree tradition, he was adopted in the band and given the title of honourary chief and a headdress to honour his friendship. 24. Louis served with the 5th Battalion in France and was wounded in action, but signed up again for World War II. The other band member who fought in both wars was Alexander Tawpisin, also with the 5th Battalion in World War I, and, along with Louis Arcand, he was wounded in action in France. 25. He earned the 1939–45 Star, Italy Star, France and Germany Star, Defence Medal, Canadian Volunteer Service Medal with Clasp, War Medal 1939–45, and Military Cross Class (III) Greece.

Maskêko-sâkahikanihk

26. Corporal Albert Lafond joined the Canadian army from 1943 to 1945 and saw active service in Europe, and also served in Korea from 1950 to 1952. 27. Private Francis X. Arcand served in active duty in the Canadian army in Europe from 1943 to 1945. 28. For example, their son James trained for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and was the first Indian to become a constable in Canada. Their daughter Deanna is a widely respected social worker and took the Department of Indian Affairs to court in 1979, winning her case for post-secondary education rights for treaty Indians. 29. A book of the athletic accomplishments, particularly in the area of hockey, was published in 1997 to celebrate fifty years of organized hockey, prepared by George E. Lafond, with Muskeg Lake members providing photographs and oral histories. See G. Lafond, Hockey Rez: 50 Years of Indian Hockey (Saskatoon: Printwest, 1997). A video to commemorate the sports achievements of band members was released in 2005, Changing of the Lines, directed and produced by George E. Lafond and Roy Kemp (Petequakey Productions). 30. Stanley B. Lafond served two tours of duty from 1964 to 1975 and received a Purple Heart. 31. His name is also spelled “Ketawayo” by the treaty commissioners. There are many written versions and spellings of the chief’s name. Cree and English names were given to Chief Kitowehow—kitowehow, keetoowahan, keetoowahaw, Alexander Cayen, or Alexandre Cadieux in some records. The English translation of the Cree name is “Sounds of birds’ wings flapping when they are flying up.” 32. Also spelled Petakwakiw, Petequakey, pitikwakew, peteqautes, peeteequacay, pettyquawky, petequacay, opicihkwahakew. In treaty documents, the translation of petequakey is “the eagle that protects.” Another definition is “one who makes noise with something,” and another definition, which is the more accepted definition by the community, is “Sounds of birds’ flapping when they are sitting in one spot.” 33. A Montreal Gazette journalist accompanied Commissioner Dewdney on his York boat journey to Fort Carlton and reported on the meeting in a series of articles. Tom White, “Chronicles by the Way,” Montreal Gazette, 27 and 29 September 1889. 34. Montreal Gazette, 29 September 1889. 35. Dewdney, 2 January 1880, National Archives of Canada, RG10, vol. 3704, file 17,858, pp. 51–54(a). 36. For a recent reappraisal of this, see F. Vaughan, The Life of Justice Emmett Hall (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).

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37. The 1997 adoption by then Chief Harry Lafond and his wife Germaine Lafond of their son, Damien, who was by birth their grand-nephew, was, according to Cree tradition, presided over by the late Elder, Norman Sunchild, in a special ceremony and with the acceptance of the members of the band. This is one example of these customs that have continued through the ages. 38. See Greyeyes and Wolfart, eds., Our Grandmothers’ Lives, 239. 39. Stonechild and Waiser, Loyal till Death, 81. 40. Sisters Faithful Companions of Jesus, Journeying Through a Century: Sisters Pioneers 1883–1983. (Edmonton: Technical Graphics, 1983). 41. Summary of intervention by Chief Harry Lafond, 26 November 1997, Evangelization: New Partnership Between the Church and the Aboriginal Peoples (Instrumentum Laboris, Nos. 13, 14, and 59), Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Press release, 27 November 1997. 42. Fathers Beaudry, Forties, Paradis, and Menard are singled out by the Elders as priests who spoke Cree and understood the community. Alpha Lafond states: “It was really good while Father Beaudry was here.… For that priest had his house here, and he spoke Cree, he really understood the people….” See Greyeyes and Wolfart, eds., Our Grandmothers’ Lives, 335. 43. Memorandum to file from the Department of Indian Affairs, date 22 February 1915.

S a s k at c h e w a n ’ s P at h t o E c o n o m i c D e v e l o pm e n t Ja m e s M . P i t s u l a

From the early days of the settlement period to the present, Saskatchewan has struggled to diversify its economy. Successive generations, regardless of party or ideology, have worked towards the same goal: a balanced, growing economy that is shielded from the vagaries of weather and volatile export markets. In the early days of provincehood, agriculture, especially wheat, was king. Provincial Treasurer Charles A. Dunning boasted that the total value of agricultural production in 1919 exceeded $370 million. He added, somewhat apologetically, that he was not able to report on manufacturing, since the provincial government did not collect any statistics on that area of the economy.1 The next year he made good the omission, informing the legislature that manufacturing output totalled $50 million per year. However, this figure must be taken with a grain of salt. “Manufacturing” was given an expansive definition that included everything from creameries and flourmills to printing offices and garages.2 Dunning was typical of every provincial treasurer who succeeded him in that he preached the necessity of diversification. “One of the best things that could possibly happen for our agricultural industry,” he said in 1920, “would be the further development of manufacturing industries based on the development of our natural resources. It would bring about a better rounded development of the

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province and help to solve a great many agricultural problems.”3 He pointed with pride in 1923 to the installation of two sodium sulphate plants with well over $500,000 of investment in buildings and machinery and to a small (380,000 tons in 1922), but promising, coal mining industry.4 His personal pipe dream was a china pottery manufactory,5 an enterprise that he hoped would benefit from “such scientific assistance as could properly be given” by experts at the University of Saskatchewan.6 It was Dunning’s version of what would later be called “knowledge-based growth.” He was also willing to place the borrowing power of the province behind economic development, but required that such projects be self-sustaining and not a drain on general tax revenue. A case in point was the telephone system, which by 1919 had received government loans of over $7 million on the understanding that “the telephone department, out of its receipts, pays into the treasury annually a sum equal to the interest on that investment and the sinking fund with respect to the loans made therefore.”7 While the Saskatchewan government owned the long-distance lines, it left local service to small companies organized at the municipal level. Walter Scott, Saskatchewan’s first premier, took it as an article of faith that government assistance was better than outright ownership because he thought that enterprises worked better if citizens had a stake in running them. Another example was the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company created in 1911. The Scott government resisted pressure from farm groups for direct government involvement in the grain-handling business, choosing instead to loan money to a farmer-owned elevator company. As Brett Fairbairn notes in Chapter 8 of this volume, “co-operatives fitted the Liberal vision in at least two ways: they appeared to be progressive, constructive, ‘improving’ institutions that would help build the kind of modern, prosperous Saskatchewan that Liberals envisaged; but also—very importantly— they were driven by citizen action, not government action.” The Liberal government also entered the financial business, offering assistance to producers through the Saskatchewan Farm Loans Board. As with the elevator company, the idea was not for the public sector to take the place of private lending institutions, but rather to ensure that they gave their clients a fair deal. As Dunning noted in 1919, the cost to farmers of borrowing money had gone down, “and I do not think we are taking too much credit to ourselves when we say that the chief reason for this is the existence of the Saskatchewan Farm Loans Board and its work.”8

Saskatchewan’s Path to Economic Development

After the post-World War I slump, the Saskatchewan economy entered an era of unprecedented prosperity. The number of farms grew from 119,451 in 1921 to 136,472 in 1931, while the average farm size increased from 368.5 to 407.9 acres. The number of tractors went from 19,243 to 43,308, and railway mileage from 6296 to 8268.9 The Regina Leader, celebrating Canada’s Diamond Jubilee on 1 July 1927, published a full-page advertisement titled “Saskatchewan: Its Place In, And Contribution To, The Canadian Confederation.” The ad underscored the remarkable progress the province had made in a short span of years, increasing in population from 257,763 in 1906 to 821,042 in 1926. It boasted that Saskatchewan was:

first Province in Canada in per capita wealth. first in production of wheat. first in production of oats. first in production of rye. first in production of flax. first in the breeding of horses. first in quantity of commercial clays. first in production of sodium sulphate. first by reason of the lowest death rate. first in number of rural telephones per capita. second in railway mileage. second in number of telegraph offices. second in egg production. second in production of barley. third in population. third in reserves of coal. third in poultry values. third in aggregate wealth.10 Pride and self-confidence were severely shaken with the onset of the Great Depression of the 1930s. A combination of drought and low agricultural prices caused per capita income to fall 72 percent from 1929 to 1933 and forced twothirds of the rural population onto relief. Prairie medical men reported cases of scurvy among those who could not afford to buy fruit and vegetables.11 The number of telephones in service fell from over 71,000 in 1930 to less than 40,000 by 1934. Automobile registrations declined from almost 109,000 in 1929 to less than 70,000 in 1933.12 A politician addressing a public meeting

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tried to raise the spirits of his audience by declaring that there was nothing wrong with Saskatchewan that some water and some good people couldn’t fix. A man at the back of the hall purportedly shouted, “You can say the same thing about hell.” The province plunged deeply into debt—not out of choice, since the principle of balanced budgets was still sacrosanct—but because collapsing revenues and rising expenditures made it impossible to meet budgetary targets. To those who claimed that the province would never be able to repay its debts, Premier Jimmy Gardiner promised in 1935 that “of course Saskatchewan will come back.” “Saskatchewan,” he said, was still “the bread-basket of the Empire. . . . It is our job to keep that wheat in the form of bread on every table in Europe as far as possible. If we do that, the weather will eventually do her part.”13 Unfortunately, conditions got much worse before they got better. The 1937 crop, the worst in the history of the province, was valued at $52 million compared with $142 million in 1936 and over $300 million in 1928.14 Relief expenditures in 1937 exceeded $40 million, an astonishing sum considering that the entire provincial budget in 1939 was only $23 million.15 In the depths of the Depression, it was necessary for the government to impose a new 2 percent tax on the sale of retail goods. The reason? Money had to be found to pay the salary arrears owed to teachers.16 Prospects brightened in 1939, when farmers harvested a crop worth over $166 million and mineral production exceeded $9 million.17 Farm income continued to increase during World War II, debts were paid off, and the province gradually got back on its feet. However, wartime prosperity concealed a more worrisome trend. As Jack Stabler and Rose Olfert point out in Chapter 7, the mechanization of farm production led to “the large-scale release of labour from agriculture,” a phenomenon that made the creation of new industries all the more urgent. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (ccf) came to power in 1944 and began to implement a left-wing, quasi-socialist program. Like its predecessors, the ccf emphasized the need for diversification, but, unlike them, it believed in a larger role for the government in the overall direction and planning of the economy. “Government,” Provincial Treasurer Clarence Fines proclaimed in 1945, “must become the nation’s, or province’s, nervecentre, as planner and sponsor of public development.” It was the government’s “direct obligation to ensure that the economy is functioning to its fullest capacity, and that economic development proceeds, not sporadically as and only

Saskatchewan’s Path to Economic Development

when it is profitable for private business, but in a planned way, and in accordance with the people’s welfare.”18 The most radical innovation was the creation of Crown corporations, not just in utilities such as telephones and electric power where the provincial government had long been involved, but also in entrepreneurial areas of the economy. Fines took it as a given that “private enterprise has never been able to provide enough jobs for all except in war-time.”19 Further, he believed that the sufferings endured by workers and farmers during the 1930s must not be repeated. The government had to find a way to prevent the recurrence of such misery; it had to diversify the economy and overcome the wild fluctuations in weather and market conditions that threatened the security of Saskatchewan people. Within a few years the ccf created eleven Crown corporations, all but three of which (the woolen mill, tannery, and shoe factory) were turning a profit. The Saskatchewan Transportation Company in 1947 had a fleet of fiftyone buses travelling a total of 4600 route miles, “one-third of which had never seen a bus before.”20 In the far north, “the familiar yellow and black of the planes of Saskatchewan Government Airways” helped open up “a hitherto almost inaccessible area.”21 The Saskatchewan Fur Marketing Service, the Timber Board, the Sodium Sulphate Mining Company, and the Saskatchewan Government Insurance Office grew and prospered. The Crown corporations by 1949 provided 3000 jobs and transacted a volume of business worth $25 million annually.22 Not all the ventures were successful. Natural Resources Minister Joe Phelps brought to Cabinet a proposal to purchase an Estevan brick manufacturing plant. A heated discussion took place in which Clarence Fines protested the lack of rigorous economic research to justify the investment of public funds. The majority in Cabinet agreed with him, but Phelps stubbornly refused to let the matter drop. He finally admitted that the Cabinet had no choice—he had already bought the plant.23 Another problem was that the Crown corporations alienated members of the business community who did not approve of a large government role in the economy. Fines in 1948 alluded to the issue, while at the same time deprecating it: the great bulk of our economic life is dependent upon the enterprise of the thousands of private individuals, partnerships, cooperative organizations, and private corporations. And we are happy that our repeated assurances and our policies have been accepted by the vast majority of responsible and serious businessmen. The facts are plain and simple.

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In spite of the deliberate campaign of distortion and scare-mongering— a campaign fostered by narrow and selfish interests in a futile attempt to discredit the Government, even at the cost of a grave disservice to our Province—cooperative and private business continues to grow and to expand in Saskatchewan.24

Saskatchewan people ended up doing battle not only against a variable climate and fickle export markets, but also against each other. The ccf stuck to its three-point plan for economic development: private enterprise, cooperatives, and Crown corporations. To encourage private industry, the government set up an Industrial Development Office (ido), which provided loans and technical assistance to aspiring entrepreneurs. It helped attract a steel pipe mill, a plywood factory, a garment factory, a farmequipment manufacturing firm, and a cement plant.25 In 1960 the ido evolved into a full-fledged Department of Industry and Information, charged with the responsibility of expanding and integrating industry assistance programs, carrying out trade and marketing studies, and promoting tourism.26 The formula seemed to work. The economy in the post-war period expanded steadily and became more diversified. Oil production, which had been a meager 1019 barrels in 1944–45,27 rose to 145,000 barrels per day in 1960, 28 percent of total Canadian output.28 Although the net value of agricultural production fell by 62 percent in 1961 as a result of drought, the net value of total commodity output decreased by only 27 percent, a testament to the growing strength of the non-agricultural sector. The latter now constituted, in a normal crop year, about 60 percent of the total net value of commodity output, whereas fifteen years earlier it had represented only about 25 percent.29 Another positive sign was the coming into full-scale production in 1962 of the province’s first potash mine at Esterhazy.30 When the ccf was defeated in 1964 at the hands of Ross Thatcher’s Liberals, it left a cumulative legacy of eighteen surplus and two deficit budgets. The surpluses totalled $108 million and the deficits $5.8 million for a net surplus over twenty years of more than $100 million. The Crown corporations employed 6200 workers and made a profit in 1963 of almost $11 million.31 One of the last ccf initiatives was the creation of the Saskatchewan Economic Development Corporation (sedco) to assist private businesses. The corporation’s grants and loans fell into three categories: capital expenditures for new plants, equipment and machinery, the promotion of industrial research, and

Saskatchewan’s Path to Economic Development

the training of the labour force. In addition, sedco acquired land and buildings, which were made available to industry on a lease-purchase basis.32 The Liberals placed more emphasis on private enterprise than the ccf had done. Premier Thatcher made his position clear: “This Government believes that a greater investment of private capital is the one step that is vital in the achievement of every economic and social goal we hold dear.”33 He said that the government was prepared to extend aid on a massive scale if that was required to make Saskatchewan “investment worthy.” Despite his pro-business leanings, Thatcher was pragmatic in his dealings with the Crown corporations. He laid down three criteria for their continued existence. If a Crown corporation met at least one of the following conditions, it would not be sold: “if it provides an essential service which private firms are unable to supply at comparable cost to the public; it if provides useful employment which otherwise would not be available; if it yields a satisfactory return on invested public funds.”34 Thatcher found that by these standards, almost all the Crown corporations were worth keeping. He considered the bus company more essential than ever because rail-line abandonment was depriving rural communities of much needed transportation services. The Sodium Sulphate Company was deemed “one of the more lucrative owned by the Government,”35 and Sask Tel earned praise as a “well managed entity.” Only a few of the Crown corporations were sold, notably Sask Air, which was replaced by a private carrier. The Liberals in 1971 (their last year in office) drew dividends into the public treasury of $10.2 million from the Saskatchewan Power Corporation, $5.9 million from Sask Tel, and $1 million from five smaller Crown corporations.36 Government-owned companies in that year employed 6100 people and did business valued at $204 million.37 Although the provincial economy performed well through most of the 1960s, it declined towards the end of the decade. Wheat sales were down (prompting Pierre Trudeau’s notorious comment, “Why should I sell your wheat?”) and prices for potash, uranium, and oil sank.38 The Thatcher government cut spending and balanced the budget, leaving the treasury in good shape for the New Democratic Party (as the ccf had since become), which won the June 1971 election. Premier Allan Blakeney announced in his 1972 budget speech that: “this Government will encourage the continued operation and expansion of Crown corporations. We will develop our resources for the benefit of Saskatchewan people. Where appropriate, this will be done though Crown corporations.”39 SaskOil, the Saskatchewan Mining and Development

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Corporation (smdc, mainly a uranium mining company), and the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (pcs) were created to ensure, as the ndp said, that the people of Saskatchewan secured the maximum benefit from the development of their natural resources. While resource Crown corporations were at the centre of ndp economic development strategy, there were also other elements. Provincial Treasurer Elwood Cowley in his 1973 budget speech put his finger on the basic challenge facing the province: as long as the economic destiny of the Province depends heavily on the primary resources sector, there can be no assurance that our economy will be able to generate sufficient economic activity and jobs to fully employ our labor force. Furthermore, the decimation of our rural communities and the decline in provincial population are problems that cannot be ignored. At present there is insufficient employment in rural areas to fully employ young persons entering the labor market for the first time. Consequently, there is a continuing drift of people from rural areas to urban centres in search of employment. The majority of persons leaving the Province or migrating from rural to urban areas are the young, more productive members of our population. It is this group that ultimately will shoulder the responsibility for social services and provide the basis for future economic development. If the average population-age continues to increase, the imbalance between the dependent and productive groups will continue to grow, thereby reducing the ability of the Province to provide an adequate level of services. If past trends were to continue unchecked, the economic and social mosaic of Saskatchewan would leave much to be desired at the turn of the century—a province of a few hundred thousand people, engaged in the production and export of raw materials from its rich resource base.40

To avert this undesirable scenario, the government introduced programs to diversify and stabilize agriculture. They included financial incentives for livestock production and the government purchase of farmland, which was leased to start-up farmers who had the option to buy the land at a later date. The Land Bank, as the latter scheme was called, proved highly controversial. The government said it was trying to ease the intergenerational transfer of land by enabling older farmers to retire with a comfortable income from the sale of their land, without forcing young farmers to raise the cash to buy it. The Opposition said the program was too socialistic. When the Progressive

Saskatchewan’s Path to Economic Development

Conservatives took power in 1982, they moved immediately to end the experiment in government farm ownership. In addition to trying to bolster agriculture, the Blakeney government beefed up the Department of Industry and Commerce. It acquired a Research and Development Branch “to identify the commercial value of our primary products, to determine the extent to which they can be processed or manufactured here in Saskatchewan, and to identify new opportunities in the area of manufacturing and processing.”41 A Business Assistance Branch with offices in cities and towns around the province was set up to give advice and technical support to entrepreneurs. The corporate income tax for small businesses was reduced in 1978 from 12 percent to 11 percent42 and in 1981 from 11 percent to 10 percent.43 A trade office was opened in Tokyo to gain access to Pacific Rim markets. Finance Minister Walter Smishek announced in 1978 that Saskatchewan was well on the way to diversification, historically a dangerous comment to make since statements of this kind all too often precede a fall in commodity prices that brings the province to its knees. Smishek pointed out that “despite slow growth in 1977 and 1978, the general health of the Saskatchewan economy shows just how far our economic base has broadened. Less than twenty years ago, the Saskatchewan economy was almost totally dependent upon agriculture. Since then, a number of sectors—notably petroleum and mining—have become major factors and have helped to offset the inevitable ups and downs of agriculture.”44 The most spectacular gains were made in oil, potash, and uranium. Resource revenues to the provincial government soared from $35 million in 1971 to over $1 billion in 1981.45 The government in 1978 set up the Heritage Fund to manage the windfall. All revenues from non-renewable resources were paid into the fund, and up to 80 percent of the intake in a given year could then be transferred to the Consolidated Fund to pay for current government spending. The remainder was invested in one of three ways: grants or loans to the private sector for exploration or development of non-renewable resources; acquisition of social and economic assets of lasting value (such as hospitals, parks, and community centres); and equity and loan capital for SaskOil, smdc, and pcs. The lion’s share went to the Crown corporations, in accordance with the government’s belief that the earnings from these corporations would, over the long haul, “provide this and future governments with a degree of fiscal flexibility tailormade to respond to the economic swings which plague a farm economy. It is a

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reserve which, built up year by year, can provide stability to our budgetary revenues.”46 It was like putting money in the bank for a rainy day, except it wasn’t a bank—it was uranium and potash mines. The Opposition parties mounted a concerted attack on what the ndp called the “family of Crown corporations.” Progressive Conservative leader Grant Devine claimed that the people wanted a government that cared about real families, not a phony family of government-owned companies.47 The appeal struck a chord, and the Conservatives swept into power in the April 1982 election. At first it seemed like 1964 all over again. Incoming Finance Minister Bob Andrew announced that “this government believes that the private sector is vital to any economic plan. We believe that one of the most important tasks we face is to show individual investors in Saskatchewan and the rest of Canada that this province is heading for a period of high sustained growth, and they should be part of it. If we want diversification, there is no substitute for the imagination, energy and capital of thousands of individuals with a lifetime of experience in their business or trade, who are constantly seeking new ways to meet and beat the competition.”48 The government hosted an “Open for Business” conference in the fall of 1982 to spread the message that private investment was welcome in the province. Premier Grant Devine promised to get rid of bureaucratic red tape, and, as a token of the new free enterprise spirit, he cancelled the smdc’s automatic right to participate in new mineral exploration and development projects in northern Saskatchewan. The goal of the conference was to jolt Saskatchewan out of the habit of relying upon the government to lead the economy. The Conservatives were not, at least at the beginning of their term, averse to Crown corporations. Bob Andrew signalled that the government “would build on any strategy or combination of strategies that produces results.… In our economic strategy, the public sector is also indispensable. We intend to use the public sector, not in isolation, and not exclusively, but as one element in a balanced mixed economy.”49 The Financial Post noted in January 1983 that “in spite of restraints placed on the Crowns, so far what is emerging in Saskatchewan is not preparation for a massive assault on public enterprise, but rather an atmosphere of détente between the free-enterprise government and the Crowns it inherited.”50 Bob Andrew stated, as late as 1985, that “privatization is yesterday’s theory … it doesn’t make sense for one government to build these things and for the next one to come and sell it off.”51 However, the government did make changes in the operations of the Heritage Fund. It no

Saskatchewan’s Path to Economic Development

longer served as a “cash cow” for the Crown corporations, but rather was used to stabilize revenue (the rule that a maximum of 80 percent of Heritage Fund income could be paid into the Consolidated Fund was dropped) and encourage private-sector development.52 The Devine government introduced the Venture Capital Tax Credit, a 30 percent provincial income tax credit to investors in approved venture capital corporations providing equity to small manufacturing, processing, tourism, and research and development firms. The Industrial Incentives Program distributed one-time payments of $7500 for each new permanent job created by manufacturing and processing companies. In addition, the provincial corporate tax levied against manufacturing and processing income earned by small businesses was eliminated.53 The government also revamped the oil royalty structure and declared a royalty holiday for new wells. As a result, the oil patch boomed. Unfortunately, a combination of extravagant tax cuts, especially the removal in 1982 of the provincial tax on gasoline, and low commodity prices undercut government finances. The deficits were $227 million in 1982, $331 million in 1983, $380 million in 1984, $579 million in 1985, and $1.2 billion in 1986 (an election year). This pattern of deficit spending was unusual for Saskatchewan, which had been accustomed, apart from the 1930s depression, to living within its means. As the Devine government embarked on its second term in office, it had to cut programs and increase taxes in an effort to bring the fiscal situation under control. Even so, the deficits continued: $542 million in 1987, $324 million in 1988, $378 million in 1989, $360 million in 1991, and $842 million in 1991. As the province sank deeper into debt, the government’s policy towards Crown corporations changed. Privatization, which had been low-key in the first term, accelerated after 1986. The Conservatives drew inspiration from Margaret Thatcher’s government in Britain, which by 1989 had sold off public assets worth $44 billion, including such companies as British Telecom, British Gas, and British Airways. British experts, such as Madsen Pirie, the head of the Adam Smith Institute in London, and Oliver Letwin, director of the International Privatization Unit for N.M. Rothschild and Sons Ltd., came to Saskatchewan to explain the principles and techniques of privatization. Premier Devine publicly embraced the cause at the provincial Progressive Conservative party convention in November 1987, when he declared that all the Crown corporations, except the utilities, were up for sale. They included SaskMinerals, smdc, SaskOil, Saskatchewan Forest

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Products, Saskatchewan Government Printing, the Saskatchewan Computer Utility Corporation, and the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. pcs, in particular, symbolized the ndp economic development strategy of owning resource companies as a means of stabilizing provincial revenues. The Conservatives rejected this approach, saying that they were “builders, not buyers.”54 The bill to privatize pcs was pushed through the legislature in 1989 (closure was invoked for the first time in the history of the province), and the corporation was sold for $630 million, about one-half its book value and onequarter of its replacement value.55 The government proceeded despite the advice of professionals who maintained that the sale was ill-timed. As the Report of the Saskatchewan Financial Management Review Commission (Gass Commission) observed in 1992, “We were unable to find any documentation to support the Government’s reasons for overriding the recommendations of its advisors.”56 If the corporation had been sold when the market was high instead of low, the government could have made hundreds of millions.57 The privatization campaign rolled along quite smoothly until an attempt was made to sell SaskEnergy, the natural gas corporation that had been carved out of SaskPower. This sale seemed to contradict the premier’s previous assertion that Crown utilities would not be sold. Roy Romanow, who succeeded Allan Blakeney as ndp leader in November 1987, decided to take a stand. When the bells rang to summon the members of the legislature to vote on the bill to privatize SaskEnergy, the ndp mlas walked out in protest. Since the government was not able to have the vote with the Opposition absent, the bells kept ringing and legislative proceedings ground to a halt. The public sided with the ndp. Within a few weeks, 100,000 people had signed a petition demanding that the government back off from the sale of the gas utility. An Angus Reid poll showed that 67 percent of the population opposed the privatization.58 The Conservatives retreated and cancelled the sale. Even so, the Devine government changed the economic landscape of Saskatchewan through large-scale privatizations and publicly assisted megaprojects. The sale of public assets was sometimes used to leverage new economic development, as in the sale of Papco (Prince Albert Pulp Company) to the American-owned Weyerhaeuser Corporation in exchange for a commitment from Weyerhaeuser to upgrade the pulp mill and construct a new $250 million paper mill. The government entered into a partnership with the American corporation, Cargill, to build a large nitrogen-based fertilizer plant near Regina. The plant not only survived, but also underwent several expansions

Saskatchewan’s Path to Economic Development

during the 1990s.59 Devine also provided generous equity investment, loans, and loan guarantees to two heavy-oil upgraders, one in Regina and the other in Lloydminster, and to Crown Life insurance company, which received financial inducements to move its head office from Toronto to Regina. The three projects “exposed the province to almost $1 billion in liabilities,”60 which had a depressing effect on the province’s credit rating. The ndp government, which replaced the Conservatives in 1991, was able to renegotiate the deals and place them on a sounder financial footing.61 While the upgraders and Crown Life were sustainable, other Conservative economic ventures were not. Char Inc., which was set up to manufacture barbecue briquettes in Estevan, received a loan of $220,000 from the Saskatchewan Economic Development Corporation, $145,000 from the provincial government, and $182,413 from the federal government, only to close after three weeks and lay off all but three employees. Supercart International, a Regina manufacturer of shopping carts, received $366,000 from the federal government, $250,000 from the provincial government, $400,000 from sedco, $65,000 from the City of Regina, and $1 million through the provincial Venture Capital Corporation scheme. The company folded without producing any shopping carts, other than a few prototypes.62 The provincial government also invested over $5 million in GigaText, a computer firm that was supposed to translate English text into French. The technology did not work, and the company had to be shut down.63 When the ndp government led by Roy Romanow took office in 1991, it faced a financial crisis. Saskatchewan’s total debt per capita was the highest of all the provinces. Whereas in 1982 less than two cents of every tax dollar went to pay interest charges on the public debt, ten years later eighteen cents were dedicated to that purpose. As Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon put it, “We are like a household with an income of $50,000 which has credit card debts of $125,000 and is still spending more than it is earning.”64 The government tackled the debt with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, which led in 1995 to a return to a balanced budget. By the year 2000 Saskatchewan’s debt had fallen from 70 percent of gross domestic product to 38 percent.65 At the same time, the government moved to forge a partnership with the business community, seeking to overcome the private sector’s distrust of the ndp that lingered from the Blakeney era of the 1970s and, for those with longer memories, from the days of Clarence Fines in the 1940s and 1950s. The Romanow government made it clear that it had no intention of reversing

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Devine’s privatization of non-utility corporations. Economic growth would have to come mainly from private-sector investors and entrepreneurs. In the words of Janice MacKinnon, “In the 1990s the role of government in the knowledge-based global economy involved creating a competitive tax regime, reducing red tape, educating and training a quality workforce, and financing infrastructure, from roads to research facilities.”66 This involved, among other things, arrangements, such as the Tourism Authority and the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership, in which the government provided the funding and overall mandate and private boards made the strategic decisions.67 The government also introduced targeted tax incentives to spur job creation. In 1992 it reduced the small-business corporation income tax rate from 10 percent to 9 percent and lowered it further to 8.5 percent in 1994, 8 percent in 1995, and 6 percent in 2001.68 The Manufacturing and Processing Tax Credit provided a tax saving equal to 8 percent of the value of eligible equipment acquired by Saskatchewan small businesses, and the sales tax on direct agents used in manufacturing and processing was phased out.69 In 1995 tax incentives were extended to all firms engaged in manufacturing and processing, not just small businesses.70 Contrary to the high-royalty policy of the Blakeney era, royalties on oil and natural gas production were kept low. Investment in the oil and gas industry topped $1 billion in 1994, and production increased more than 15 percent, a trend that continued in subsequent years and helped lead the province out of the recession.71 The government, recognizing the importance of new technology in the global economy, placed increased emphasis on funding research and development, for example, at Innovation Place at the University of Saskatchewan and the Research Park at the University of Regina. A 15 percent income tax credit for research and development boosted such industries as engineering, biotechnology, and information technology.72 The government also engaged in limited forms of Crown corporation entrepreneurship, often in joint ventures with private partners. Such initiatives drew the wrath of critics, both inside government and out, who charged that government should not “invest directly in individual businesses” or pick “winners and losers.”73 When such investments failed, as in the case of the Spudco, a Crown corporation in the potato industry, the government came under heavy attack. Public sector projects were said to be stunting the province’s growth and crowding out private business and community development.74 On the other hand, such ultimately successful companies as ipsco,

Saskatchewan’s Path to Economic Development

the Co-op Upgrader, and Saskferco likely would not have come into existence without government leverage in the form of equity investment, loans, or loan guarantees. By 1994 there were signs that the province was moving closer to the longsought and ever-elusive goal of economic diversification. Saskatchewan was still Canada’s largest producer of wheat, second largest producer of crude oil, third largest natural gas producer, and one of the world’s leading suppliers of potash and uranium, but while these commodities continued to play an important role in the economy, they were not as dominant as they previously had been. Agricultural output accounted for 9.6 percent of the province’s gdp in 1984, and only 8.2 percent in 1994. Mineral products, which represented 11.6 percent of total output in 1984, dropped to only 6.7 percent in 1994. In the same period, manufacturing’s share of total output increased from 5.7 percent to 7.7 percent, and service industries (wholesale and retail trade, transportation, communication, storage and utilities, finance, insurance, real estate, and personal, community, and business services) went from 58.5 percent of aggregate output to 65.2 percent.75 Even within the agricultural sector, diversification was occurring. Although wheat historically had been the largest crop, it accounted in 1994 for only 36.2 percent of the total volume of crops harvested. Other major grains and oil seeds, such as durum, oats, barley, rye, flax, and canola, made up 56.1 percent, and specialty crops (peas, mustard, sunflowers, and lentils) another 7.7 percent.76 The data for 2002 placed agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting at 6.3 percent of provincial gdp; mining, oil, and gas at 12.8 percent; and manufacturing at 7.7 percent, with services of various kinds making up the vast bulk of the remainder.77 Politicians in Saskatchewan have a habit of invoking the pioneer virtues of hard work, innovation, and cooperation. Progressive Conservative Finance Minister Lorne Hepworth intoned in 1990: “Saskatchewan people have a tradition of working together. We set aside our differences and persevere. We overcome the difficulties and build a better future by finding common cause with one another. We find the best ideas, the ideas that work, and we implement them.”78 ndp Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon adopted similar language in 1993: Saskatchewan was founded by pioneers who had the vision and the courage to make sacrifices to secure a better future for themselves and their children. Now, we must draw on that tradition by making difficult choices today to secure a brighter tomorrow. In making those

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choices, we have to be guided by the timeless values of this Province: the values of community, hard work, compassion, cooperation and fairness. Let us again become pioneers, pathfinders bold enough to chart new courses in difficult times.79

In point of fact, Saskatchewan people have not always been unified or cooperative in their approach to economic development. They have disagreed on such basic issues as: What is the role of government in the economy? How high or low should taxes be? What kind of incentives should be offered to private investors? How can a spirit of private entrepreneurship be encouraged? As recently as 2003, a provincial election hinged on the question: What is the appropriate role for Crown corporations in the Saskatchewan economy? Every Saskatchewan government since 1905 has promoted economic diversification. From Charles Dunning in the 1920s to Elwood Cowley in the 1970s, and Eric Cline in the 2000s, the constant refrain has been, “diversify, diversify.” The Liberals in the early days built up a government-owned telephone system, bought power plants, and extended loans to individual farmers and farmer-owned cooperatives. The ccf (1944 to 1964) used a three-pronged strategy of private investment, cooperatives, and Crown corporations to grow the economy. The Ross Thatcher Liberals (1964 to 1971) put the emphasis on free enterprise, but kept the Crown corporations as long as they provided services that would otherwise not be provided, created jobs that would not otherwise be created, or yielded a satisfactory return on invested public funds. The ndp (1971 to 1982) returned to the old ccf policy of the mixed economy, but added a new twist: major public investment in natural resource corporations. The Progressive Conservatives (1982 to 1991) sold the resource Crown corporations and used public funds to leverage private investment in megaprojects such as heavy-oil upgraders, a paper mill, and a fertilizer plant. Following their return to power in 1991, the ndp has focused on restoring the province to fiscal solvency, forging partnerships with the business community, giving tax incentives to encourage value-added industries, engaging in selective Crown entrepreneurship, and supporting research and development as the key to success in the global economy. Saskatchewan in its first century travelled a long distance down the path of economic development and diversification. The province will make even more progress in the next century if it can embrace a common strategy for economic growth that everyone can support, rather than engaging in self-defeating battles over the best policies to pursue. Saskatchewanians have boasted with some justification of their

Saskatchewan’s Path to Economic Development

pioneering spirit and pragmatic ability to get things done, but now, more than ever, it is necessary to ensure that the results live up to the rhetoric. There are signs that this may be happening. The 2007 provincial election was relatively free of ideological disputation. Both the ndp and the Saskatchewan Party (an amalgam of former Progressive Conservatives and Liberals) moved towards the centre of the political spectrum, each declaring their intention to sustain and build upon the natural resource-driven economic book the province was enjoying. The ndp tried to raise fears of massive privatization should their opponents take power, but Sask Party leader Brad Wall persuaded most voters that he would do no such thing and, to date, as premier, he has kept his promise. It is possible that the province, after many years of lurching from one extreme to the other, may have achieved a consensus on the path to economic development. Time will tell whether the adage—“those who do not study their history are condemned to repeat it”—will be confirmed or repudiated in this case.

Notes 1.

Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.A. Dunning, 27 January 1920, 5–6.

2.

Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.A. Dunning, 6 December 1920, 9–10.

3.

Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.A. Dunning, 31 January 1922, 9.

4.

Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.A. Dunning, 13 March 1923, 9–10.

5. Ibid., 10. 6. Ibid. 7.

Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.A. Dunning, 29 January 1919, 8.

8. Ibid., 11–12. 9.

Province of Saskatchewan, A Submission by the Government of Saskatchewan to the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, 1937, 134.

10. Regina Leader, 2 July 1927. 11. S.M. Lipset, Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 125. 12. Ibid., 127. 13. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. James G. Gardiner, 24 January 1935, 23. 14. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. W.J. Patterson, 16 February 1938, 3. 15. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. W.J. Patterson, 27 February 1939, 13. 16. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. W.J. Patterson, 23 March 1937, 4–5. 17. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. W.J. Patterson, 26 February 1940, 3. 18. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.M. Fines, 15 March 1945, 15.

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19. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.M. Fines, 6 March 1947, 24. 20. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.M. Fines, 26 February 1948, 11. 21. Ibid. 22. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.M. Fines, 8 March 1950, 12. 23. John Richards and Larry Pratt, Prairie Capitalism: Power and Influence in the New West (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979), 110. 24. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.M. Fines, 26 February 1948, 12. 25. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.M. Fines, 5 March 1956, 20–21. 26. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.M. Fines, 26 February 1960, 16. 27. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. C.M. Fines, 14 March 1946, 7. 28. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. W.S. Lloyd, 27 February 1961, 7. 29. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. A.E. Blakeney, 9 March 1962, 8. 30. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. J.H. Brockelbank, 1 March 1963, 7. 31. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. J.H. Brockelbank, 21 February 1964, 9. 32. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. J.H. Brockelbank, 1 March 1963, 24–25. 33. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. W. Ross Thatcher, 19 February 1965, 3. 34. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. W. Ross Thatcher, 25 February 1966, 9. 35. Ibid., 14. 36. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. D.G. Steuart, 26 February 1971, 41. 37. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Allan Blakeney, 10 March 1972, 12. 38. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. D.G. Steuart, 26 February 1971, 5. 39. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Allan Blakeney, 10 March 1972, 12. 40. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Elwood Cowley, 9 February 1973, 11. 41. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Elwood Cowley, 9 February 1973, 19. 42. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Walter E. Smishek, 7 March 1978, 22. 43. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Ed Tchorzewski, 5 March 1981, 14. 44. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Walter E. Smishek, 7 March 1978, 6. 45. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Ed Tchorzewski, 5 March 1981, 8. 46. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Walter E. Smishek, 7 March 1978, 9. 47. James Pitsula and Kenneth Rasmussen, Privatizing a Province: The New Right in Saskatchewan (Vancouver: New Star, 1990), 31. 48. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Bob Andrew, 29 March 1983, 2. 49. Ibid. 50. Financial Post, 1 January 1983. 51. Moose Jaw Times Herald, 29 January 1985, quoted in Maureen Appel Malot, “The Provinces and Privatization: Are the Provinces Really Getting Out of Business?” in Allan Tupper and G. Bruce Doern, eds., Privatization, Public Policy and Public Corporations in Canada (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1988), 412.

Saskatchewan’s Path to Economic Development

52. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Bob Andrew, 29 March 1983, 6. 53. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Bob Andrew, 21 March 1984, 3. 54. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. J. Gary Lane, Q.C., 17 June 1987, 23. 55. Pitsula and Rasmussen, Privatizing a Province, 197–98. 56. Quoted in Janice MacKinnon, Minding the Public Purse: The Fiscal Crisis, Political Trade-Offs, and Canada’s Future (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 47. 57. MacKinnon, Minding the Public Purse, 47. 58. Pitsula and Rasmussen, Privatizing a Province, 195. 59. MacKinnon, Minding the Public Purse, 46. 60. Ibid., 84. 61. Ibid., 84–96. 62. Pitsula and Rasmussen, Privatizing a Province, 63–64. 63. Ibid., 277–79. 64. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Janice MacKinnon, March 1993, 1. 65. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Eric Cline, March 2000, 2. 66. MacKinnon, Minding the Public Purse, 75. 67. Ibid., 75–76. 68. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Janice MacKinnon, March 1993, 4; Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Eric Cline, 2002–03. 69. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Janice MacKinnon, March 1993, 6. 70. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Janice MacKinnon, February 1995, 8–9. 71. MacKinnon, Minding the Public Purse, 80. 72. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Eric Cline, March 1998, 5. 73. MacKinnon, Minding the Public Purse, 274. 74. Bruce Johnstone, “Our Future Could Be Bright,” Regina Leader Post, 8 May 2003. 75. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Janice MacKinnon, February 1995, “Saskatchewan’s Economy—Growth in Diversity,” 25. 76. Ibid., 27. 77. Statistics Canada, CANSIM Table 379-0025-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at basic prices by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and province. 78. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Lorne H. Hepworth, 29 March 1990, 1. 79. Budget Speech delivered by the Hon. Janice MacKinnon, March 1993, 1.

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O n e Hu n d r e d Y e a r s o f E v o lu t i o n i n t h e Ru r a l E c o n o my Ja ck C . S t a b l e r a n d R o s e O l f e r t

1870 to 1896: Prelude

The land that eventually became Saskatchewan first came under the flag of a national state in 1670 when Charles II granted the original Charter for Incorporating the Hudson’s Bay Company to his cousin, Prince Rupert, and the Company of Adventurers.1 For the next 200 years the company attempted to preserve the fur-producing potential of its domain by establishing trading relations with the region’s Aboriginal inhabitants and discouraging settlement by others. Eventually, however, the westward extension of the frontier made the continued pursuit of this objective impossible. Within literally days of the 200th year anniversary of its incorporation, the company surrendered its title to the British Crown, which, in turn, transferred the company’s lands (and the North-West Territories) to the recently created Dominion of Canada. Canada paid £300,000 to the company and allowed it to retain 6.6 million acres of its former domain. A diminutive version of the Province of Manitoba was immediately created (1870), and an act providing for a government for the remainder of the new acquisitions was passed, stipulating a lieutenant-governor and council to be appointed from Ottawa.2 All ungranted lands within Manitoba and the North-West Territories were retained by Canada.3

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From the moment of its creation, the Dominion government had as its objective the incorporation of the former British colonies and territories into an economically prosperous union in the northern half of the continent. At the time of the transfer the newly acquired lands were very sparsely populated. In all this vast area there were but 73,000 persons according to the census taken in 1871: 56,000 Aboriginal, and 17,000 non-Aboriginal. The new Dominion Government took immediate steps to encourage extensive agricultural settlement of the Prairies with the passage of the Dominion Lands Act of 1872. Under provisions of this act, a settler could, for a fee of ten dollars, file claim on 160 acres. Title was acquired by satisfying a three-year residency.4 An active immigration policy was initiated and, in time, recruitment was extended to eastern Canada, the United States, Britain, and northern and eastern Europe.5 Other initiatives designed to encourage extensive agricultural settlement included the commitment in 1871 to complete a transcontinental railway, the dispatch of the North West Mounted Police in 1873, and the conclusion of treaties with Aboriginal inhabitants between 1871 and 1877 providing specific reserves and extinguishing any claim of title to other lands. Two final initiatives completed the package, which collectively came to be known as the “National Policy.” These were the erection of systematically structured protective tariffs in 1879 (adjusted over the next dozen years), and the Crows Nest Pass agreement in 1897, which (among other things) established low freight rates (“in perpetuity”) for western grains destined for export. These separate, but complementary, initiatives were designed to create and sustain a national economy based on east-west trade flows. The initial response to the government’s efforts was very modest. In the ten years following 1871, Manitoba gained 37,000 residents, while the remainder of the North West increased by only 8500. By comparison, the adjacent area of the United States (Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana) increased by nearly one-half million. The lack of adequate transportation in Canada was definitely a problem. The transcontinental railroad, to which Canada committed in 1871, was slow to develop. The government insisted on an all-Canadian route, which required nearly 1000 miles of track north of Lake Superior through what was viewed as unproductive wilderness. Private capital markets were anxious about this, as well as the fact that, at that time, it was yet to be demonstrated that the Canadian Prairies were suitable for large-scale agricultural settlement.

One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy

Between 1870 and 1880, the government completed surveys of the proposed route, built rail lines connecting with water routes, and built a line from Winnipeg to the us border. Short extensions westward from Winnipeg and eastward from Vancouver had also been completed. Finally, in 1880, an acceptable proposal was made by a private group, and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company received its charter within a few months. The concessions made to the Canadian Pacific were very generous, even by the standards of the time, and included grants of $25 million, 25 million acres of land, and numerous tax and tariff exemptions. The government also handed over 700 miles of track that it had built during the 1870s. In spite of periodic financial crises during construction, completion of the system was rapid. Work began in 1882, and by the fall of 1885 the transcontinental link was completed.6 With the completion of the railroad, one of the major obstacles to settlement was removed.7 There were other considerations, however. One was the common set of problems faced by settlers across North America who moved from humid climates in the east or from northern Europe. The semi-arid climate, the tough grassland sod, the lack of a cheap, readily available fencing material, and, in the Canadian Prairies, a frost-free period of only 100 days presented problems for which their previous experience had not prepared them. But, in due course, implements were developed and farming practices evolved that made dry-land farming possible.8 By the mid- to late 1880s, homestead land was available, the railroad was in place, and the technology for dry-land farming had been developed. However, the profitability of wheat farming experienced a substantial decline at about the time that it assumed its greatest importance as a factor influencing the settlement of the Prairies. The last quarter of the nineteenth century was a deflationary period globally. All prices fell, but the fall in wheat prices was greater than the general decline, and especially so from the late 1880s onward. The price for “No. 2 White Wheat” at Toronto, which was $1.26 per bushel in 1881, had gradually declined to $0.61 by 1894. Since wheat was the major potential export of the Canadian Prairies, the expansion of settlement was strongly influenced by its price. Homestead entries on the Prairies, which were several hundred per year in the early to mid-1870s, rose to over 1000 per year from the late 1870s through the early 1890s, then dropped back to several hundred per year between 1895 and 1897.9 Cancellations averaged over 1200 per year from 1884 through 1897.

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Some of the difficulties experienced by early homesteaders are illustrated by the experiences of one Alexander Kindred, a Scottish immigrant, who homesteaded in southeastern Saskatchewan in the mid-1880s, as indicated by the following notes from his records: [In 1885] we had only 10 bushels [per acre] of very badly frosted wheat. I took some to Indian Head and traded it for flour, shorts and bran. I had no money to pay expenses…. In 1886 we had 80 acres under crop. Not a drop of rain fell from the time it went in until it was harvested. I sowed 124 bushels and threshed 54. In 1888 we began to think that we could not grow wheat in this country. I now had 120 to 125 acres under cultivation. We put in 25 acres of wheat, 10 to 15 acres of oats and let the rest go back to prairie. That year we got 35 bushels [of wheat] to the acre! So we went back to work and ploughed up again. The next year wheat headed out two inches high. Not a drop of rain fell that whole season until fall. We summer-fallowed that year (1889) for the first time, and, to show the optimism, we put in in 1890 every acre we could. We had wheat standing to the chin but on the 8th July a hailstorm destroyed absolutely everything. My hair turned gray that night.10

Conditions finally changed for the better after 1896. The technical obstacles that had retarded or postponed settlement of the Prairies had been overcome. The market for wheat became more favourable as the trend in wheat prices moved continuously upward for the next quarter-century. Transport costs declined as well with the implementation of the Crows Nest Pass rate coupled with a decline in ocean freight rates. The rate per bushel between Regina and Liverpool fell from $0.334 in 1890 to $0.267 in 1896, and to $0.204 in 1903. It remained below $0.220 until 1912.11 For the nation, the program of economic nationalism was finally in place with protective tariffs and industrial development in central Canada, and with settlement, railways, and steamships to facilitate wheat exports from the Prairies. For the next thirty-plus years, economic activity in the Prairies increased more rapidly than in Canada as a whole, with Saskatchewan leading the way. 1897 to 1929: The Great Expansion: Overview

The golden years for Saskatchewan’s rural economy occurred between 1897 and 1929. Homestead entries, which had dwindled to a few hundred per year in the late 1890s, rose dramatically thereafter. In the single year, 1903, nearly 20,000 homestead entries were registered in Saskatchewan, more than twice

One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy

as many as were recorded in the quarter-century between 1872 and 1896. Once it was clear that settlement had begun in earnest, the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were created and Manitoba was enlarged to its present boundaries (1905).12 In 1906, the peak year for homestead entries in Saskatchewan, 27,692 new entries were filed. Homesteaders came from near and far. Canadians and Americans each accounted for just under 30 percent of the entries filed in the Prairie region between 1901 and 1913, and Europeans and Britons accounted for 25 and 18 percent, respectively. Between the census years of 1901 and 1931, which correspond closely with the period of expansion, Saskatchewan’s population grew tenfold, from 91,000 to 921,000, increasing from 1.69 to 8.88 percent of the total Canadian population. The number of farms in Saskatchewan grew from 13,000 to 126,000 between 1901 and 1931. The area in farms rose fifteen times from 3.8 to 55.7 million acres, and improved acreage increased thirty times from 1.1 to 33.5 million. The 160-acre homestead was never the norm as settlers took advantage of the opportunity to pre-empt or purchase additional government land or to purchase land from the Canadian Pacific or Hudson’s Bay companies. By 1931, the average farm size in Saskatchewan was 408 acres. Wheat production on the new homesteads increased rapidly. By 1911, Saskatchewan produced half the Canadian crop and maintained this position thereafter. By 1913, wheat was Canada’s single most important export. Processing and service industries were largely absent during this early, though very rapid, phase of development. Manufactured goods inputs into the production process were imported from eastern Canada, the United Kingdom, or the United States. Manufactured consumer goods were likewise imported or acquired from the tariff-protected manufacturers in eastern Canada. Neither the size and skill set of the local labour force, nor the size of the local market, were conducive to the development of a manufacturing sector. Transportation subsidies and high demand for wheat exports in Britain and Europe further mitigated against processing on the Prairies. Many farms and farm families were also highly self-sufficient. Their isolation required inventiveness in machinery repair and modification, and home production of many consumer goods. Those not produced locally (tea, sugar, salt, etc.) were imported. Services such as health and education, transportation, entertainment, and personal services were, by today’s standards, very rudimentary. Saskatchewan was distinctly rural during the years of expansion. Sixty percent of the labour force was employed in agriculture in 1931. The majority

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of the remaining 40 percent of the labour force provided support either for the agricultural industry or farm families as consumers. Consequently, fully 83 percent of Saskatchewan’s population was classified as rural in 1931. Of the 158,000 Saskatchewan residents classified as urban at that date, 96,500 lived in Regina or Saskatoon, which had grown from villages of 2249 and 113, respectively, in 1901 to small cities of 53,000 and 43,000 in 1931. Some 900 additional villages and towns had come into existence to serve the rural dwellers as well.13 Income levels in the booming Prairie economy compared well with incomes elsewhere in Canada during the years of expansion.14 Taken all together, the three decades under consideration comprise an era of dramatic change compared with the three that preceded it. Nevertheless, the pattern of expansion was not uniform either geographically or temporally. These variations are considered in the following sections.

1897 to 1913: The Period of Extensive Settlement In 1897 there were substantial tracts of unoccupied land adjacent to the railroad’s main line (and the extensions to Saskatoon and Edmonton). The first settlers selected these most accessible sites. After government lands in the immediate proximity to the railroads had been selected, settlement then spread rapidly through the more humid park belt extending from Yorkton to Edmonton. The more arid steppes of southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta were generally avoided. The efforts of these first settlers were highly successful, leading to the encouragement of further settlement. Settlement of the steppe zone was made more attractive with revisions to the land disposal policy that selectively reintroduced the privileges of pre-emption or purchase of an additional quartersection of government land (1908). The area to which the revision applied was defined as extending from Moose Jaw to Calgary, south of Battleford. The prospect of being able to obtain an additional 160 acres at a low price and on generous terms hastened the occupancy of the steppe zone. Aboveaverage moisture conditions for several years after 1908 and above-average prices for wheat were additional inducements. Occupation of the steppe zone actually preceded construction of the railroads. By 1913 settlement had spread over most of the portions of the Prairie region that were eventually occupied, though settlement was not yet as dense as it eventually was. By this date 7500 miles of railroad track had been added

One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy

in the Prairies to the 4100 that existed in 1901, including the construction of two additional transcontinentals.15 Further, by 1913, 69 percent of the homestead entries taken out between 1897 and 1929 had been filed, and two-thirds of the Canadian Pacific and Hudson’s Bay holdings sold between these dates had been disposed of. Nearly one-half the population gain in the Prairie region during the period of expansion was realized during this wave of extensive settlement. In 1913, Saskatchewan’s population exceeded Manitoba’s by 31,000 and Alberta’s by 118,000.

1914 to 1929: Filling In The final fifteen years of the expansion were characterized by the filling in of lands that had not already been claimed as homesteads and by bringing into use lands already in farmsteads but not as yet improved. An additional 63,000 homestead entries were filed in Saskatchewan during this period, while improved land increased from 11.9 million to 33.5 million acres. In addition, the railroad network was completed with the extension of branch lines into every settled area. Communities developed, usually around the elevators that had been (and were being) built to store the wheat crop in preparation for shipping to export. Economically, the unbroken period of prosperity, which characterized the 1897 to 1913 era, was replaced by the severe cycles that have defined Saskatchewan’s economy ever since. A sharp break occurred in 1914. That year a poor crop,16 the disruption of trade following the outbreak of war in Europe, and a tightening of London capital markets (which had provided much of the funding during the previous fifteen years) sharply checked the growth of the Prairie economy. This first pause was brief, however. Very quickly there arose a great demand for foodstuffs for the Allied armies. The price of Number 1 Northern wheat at Fort William more than doubled between 1913 and 1916, remaining above two dollars per bushel for the five years following 1915. The response was immediate and vigorous. Acres seeded to wheat in the Prairies rose from 14.4 million in 1916 to 22.2 million in 1921 with Saskatchewan accounting for twothirds of the increase. Although the increase in acreage seeded to wheat during these years was 54 percent, production rose by only 9 percent because of adverse weather conditions. The yields per acre in the years 1918 to 1921, inclusive, were

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never greater than two-thirds of the long-term average to that time. However, the inflated wartime prices concealed the impact of lower yields. Thus, overextension of farming was further encouraged in the drier southern areas of Saskatchewan. The end of the war-generated boom came in 1920. All prices moved downward, with those for agricultural products and other raw materials experiencing the greatest decline. The wheat that had sold for two dollars per bushel in 1920 sold for little more than one dollar for the next three years. The expansion of agricultural activity came to a halt. Farmers who had gone into debt to purchase additional land or equipment during the war found themselves caught in the squeeze. Debt charges remained while revenues declined. In the drier portions of Saskatchewan, the squeeze proved more than could be dealt with for some farmers. The 1926 census recorded 900 abandoned farms in the southwest region of the province. Wheat prices rose more than 50 percent in 1924, but weather conditions in that year led to a very poor crop’s being taken in. Good prices continued through the summer of 1929, however, with the recovery of world markets, and good crops were harvested in each of the four years between 1925 and 1928. The return of favourable circumstances stimulated a final wave of settlement and further expansion on occupied holdings. Railroad construction, which had been curtailed during the war because of the unavailability of capital and labour, resumed relying now on American capital. A final 2900 miles of branch lines were built in the Prairie provinces between 1921 and 1931; 1700 of these were built after 1926. The future, undoubtedly, looked bright to Saskatchewan residents in the spring of 1929. Nearly half the farms in the Prairie provinces were in Saskatchewan, and these farms produced over half of Canada’s wheat crop, which was the nation’s leading export. Few farms were more than ten miles from an elevator. The basic intercity highway and grid road network that serves Saskatchewan today was in place, though major roads were “Graveled Highways” and others were either “Standard” or “Fair Earth Roads.” Saskatchewan’s population exceeded Manitoba’s by more than 200,000 and Alberta’s by 190,000. Regina’s and Saskatoon’s populations had more than doubled between 1916 and 1931, while Edmonton’s and Calgary’s had increased by less than 50 percent. Saskatchewan personal incomes exceeded the Canadian average. Some Saskatchewanites would have realized that farming had been overextended into areas that were too dry to support cropping under normal moisture

One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy

conditions. Few, however, would have comprehended the tremendous structural (and, consequently, spatial) imbalance that had developed. Every sector of the prosperous Saskatchewan economy that existed in the spring of 1929 had been built with nineteenth-century technology. The newer technology, which was available even then, required much less labour per unit of production and inevitably would replace the old. The economic history of Saskatchewan from 1929 to the present is dominated by the occupational and spatial adjustments necessitated by the adoption of the technologies of the twentieth century. 1930 to 2003: Restructuring, Adjustment, and Diversification

Although adjustment to the impacts of new technologies is the dominant theme of the seven decades following 1929, there were several time periods when other temporary influences were of equal or greater importance. The first of these was the era of the Depression of the 1930s.

1929 to 1941: The Depression The decline in economic activity experienced in Canada during the 1930s was exceptionally severe, and the recovery both protracted and hesitant. Drastic as the national downswing was, however, Saskatchewan’s experience was even more severe and more prolonged. While real personal income per capita in Canada had fallen to 72 percent of its previous peak in 1933, Saskatchewan’s had fallen to 34 percent. The impact in rural areas, which depended almost exclusively on agricultural income, was even worse. Net farm income in Saskatchewan was negative in 1933. Rising protectionism throughout the world curtailed trade. Further, following the revolution, the return of Russian wheat to world markets during the mid-1920s led to overproduction and mounting carry-overs from year to year. The price of Number 1 Northern declined from $1.24 per bushel at Fort William in 1928 to $0.54 in 1932. The impact of the fall in price alone would have been dramatic, but it was exacerbated by severe drought. Yields per acre were below the long-term average each year from 1929 through 1938. The average wheat yield per acre in Saskatchewan was only 2.6 bushels in 1937. In an attempt to realize as much from the sale of wheat as was possible, the Canadian Wheat Board (cwb), a marketing agency, was created in 1935. The cwb

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has coordinated the collection, delivery, and sale of western Canadian wheat (and some other grains) since its inception. Nevertheless, net farm income in Saskatchewan did not exceed its 1928 peak until 1942. In that same year, provincial personal income per person exceeded its 1929 peak for the first time. The response of the population to the economic depression was migration both out of the drier to the more humid areas within the province, as well as out of the province. Saskatchewan’s population declined by 26,000 between 1931 and 1941.17 From the beginning of the depression until late in the 1930s, the structure of Saskatchewan’s economy altered only slightly. The forces of secular change were almost completely submerged by events associated with the cyclical downturn. Investment spending dried up because of the worldwide depression, resulting in very limited capital for new technologies. In addition there was very limited demand for new machinery. Since structural change is attributed in part to the adoption of technologically improved capital, the collapse of investment spending contributed substantially to the structural rigidity of this decade. The large-scale release of labour from agriculture, promised by the development of the gasoline-powered tractor and the complementary equipment associated with its use, was postponed until the 1940s.18 The number of farms in Saskatchewan actually increased by 2000 between 1931 and 1941. There was, however, substantial internal change. The number of farms in eight southern and southwestern census divisions decreased by 4000, but increased in northern census divisions by 6000 where new homesteads were still available. The structural rigidity of the 1930s is also reflected in the statistics of city size and rural-urban population distribution. Eighty-three percent of Saskatchewan’s population lived in rural areas in 1931, declining only to 79 percent by 1941. Saskatoon’s population was smaller by 263 persons in 1941 than a decade earlier, while Regina’s population increased by 5000 between 1931 and 1941.

1942 to 1961: The Modernization of Agriculture The impact of World War II on Saskatchewan (and Prairie) agriculture differed from that of World War I. With Germany’s occupation of Europe early in the war, much of the market for Canadian wheat disappeared. In order to help Prairie producers adjust and to avoid the surpluses that would have developed with normal plantings, the federal government paid bonuses

One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy

to farmers who would put their land into alternative uses. Freight subsidies were paid to ship feed grains to Ontario and Quebec, and quotas were established on the amount of wheat that could be delivered. As a result there was a marked reduction in the dependence on wheat during the war years, while the production of other small grains and livestock increased. Wheat prices gradually rose to a high of $2.06 per bushel in 1949. When the bonuses were removed, wheat resumed its position as the leading Saskatchewan crop, but the quota system continued to control deliveries. With the acceptance of the International Wheat Agreement by major exporting and importing countries in 1949, much greater stability of wheat prices was achieved, with these prices averaging around $1.80 through the 1950s. With the recovery of farm income in the 1940s and the end of World War II, mechanization resumed. Between 1946 and 1961 the number of tractors on Saskatchewan farms nearly doubled, the number of trucks increased over three times, and that of combines more than tripled. Horses as a power unit were phased out, declining to 22 percent of their 1946 numbers by 1961. As a consequence of the mechanization, labour productivity in the agricultural sector doubled and production increased by 50 percent. Because the area in farms increased by only 7 percent during these two decades, the agricultural industry began to release its labour force. Sixty-eight thousand workers left the industry between 1941 and 1961, and the number of farms decreased by 45,000. The remaining farms became considerably larger, of course, increasing from an average of 432 to 686 acres. The formula for success in agriculture was to mechanize and expand fast enough to continuously reduce production costs per unit of output. Those who did not do this had to seek an alternative source of income. For most, during the 1940s and 1950s, this meant their exit from the industry and from rural Saskatchewan. The exit of labour from agriculture placed a great burden on other sectors of the provincial economy. Unless the remainder of the economy generated more than 68,000 replacement jobs between 1941 and 1961, total employment would fall. As it turned out, 78,000 jobs were created throughout the other sectors, but, because of the loss from the agricultural sector, the total labour force increased by only 10,000. Virtually all the jobs created were in the “service producing industries,” which are very much urban-based activities. Thus, the change in the industrial structure of the economy led to a geographical shift of employment and population as well. Saskatchewan’s population increased by fewer than 30,000

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between 1941 and 1961, and, at 925,000, was almost identical to what it had been in 1931. Rural areas lost 180,000 residents to urban Saskatchewan between 1941 and 1961. Urban areas also captured all the province’s modest population growth, thus posting a gain of 210,000. By 1961, Saskatchewan’s population was 57 percent rural and 43 percent urban. Regina’s population nearly doubled while Saskatoon’s more than doubled. Together the two cities accounted for 52 percent of the urban population. Saskatchewan’s cities, Saskatoon and Regina in particular, were becoming the engines of growth for the provincial economy. Growth of the major cities, coupled with an exodus of labour from agriculture and population from rural areas, would characterize Saskatchewan’s economy from the 1940s onward. An added consequence of the redistribution of jobs and people was the beginning of the decline of Saskatchewan’s multitude of small communities and the consolidation of public infrastructure. Between 1941 and 1961 approximately 100 of Saskatchewan’s smallest and poorly situated communities expired, and the majority of communities up to 500 in population began to lose business outlets and population. An ambitious program to upgrade the province’s intercity road network was initiated in the 1950s. Paved intercity highways increased from 750 to 2750 miles in that decade. An additional 7500 miles were added between 1961 and 1971. A (perhaps unanticipated) consequence of the improved highway system was the hastening of the consolidation of rural infrastructure and the extension of rural dwellers’ shopping patterns. Although the greatest impact of the consolidation occurred after the 1950s, 1250 public schools in rural areas and small communities were closed in the 1950s and the students were bussed to larger centres. Thus, intermediate and large-sized communities benefited from this first wave of consolidation and grew. Farm incomes recovered in the early 1940s, as did provincial personal incomes. Thereafter, through migration people quickly adjusted to changes in economic activity. In most years from the mid-1930s onward, most of Saskatchewan’s net population increase moved away, but, as a consequence, incomes for those who remained in Saskatchewan have fluctuated around the Canadian average.

One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy

1961 to 1981: Trade Centre Consolidation The 1960s and 1970s were decades of general prosperity. During this time Saskatchewan’s population continued to inch forward toward the elusive 1 million figure. Within the province, the mass migration from rural to urban continued, and by the late 1960s, more people lived in urban Saskatchewan than in rural. The agricultural labour force continued to shrink and the number of farms became ever fewer, while the remaining farms increased in size. Mechanization continued, now taking the form of replacing early small units with newer, larger ones. The 1960s also marked the beginning of widespread use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, all of which led to additional productivity gains through the further release of labour. Provincially, the urban-based services industries continued to grow rapidly. Globally, intermediate processing between primary production and final consumption increased, and much of the added value was in the form of services. In addition, some business services (engineering consulting) and consumer services (tourism) became exports in their own right. Manufacturing activities also slowly increased in rural as well as urban areas. Further, several potash mines and oil fields were developed, and these, along with existing and new coal mines, provided some alternative types of employment in rural Saskatchewan. In the park belt, forestry-based industry created several hundred jobs for rural dwellers in or near the communities of Hudson Bay, Prince Albert, Big River, and Meadow Lake. The wholesale trade function, which was once performed primarily out of Winnipeg, had cumulatively transferred to Saskatoon and Regina, so that by 1961 these places had become the distribution centres for the province. The gradually expanding population base, combined with increasing urbanization and relative affluence, also contributed to the growth of privateand public-sector services. Schools, other education institutions, hospitals, and health care services all expanded and, with them, employment opportunities in these sectors. For decades farm families had earned additional income through off-farm employment. Usually this work was temporary and seasonal. But beginning in the 1960s, permanent employment, typically of the farm female, became more common. Even so, farm families still earned 75 percent of household income from agricultural sources in 1967.

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Not only on the farms, but throughout the province (and beyond), the 1960s witnessed rapidly increasing participation of females in income-earning activities. As a consequence, labour force size increased without adding to population. Improvement of the intercity road network continued through the 1960s, and by 1971 there were 10,000 miles of paved intercity highways in the province. All-weather grid roads had also increased fourfold from the mid-1950s. The impact of the exodus of people from rural Saskatchewan, coupled with the generally enhanced mobility made possible by the improved road system, was dramatic. Infrastructure was consolidated, and the geographic size of shopping areas of rural dwellers was greatly expanded. Between 1961 and 1971, 1500 schools in small towns and rural areas were closed. Longer bus rides became common. Between 1960 and 1969, 231 rural or small-town post offices were closed and an additional 159 were closed between 1970 and 1979. The shopping patterns of rural dwellers were extended geographically and increasingly focused on larger regional centres and the province’s major cities. Rural dwellers’ shopping trips became two- or at most three-tiered: to the local community first for a few everyday items such as gasoline and a few basic grocery items and then to the regional centre or major city for multipurpose trips for everything else. Visits to hospitals and health-care practitioners followed a similar pattern. During these two decades, the aggregate loss of consumer and producer services in communities of less than 1000 population exceeded the aggregate gains by communities of between 1000 and 50,000. It was only the gains of Saskatoon and Regina that resulted in a small, positive increase in the total number of these types of business outlets for the province.19 As national and American chains and eventually big-box retail outlets came to replace independently owned businesses and regional chains, they located only in the province’s ten to twelve largest communities—thus increasing the attraction of these places, drawing more trade from rural Saskatchewan and further contributing to the decline of rural communities. By the beginning of the 1980s, the radii of Saskatoon’s and Regina’s retail trade areas extended 100 miles in every direction into rural Saskatchewan. The provincial and federal governments attempted to offset the rural-tourban shift with a variety of local and regional development programs. Initially, a few isolated and temporary successes were recorded, but, in the end, the forces of change were too great. The number of communities that could be considered viable as trade centres had dropped to 62 by the beginning of the 1980s, down from 138 in 1961.20

One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy

The majority of Saskatchewan’s Aboriginal peoples lived on reserves until the 1960s. Growing populations, increased awareness of alternate lifestyles, and the lack of economic opportunity on the reserves led increasing numbers to move into the province’s cities. Initially, the lack of training or job experience meant that many could not find employment in the cities, either.21 In agriculture, the great productivity gains in grain production in India, China, and elsewhere in Asia occasioned by the green revolution were beginning to lead to increases in output that displaced grain that had been supplied by Saskatchewan producers. In Europe, the protection provided to agriculture after World War II in the effort to attain self-sufficiency in foodstuffs was beginning to have the same effect. Substantial global wheat surpluses developed in the late 1960s, and in 1971 the Canadian carry-over reached a billion bushels. Wheat prices fell, of course, and agriculture experienced a sharp recession from the late 1960s into the mid-1970s. By 1976 the number of farms had fallen to 71,000, down from 94,000 in 1961, and the rural population accounted for 45 percent of the provincial total, only half of them farmers. Crop failures elsewhere in the world in the mid-1970s and the beginning of the breakdown of Soviet agriculture resulted in a temporary rise in wheat prices that carried through to the mid-1980s. This era marks the end of market-supported prosperity for Saskatchewan’s grain farmers. After the mid1980s Saskatchewan farm families derived a greater amount, and ever increasing share, of farm household income from non-farm employment. In the province whose vehicle licence plates once proudly proclaimed “The Wheat Province,” farming, in effect, became a part-time job for all but a very few.

1981 to Present: Urban Dominance and the Economic Integration of Rural and Urban Saskatchewan During the past twenty-five years the growth of the provincial economy has been convincingly driven by its cities—especially Saskatoon and Regina. While continuing to dominate retail and wholesale trade within the province, both the two major cities have diversified and have developed markets for their manufactured goods and high-tech services throughout Canada, the us, and offshore. During this time Saskatchewan’s population reached the elusive one million mark, around which it continues to fluctuate. The impact of the continued increase in female participation in incomeearning activities, and the changing age structure of the population, is

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dramatically illustrated by noting that Saskatchewan’s labour force increased by 184,000 between 1961 and 2003 (from 326,000 to 510,000) while its population increased by only 75,000. By 2003, 64 percent of the total population was in the labour force, and women made up 46 percent of the total. The rural-to-urban exodus continued with farmers and small-town residents now joined by increasing numbers of Aboriginal people moving from the reserves. In a novel development, some urban reserves have been established, but as commercial enterprises rather than as residential neighbourhoods. Early in the twenty-first century, Saskatchewan’s urban population accounted for approximately two-thirds of the provincial total. The metropolitan areas of Saskatoon and Regina comprised nearly two-thirds of the urban population and 40 percent of the provincial total. The structure of the labour force continued to alter as well, with virtually all the net job creation in the urban-based service-producing industries—the majority of which were captured by the province’s two major cities. In 2003, 47 percent of all jobs in Saskatchewan were in the metropolitan areas of Saskatoon and Regina, and the agricultural labour force had fallen to only 10 percent of the total. The income-producing potential of the agricultural industry continued to spiral downward, especially after the late 1980s. It was not that agricultural output declined; indeed, just the opposite occurred. Total physical production of agricultural products in Saskatchewan has increased continuously. However (aided by generous support programs in Europe and the us), production has also increased throughout the world in such volume that (constant dollar) commodity prices have fallen too fast to be offset by productivity gains. In the past, by purchasing modern implements, adopting chemicals, expanding the land base, and improving management practices, those farmers remaining in the industry were able to reduce unit production costs fast enough to offset the effects of falling commodity prices. Since the late 1980s, however, this has not been possible, and the number of farms had fallen to just over 50,000 by 2001. Attempts to diversify the agricultural industry have (with the exception of canola) not produced dramatic changes. Farm income was also adversely affected by Liberal government policy changes in the 1990s. Canada provided substantial support to Prairie grain farmers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, much as the eu and the us continue to do. But Canada largely withdrew from the subsidy war in the mid-1990s. The Crow transportation subsidy (then called the Western Grains Transportation

One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy

Act) was also terminated in 1995 along with the Canadian Wheat Board system of pooling transportation costs.22 The complete impact of the loss of the transportation subsidy (and the pooling) came directly out of the farm family’s net income (which varied by location). For farms in northeast Saskatchewan, which had previously benefited most from the pooling, the combined returns to land and labour dropped by approximately 25 percent. The consequences of the erosion of net farm income for farm families were not as great as they would have been in an earlier time, however. Because the profitability of farming had been declining over a long period of time, farm families gradually responded by diversifying the use of their labour resources. Farm females, first, then farm males, began to take permanent off-farm employment as early as the late 1960s. By the end of the twentieth century, approximately two-thirds of farm females and 30 percent of farm males spent over 50 percent of their working hours in some industry other than agriculture. A portion of the remainder had some non-farm employment as well, but it amounted to less than 50 percent of their working hours. Net farm income as a percent of Saskatchewan farm household income, consequently, declined from 75 percent in 1967 to 58 percent in 1981 and to 31 percent in 1996. Non-farm employment income rose from 13 percent in 1967 to 54 percent in 1996. Other income (interest, dividends, pensions, and transfer payments) made up the balance. The non-farm jobs that farm families have taken are located primarily in the province’s cities and a few large towns. Not only has this contributed to farm family income but, because these people are commuting rather than migrating, has slowed the pace of rural depopulation. The importance of urban jobs for rural dwellers is illustrated by commuting patterns of Saskatchewan workers. Approximately 20 percent of the province’s employed labour force commutes to their place of employment. Sixty-nine percent of these commuters are rural dwellers. For those rural dwellers whose commutes are entirely within the province (95 percent), 81 percent are to jobs within urban centres. Ironically, the slowing of the rural exodus has done little to mitigate the decline of Saskatchewan’s rural communities. Most continue to lose businesses; many continue to lose population. Of the sixty-two communities that were classified as viable trade centres in the early 1980s, only twenty-four have retained this status twenty years later. The concentration of high-end services and bigbox retailers in the major cities has continued to enhance their attraction as

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destinations for shoppers. In addition, rural dwellers who commute to work in an urban centre find it convenient to do most of their shopping and other business there as well. Thus, as Saskatchewan enters its second century, the industry that led to the province’s creation has altered in ways unimaginable to those first homesteaders. Average farm size now approaches ten times the original 160-acre allotment. Much greater output is produced by far fewer workers. But, even so, fewer than 10 percent of Saskatchewan’s farms generate enough income to support a family. The other 90 percent depend upon non-farm, mostly urbanbased, jobs to earn enough to support their families. In fact, net farm income in 2002 was once again negative, as it was in 1933. Inputs used in agriculture are now purchased from all over the world rather than in the nearest town. But even as the industrial linkages between the agricultural industry and the rest of the rural economy have eroded, a mutual dependence between rural and urban Saskatchewan has developed. The two have become integrated as never before through rural dwellers commuting to a few large communities for employment, to shop, and to access public services. It is as if all of rural Saskatchewan has become a geographically removed neighbourhood of an urban centre. The rural economy of Saskatchewan has been transformed over the province’s first 100 years of existence, and the transformation continues. Biotechnology, information and communication technologies, knowledge-based growth, and global free trade have replaced wheat prices, steel rails, and homesteads as the primary determinants of the health and prosperity of rural Saskatchewan. Now, as then, the ability of the rural population to respond to the environment they find themselves in, through the acquisition of the requisite knowledge, institutions, governance, and access to markets, will determine their numbers and income levels.

Works Consulted K. Bicha. “The Plains Farmer and the Prairie Province Frontier, 1897–1914,” Journal of Economic History 25 (1965): 263–70. G.E. Britnell. The Wheat Economy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1939). _____. “Saskatchewan, 1930–1935,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 2 (1936): 143–66.

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_____. “The Rehabilitation of the Prairie Wheat Economy,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 3 (1937): 508–29. _____. “The War and the Wheat Economy,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 7 (1941): 397–413. V.C. Fowke. The National Policy and the Wheat Economy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1939). _____. “The Economic Effects of the War on the Prairie Economy,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 11 (1945): 373–87. W.H. Furtan, and G.E. Lee. “Economic Development of the Saskatchewan Wheat Economy,” Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 25 (1977): 15–28. G. Hodge. “The Prediction of Trade Centre Viability in the Great Plains,” Papers of the Regional Science Association 15 (1965): 87–115. H.A. Innis. A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1923). W.A. Mackintosh. Prairie Settlement: The Geographical Setting (Toronto: Macmillan, 1934). _____. Economic Problems of the Prairie Provinces (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935). A.E. Safarian. The Canadian Economy in the Great Depression (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959). J.C. Stabler, and M.R. Olfert. Restructuring Rural Saskatchewan: The Challenge of the 1990s (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1992). _____. Saskatchewan’s Communities in the 21st Century: From Places to Regions (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 2002). _____. “Public Policy in the 21st Century: Is Prairie Agriculture Becoming Like Any Other Industry? Does it Matter?” Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 48 (2000): 385–95. _____. and J. Greuel. “Spatial Labor Markets and the Rural Labor Force,” Growth and Change 27 (1996): 206–30.

Notes 1. As was the custom in the seventeenth century, the grant was subject only to the prior rights of “any other Christian Prince.” See P.C. Newman, Company of Adventurers (Markham, ON: Penguin Books, 1985), 320. 2. The seat of government of the North-West Territories was moved from Ottawa to Battleford in 1875 and then in 1882 to Regina.

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3. This is in contrast with the original partners to Confederation that retained, without question, all their unclaimed natural resources. The western lands (and resources) were to be administered “for purposes of the Dominion.” Many Westerners believe, with the benefit of hindsight, that the colonial-type government and retention of the West’s resources (until 1930) were symptomatic of Ottawa’s attitude toward the West that was to persist through most of the twentieth century. 4. In addition, the right of pre-emption granted in 1874 allowed the settler to purchase 160 acres of government land adjacent to the homestead at a low price. Finally, the settler could purchase up to 640 additional acres, not otherwise withdrawn, for one dollar per acre. Both the pre-emption and the offer of 640 additional acres were withdrawn before much settlement actually occurred (1890 and 1881, respectively). The opportunity to either pre-empt or purchase an additional quarter-section was restored in 1908 and continued in effect to 1918, when both were repealed in order to assure the availability of lands for soldiers returning from World War I. See C. Martin and A.S. Morton, History of Prairie Settlement and “Dominion Lands” Policy (Toronto: Macmillan, 1938), chapters 9 and 10. 5. In due course, the railroads and the Hudson’s Bay Company also actively recruited immigrants to settle their substantial land holdings. See W.A. Carruthers, History of Immigration Policy and Company Colonization (Toronto: Macmillan, 1938). 6. West of Winnipeg, the route taken by the Canadian Pacific departed considerably from that surveyed by the government. The survey had followed the transition zone between the prairie and the forest, arching in a northwesterly direction from Winnipeg to Edmonton, based on reports by Hind and Palliser that had classified the southern prairie as incapable of supporting agricultural settlement. The CP’s botanist, Macoun, was more optimistic, estimating the potential agricultural land between Winnipeg and the Rockies at approximately 150 million acres. Thus, the CP selected a much more southerly route connecting Winnipeg with Regina and Calgary. This route was considerably shorter and had the added advantage of preventing potential traffic from being drawn to American railroads. When a second, and yet a third, transcontinental railroad was built during the wave of optimism accompanying the wheat boom, the route chosen was the one surveyed by the government during the 1870s. See G.P. de T. Glazebrook, A History of Transportation in Canada (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1938), chapters 5 and 8. 7. Several communities were in existence by the early 1880s. The Red River Colony-Fort Garry-Winnipeg originated early in the nineteenth century as a Hudson’s Bay Company colony as did Edmonton House (1795) as a company trading post. Calgary was established as a North West Mounted Police fort in 1875, and Regina was transformed from a collection point for buffalo bones to

One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy

the administrative capital of the North-West Territories in 1882. Saskatoon was established by the Ontario Temperance Society in 1883. With the completion of the Canadian Pacific, Winnipeg became the collection and distribution centre for people and goods passing by rail or water between western Canada and eastern Canada or the eastern United States. Extension of the railroad to Saskatoon from Regina in 1890, and from Calgary to Edmonton in 1891, and later from Winnipeg through Saskatoon to Edmonton, did much to designate the major cities in the urban systems that developed in the twentieth century. See K. Lenz, “Large Urban Places in the Prairie Provinces—Their Development and Location,” in R.L. Gentilcore, ed., Canada’s Changing Geography (Scarborough, ON: Prentice-Hall, 1967). 8.

By the mid-1880s the steel plough (for breaking sod), disc harrows, the wheat drill, and threshing machines were making large-scale (for that time) wheat farming possible. Summer fallowing to conserve moisture was also being practised. The grain elevator and grain boxcar, which facilitated the storage, handling, and shipping of large quantities of grain, were also in use. Agricultural experimental stations, established by both the Dominion government and the Canadian Pacific Railroad, conducted plant-breeding research that eventually led to rapid-maturing, drought-resistant varieties of grain. But, it was generally after 1900 before these varieties were widely used. See L. Rogin, The Introduction of Farm Machinery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1931), and W.D. Rasmussen, “The Impact of Technological Change on American Agriculture, 1862–1962,” Journal of Economic History 22 (1962): 578–91.

9. Average homestead entries per year in the Prairie region by five-year intervals were: 1872–76=677; 1877–81=2301; 1882–86=4119; 1887–91=1599; 1892– 96=1606. For the three years of 1895 to 1897 the average annual homestead entries were 823 per year while cancellations averaged 1159 per year. See M.C. Urquhart and K.A.H. Buckley, Historical Statistics of Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1965), 320. 10. Quoted in Martin and Morton, History of Prairie Settlement, 86. 11. The increase in demand was associated with a rapid increase in urbanization in Britain, western Europe, and eastern North America. The fall in transport rates was made possible by the introduction of steel rails and improved steam locomotives as well as the changeover from wooden sailing ships to steampowered vessels with iron, and, later, steel hulls. See Urquhart and Buckley, Historical Statistics, 548, and R. Burlingame, “Locomotives, Railways and Steamships,” in M. Kranzberg and C.W. Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).

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12. Below the provincial and urban levels a curious, and ultimately ineffective, form of local government was created. Rural municipalities, originally composed of about nine townships, were given very limited responsibilities. This was, perhaps, appropriate at a time when government programs and services were limited and rudimentary. However, as the economy has become much more complex, and government’s role increasingly pervasive, rural municipal governments have remained frozen in their early 1900 structure with neither the responsibility nor the capacity to provide effective governance. See J.C. Stabler and M.R. Olfert, “Functional Economic Areas in Saskatchewan: A Framework for Municipal Restructuring” (University of Saskatchewan: Department of Agricultural Economics, 2000). 13. A half-dozen years later, the Government of Saskatchewan stated in its submission to the 1937 Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, “There is, in Saskatchewan, no important source of income which does not derive, in the final analysis, from agriculture.” See Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, Canada 1867–1939 (Ottawa: 1940). 14. There were no official statistics on incomes prior to 1926. An attempt to construct “relative participation income” numbers shows the Prairie region at 127, 117, and 110 (Canada = 100) in 1910–11, 1920–21, and 1926–27, respectively. Official statistics for the three years, 1926 to 1928, show total personal income in the Prairie region at 106, Saskatchewan at 101. M. McInnis, “The Trend of Regional Income Differentials in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Economics 1 (1968): 440–70, and Canada, National Accounts, Income and Expenditure 1926–1956 (Ottawa, 1962). 15. These two railroads experienced financial difficulty from the outset and, facing inevitable bankruptcy, were nationalized shortly after World War I to form the Canadian National Railroad (Glazebrook, History of Transportation, chapter 11). 16. Wheat production in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 1914 was 60 percent of what it had been in 1913. See Canada, Handbook of Agricultural Statistics: Part I— Field Crops 1908–1963 (Ottawa, 1958). 17. Taking net natural increase into account, the net out-migration rate was 164 persons per 1000 between 1931 and 1941. See I.B. Anderson, Internal Migration in Canada (Ottawa: Economic Council of Canada, 1956). 18. Gasoline-powered tractors began to appear in about 1918 when Ford Motor Company produced 34,000 units, which sold for $885 each. The price declined progressively to $395 in 1922. Saskatchewan farmers quickly accepted this improved power unit. Many were purchased between 1918 and 1920, but acquisitions fell off with the recession. After market conditions improved in 1924, both tractor and combine sales increased rapidly, but they came to an almost complete halt after 1929. See “Tractor, Thresher and Combine Sales: 1919–1930,” Canadian Farm Implements, December 1930, p. 20, and W.G. Phillips, The Agricultural Implement Industry in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956), 27–32.

One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy

19. The volume of business conducted rose much more than is indicated by the change in number of business outlets since those closing in small communities were replaced by much larger outlets in the province’s cities. See J.C. Stabler, “Non-Metropolitan Population Growth and the Evolution of the Rural Service Centres in the Canadian Prairie Region,” Regional Studies 21 (1987): 43–53. 20. Rural municipal governments stood by helplessly, having neither the mandate nor the capacity to participate in economic development initiatives in any meaningful way. 21. It is not possible to quantitatively document the movement of Aboriginal peoples from the reserves to the cities because population statistics for Aboriginal peoples were not provided on a geographic basis until in the late 1990s. 22. The WGTA contributed approximately $750 million annually to the transport of eligible grains and oilseeds to export points. When this program was terminated, the Liberal government paid out only a small fraction of the net present value of this subsidy to Prairie farmers. Thus, in effect, they placed a tax of several billion dollars on the Prairie agricultural industry.

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C a n a d a’ s “ C o - o p e r at i v e P r o v i n c e ” : I n d i v i du a l i s m a n d M u t u a l i s m i n a S e t t l e r S o c i e t y, 1 9 0 5 t o 2 0 0 5 B r e t t Fa i r b a i r n

Saskatchewan is known as a place that has many cooperatives, and inevitably this perception is bound up with the perception of the province as a whole. Cooperatives are sometimes seen as part of a Saskatchewan difference that belongs primarily in the past and that is connected to agrarianism and collectivism. Some people admire the province’s “long history of radical and progressive politics,” and see its political culture expressed in a “‘mixed economy,’ which includes a strong commitment to cooperatives and Crown corporations.”1 Others see the same characteristics but evaluate them negatively and would prefer to adopt more pro-free-enterprise policies such as those associated with neighbouring and richer Alberta. But are Saskatchewan cooperatives “radical” or “progressive”? Do they have any similarity to Crown corporations? Do they really distinguish Saskatchewan from other places? What, precisely, do they say about the character of Saskatchewan society? Perhaps, while recognizing the accomplishments of Saskatchewan people, we have some myths to debunk. I have a simple proposition to make: Saskatchewan people are not especially cooperative. We have formed co-ops because we had to, not necessarily because we badly wanted to or because we were idealistically devoted to them. It is a history of pragmatism, of trial and error,

150 Perspectives of Saskatchewan

in which ideals of cooperation were gradually discovered along the way, at least by some of the participants. Co-ops in Saskatchewan

By the mid-twentieth century three large sectors of the Saskatchewan cooperative movement had taken shape. These included the agricultural cooperatives, led by large marketing organizations like Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. The agricultural co-ops were, for decades, the most prominent, and, in the pool’s case, most political of all the co-ops, and are still the first thing many people think of when they hear the word “cooperative.” But the largest number of Saskatchewan people are in credit unions, locally owned financialservices cooperatives that together count about half the population of Saskatchewan—about 500,000 people—as members.2 The provincial creditunion system, as a whole, has over $7.5 billion in assets. Third, there are the consumer cooperatives, locally owned retailers who sell petroleum, food, and other commodities in Saskatchewan towns and cities. Their central, Federated Co-operatives Limited, is the largest corporation by sales in Saskatchewan, with $3.2 billion in 2003. Altogether, cooperatives make up two of the top three corporations in Saskatchewan by sales volume, and twenty-five of the top 100.3 They play important roles such as service provision, local economic development, and leadership training in rural, urban, and northern settings.4 In addition to those large cooperative systems, Saskatchewan has an array of diverse, mostly smaller cooperatives. Prominent examples include community clinics created in the medicare crisis of the 1960s, child-care cooperatives that became the primary form of delivery of child-care services in the 1970s, an urban cable television cooperative, housing co-ops created in the larger cities between the 1970s and 1990s, and many other examples: over 1300 cooperatives of all types in total. And yet, despite all this, cooperatives are not a Saskatchewan invention. They are equally strong in many other places; we cannot even say truthfully that Saskatchewan is the most cooperative province in Canada—that would surely be Quebec. The official definition is that “a co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

controlled enterprise.”5 The key substantives in that sentence are the words “association” and “enterprise.” Cooperatives are what happens when the modern idea of a democratic voluntary association is fused with the modern idea of a business. Wherever in the world and whenever in history people have merged those models, they have created cooperatives. Usually, they did so because they had an economic concern that a conventional business model didn’t seem to address. “Co-ops arise from need,” as people in the cooperative movement say. In Saskatchewan co-ops began with white settlement, much as they did in the American Midwest, Australia, Kenya, South Africa, and other places where colonists arrived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While First Nations people were excellent at undertaking cooperative economic activity, they did so within a less formal and more traditional context, not with independent voluntary organizations or commercial market enterprises. It was the state that created the possibility of cooperatives by introducing legal codes, market economies, and hundreds of thousands of new settlers steeped for the most part in European ideas. There were rare settlers who came to Saskatchewan with the desire and intention to create cooperative communities. For the most part, settlers came and simply tried to cope. They discovered that, like the First Nations who had occupied the land since time immemorial, it takes cooperation to deal with Prairie winters, distances, sparseness, and isolation. Unlike the First Nations, most settlers did not have adequate cooperative institutions ready-made. They had to find cooperative mechanisms that were compatible with the circumstances of modern societies. They undertook reciprocal cooperation and mutual aid. Eventually, they discovered formal cooperative organizations they could trust and support. Some have argued that cooperatives were developed as part of a “protest” by a colonial “hinterland” against a central power in Ottawa.6 This positions cooperatives as part of the struggle of the oppressed. While accurate in some ways (this is how some of the agrarian organizations saw themselves), this is a construction. It is also true that cooperatives were created as part of the colonization process itself, and as tools for colonists to advance their interests. It might be better for some purposes to see them as the tools employed by the “small colonizers” (in Albert Memmi’s words) who were also victims of, and exploited by, the bigger colonizers, the merchants and railroads and banks.7 Settlers didn’t learn easily how to form co-ops. History mentions successful cooperatives that survived, but rarely their scores of short-lived predecessors. The first cooperatives in Saskatchewan are said to have been dairy cooperatives,

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formed in the 1890s by groups of dairy farmers to handle and transport their milk.8 There were also buying clubs from an early date, a kind of consumer cooperative without premises or inventory. While the first of these was not incorporated until 1914 when suitable legislation existed, the fact that 102 associations incorporated and reported in that first year may be a sign of pre-existing activity that was waiting to be incorporated.9 The fragmentary information we have from the pre-1914 era includes stories of local farmers’ meetings that were convened specifically to place orders for railcar loads of apples, flour, barbed wire, fence posts, rolled oats, and sugar.10 In other words, cooperatives began informally, on a small scale, based on specific needs within the settler economy that individual farmers could not handle satisfactorily through individual action alone.11 As they tried to survive and grow, they encountered numerous problems. A government study of 1091 cooperatives incorporated prior to 1938 noted that more than half had been dissolved, due mainly to “mismanagement” and “lack of interest.”12 Historian John Archer wrote about the failure of one ambitious early cooperative venture, the Saskatchewan Purchasing Company.13 Archer quoted a letter penned by one of the disillusioned organizers: I am forced to the conclusion that the average Western farmer (there are glorious exceptions) is only a co-operator to the extent that cooperation becomes an aid to his worship of the almighty dollar. [He has] many commendable traits in his character … yet when he enters the arena of ordinary commercial life he becomes singularly suspicious and selfish.… he is utterly dead to the true co-operative spirit; of ethical co-operation he knows nothing; and his regard for practical co-operation is measured only by his ability to purchase [at] a cooperative store five cents cheaper than he can elsewhere.

This was no isolated lament. The private letters and public controversies of cooperatives in the 1910s and 1920s show division, recriminations, and plenty of failures. Waves of Cooperatives

The cooperative movement in Saskatchewan was a process, not an event. It began as an agrarian interest movement of settler-landowners, and ended up as a broader and more inclusive communitarian movement.

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

The story of the organized, mass agrarian movement of the early twentieth century has been written and documented: the formation in 1901 at Indian Head of the Territorial Grain Growers’ Association before Saskatchewan was even a province, and in 1905 and 1906 the organization of the first large agrarian cooperative, the Grain Growers’ Grain Company (later United Grain Growers) headquartered in Winnipeg.14 With the creation of Saskatchewan in 1905, a provincial frame was put around the activity of farmers. The 1905 Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association became the most important interest, lobby, and policy group in the province. Local sgga lodges organized buying clubs and other local cooperative action, while the central leadership worked with the government to create a province-wide Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company in 1911. In 1914 the sgga added a wholesale trading department to supply goods to its local lodges.15 The development of successive new organizations was driven by a combination of dissatisfaction and rising expectations. Farmers were unhappy with how slow the Grain Growers’ Grain Company was to build elevators, and so they created their own cooperatively owned elevators. Then they were dissatisfied with how unambitious the elevator co-op was.16 After 1918 they turned to the next new thing: wheat pooling. Farmers dreamed of a large-scale organization that would eliminate middlemen, profiteers, and speculators to sell wheat strategically, increasing the returns to the farmer-owners. Their confidence in this idea was buoyed by the experience of the wartime Canadian Wheat Board. When the government refused to reinstate the board, radical farm leaders decided to do it themselves.17 It took two tries to form the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in 1923 and 1924, and, once it was up and running, the divisions continued. The pool’s own board was split between the moderates and radicals. Meanwhile the older co-op elevator company resisted collaboration with the new pool until farmer delegates forced the co-op elevator directors to sell their elevator system to the pool. An observer would be forgiven for thinking none of this was very cooperative. In many ways the wheat pool was the culmination of this first major line of development. Tens of thousands of farmers joined in 1924 to form what instantly became one of the most important institutions of the province of Saskatchewan. With nothing but one-dollar membership shares and the promise of delivering their wheat crops, they formed what was not only Saskatchewan’s largest business, but also (together with its allied pools in the neighboring provinces) Canada’s biggest business enterprise and export group.

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It was also a prototype for a series of similar marketing organizations: a dairy pool, an egg pool, and so on. By 1923—even before the completion of the pooling drives—a government circular already declared Saskatchewan to be “The Co-operative Province.”18 And yet the marketing cooperatives constituted only one kind of cooperative development. Well-informed critics characterized the farmers as being driven by “agrarian class consciousness” rather than by a genuine cooperative spirit; the big farm co-ops were merely “agricultural trade unions” lacking in broad social vision.19 In truth, the large agricultural cooperatives, up to and including the wheat pool, were materialistic and commercial undertakings. Successful early co-ops promised economic benefit to farmers, a message that spoke to pragmatism and self-interest. Genuinely visionary or utopian cooperators seem to have been fewer in number. An outstanding early example was E.A. Partridge, the Sintaluta farmer who was a driving force behind the early Grain Growers’ Grain Company and later an advocate of far-reaching reformist ideas. Partridge was an impressive farm leader, intellectual, and advocate of a better society.20 He was ahead of his time. It is also important to see these early agrarian cooperatives as part of a continental phenomenon. Like many of the settlers, the agrarian cooperative ideas came to Saskatchewan from the United States. Minnesota, North Dakota, and various Midwestern states offered a laboratory of models for cooperatives and farm politics: grain growers’, farmers’ union, non-partisan league, farm-labour coalition, populism, progressivism, farmer- or government-owned elevators, and co-ops of all types. Pooling itself was perhaps the most important of the transplanted American ideas. Pioneered by Sunkist Growers of California prior to World War I, the idea of large-scale pooled marketing was promoted in the 1910s and 1920s by California lawyer Aaron Sapiro, whose speeches electrified Prairie farmers in the pooling campaigns of 1923 and 1924.21 Saskatchewan did not originate agricultural cooperation, but it caught on here in a big way. For the first quarter-century of the province’s history, the producer co-ops represented the overwhelming importance of the agrarian settler economy, the confidence and progressivism—even boosterism—of the province’s people, and the many similarities to American farmer issues and agricultural regions. All this was changed fundamentally by the 1930s.

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

Depression and Cooperation

There is no need to retell the tales of personal, family, and community hardship that characterized the 1930s in Saskatchewan. Many small cooperatives encountered serious difficulties; some failed. The usual problem was bad debts. But efficiency was also an issue; the surviving cooperatives had to take management to a new level. It was the big cooperatives, the marketing organizations, that were hardest hit. Wheat prices, falling precipitously in a trend no one had anticipated, caught the wheat pool wholly unprepared. Along with its joint organizations in Alberta and Manitoba, the wheat pool was effectively bankrupt by 1931. Rescue by the federal government laid the basis for the re-establishment of a Canadian Wheat Board in the 1940s: farmers’ efforts had, it turned out, contributed to achieving what they had wanted in the first place, a government marketing board. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool continued as a cooperative, but it no longer pooled or marketed wheat. Instead, it was now primarily an elevator or grain-handling co-op. But other kinds of co-ops took deeper root. Through the toughest years of the 1930s, the consumer co-ops began to multiply in number and band together more effectively. Their wholesale, just created in 1929, grew slowly. An important expansion came with an “affiliate plan,” which organized buying clubs around wheat-pool service points, many of which later evolved into full cooperatives. A little later, particularly, there was the “associated stores” plan, in which the co-op movement worked with supportive private store owners, buying them out on retirement and converting their stores into cooperatives. Through these as well as the normal processes of cooperative formation, the consumer movement spread institutionally during the Depression and created a framework for later growth. One of the consumer co-ops’ most important departures was the creation in 1934 of Consumers’ Co-operative Refineries Limited (ccrl), better known as the Co-op Refinery. The refinery’s story epitomizes how the selfhelp spirit of the cooperative movement was most striking in the darkest depths of the Depression.22 Co-ops had begun handling petroleum products in the 1920s because farming was becoming more mechanized. A number of “oil co-ops” in the southern part of the province were specialized in this business, purchasing their supplies from regional oil refiners then located in Regina and Moose Jaw. But in the early 1930s, the co-ops observed that their four independent, regional

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suppliers were all bought up by two transnational corporations. The co-ops began to worry about their supply and their vulnerability to an emerging monopoly. So in the spring of 1934 twelve farmers met in the Sherwood Rural Municipality office and made a remarkable decision. They set out to canvass co-op supporters to buy shares and to build a consumer-owned oil refinery. Among the founders was a young businessman and promoter, Harry Fowler. Fowler was a visionary who dreamed large and had the speaking ability to get others to buy into his visions. The refinery was incorporated within three weeks, and two hundred shares at twenty-five dollars each were sold within two months. Eventually Fowler and the others were able to assemble $34,000 in capital. They hired a knowledgeable refinery man, who went around Regina scavenging for parts. The story goes that he found an old metal smokestack to convert into a fractionating tower for the refinery. Later, one of the directors, unbeknownst to the others, had to pledge his farm as security so a railroad agent would release a tank car of crude oil. With such improvisations, a small skimming plant was built and was ready for operation in 1934. Its first year’s profit, $34,000, amounted to a 100 percent return on the invested capital.23 The refinery remains today, in vastly expanded and modernized form, on the outskirts of Regina. Now a subsidiary of Federated Co-operatives Limited, it is the only full oil refinery remaining in Saskatchewan or Manitoba—a testament to the way co-ops stay in regions (and earn profits doing so) while multinationals consolidate elsewhere. The refinery was possible because cooperators and cooperatives were learning to work together. Another prime example of this was Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, which dedicated its field service staff (fieldmen, as they were then called) to become “missionaries of rural development.” Pool field agents visited small towns, organized meetings, showed slides and movies both educational and frivolous, and helped people organize new cooperatives. The field agents were partly responsible for the multiplication of the consumer cooperatives, as well as for many other community initiatives. The pool staff of the 1930s and 1940s were likely the most important group of community economic developers the province has ever seen. One of the great innovations of the 1930s was the introduction of credit unions into Saskatchewan. Although financial cooperatives had existed elsewhere for decades, the perception in Saskatchewan had been that banking was a mysterious and complex business, something farmers or other ordinary

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

people could never organize for themselves. This perception changed in the 1930s, likely for a number of reasons. One was desperation: credit issues were crushing many families. Another reason was example: Nova Scotia passed a model credit union act in 1934, driven by the energetic Antigonish Movement of adult education and cooperatives. But third, a group of leaders including Barney Arnason, the government’s chief civil servant handling cooperative affairs, and Fowler, the refinery promoter, decided that the government and the co-ops should promote credit unions.24 The result of this cooperative– government partnership was the Saskatchewan Credit Union Act of 1937. Within months, in the summer of 1937, the first half-dozen credit unions sprang up. Saskatchewan’s first credit unions were small, urban savings-and-loan institutions, organized by groups of employees and their workplaces or by religious and ethnic communities. In this they resembled the us model of credit unions, which had spread widely in that country since the 1920s. The earliest of them, incorporated in August 1937, was the Regina Hebrew Savings and Loan, which, among other activities, served as a vehicle for the Jewish community in Regina to finance the immigration to Canada of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. It took an initiative from above to make credit unions possible, but the credit unions themselves were formed, and then transformed, by people’s initiative from below. A critical departure came in the town of Lafleche in 1938, where T.H. Bourassa, a merchant, was concerned by the weakness of the local economy and the poor record of the established banks in serving local needs. As a small businessman and civic leader, Bourassa led in the creation of Saskatchewan’s first rural credit union. And because this credit union was not narrowly focused on an occupational, religious, or ethnic group, it also began what became a trend toward community or open-bond credit unions. When, today, people think of credit unions as community institutions or as ones rooted in rural Saskatchewan, they are thinking of what Bourassa and the people in and around Lafleche started in 1938. As the Depression ended, the strength and diversity of the cooperative movement were greater than ever before, despite the setbacks to the marketing co-ops.

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The “Movement Culture” of Cooperatives: 1940s–1960s

When prosperity returned in the 1940s, the community business enterprises that Saskatchewan people had created were networked, mutually supportive, and poised for expansion. Saskatchewan Wheat Pool was on the move again. The years 1944 to 1949 brought “an unprecedented surge of commercial expansion and diversification” for the pool.25 The co-op expanded into flour milling, vegetable-oil crushing, and livestock marketing; elevators were modernized; and in September 1949 the pool paid off the last installment of its 1930s government debts. In small towns across Saskatchewan, the pool elevator remained a visible landmark and a focal point of the local economy. The local pool elevator committee provided community leadership and donated time and money to support charitable and social causes in the community. And the pool field agent remained the essential support to pool members and an important contact to the outside world and to other cooperatives. The consumer cooperatives were also expanding. In 1944 the refinery merged with the co-op wholesale to create Saskatchewan Federated Cooperatives Limited. By the end of the war, Federated had expanded into coal mining, feed production, flour milling, and lumber milling; and in 1946 it purchased a new building in Saskatoon to serve as headquarters for an expanding retailing network.26 Co-op label products flowed through the distribution channels to shelves and gas pumps of hundreds of co-op stores in virtually every town. Local co-op members received patronage refunds on their purchases at year-end, and often they invested their savings in co-op bonds to finance continued expansions of the refinery and other facilities. In 1960, 40,000 co-operators turned out for the refinery’s twenty-fifth anniversary, celebrating their pride, their investment, and their ownership.27 Credit unions were booming. The 1940s and 1950s saw the multiplication of credit unions in towns and villages across the province, from fifty-two credit unions with 4481 members in 1940 to 278 with 88,288 members in 1960.28 Credit unions transformed themselves from relatively informal associations, run out of the pool elevator office or the co-op manager’s office, and built free-standing offices of their own. Steadily they expanded from their core business in personal savings and loans into chequing, mortgage lending, farm lending, and a growing range of services. Like the other co-ops, they supported these developments in local communities by growing new central organizations such as the Credit Union League of Saskatchewan (1938) and

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

the Saskatchewan Co-operative Credit Society (1941), which later merged to form Credit Union Central of Saskatchewan. Like the other co-ops, the credit unions supported local events and organizations in communities across the province. The best way to think of the co-op movement in these years is as a web of mutually supporting organizations. All the “big three” arms of the co-op movement—the pool, the retails, and the credit unions—had their own local and provincial leaders. They had their own local member meetings, community picnics, speeches, and educational events. They had publications for their members: the Western Producer weekly newspaper (owned by the pool and published since 1923); the biweekly Co-operative Consumer newspaper (owned by Federated; launched in 1939); and Credit Union Way magazine (1946). Together, they sponsored youth training programs, formed provincial and national unions of cooperatives. They also launched new provincial and national joint ventures. Interprovincial Cooperatives was created in 1940 to facilitate cooperative buying across Canada. Canadian Co-operative Implements Limited, a farm machinery company, was launched in 1944. Provincial and national insurance companies were founded by 1945; Co-op Trust in 1952. Saskatchewan cooperatives played important roles in these national projects. The cooperative movement of that day was a popular, participatory social movement. It was participatory not so much in the literal sense that all members turned out at meetings regularly to cast votes, though they did that, too, in relatively large numbers: co-op, credit union, and pool meetings were often social highlights in small towns. What was more important was something less easily defined. Large numbers of people identified with the cooperative movement, chose to associate themselves with it, and recognized in it something that was important to them and to their communities. This is evident in the tone of the publications of the day, which were mass-distributed to thousands and thousands of Saskatchewan households. The movement’s publications, educational events, meetings, and organizations were each just one piece in a larger cultural connection. In 1941, a wheat pool advertisement appeared under the title “co-operation: The New World Order” in an educational publication for co-op members.29 Commenting on the world war then in progress, the pool leadership argued: It is not enough to destroy Hitlerism. A new system must be established in which there will be no place for the evil brood of dictators,

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spawned by capitalism, nourished by the despair of millions denied their proper share of the wealth they have produced. War would be unthinkable in a co-operative world. But co-operation as the new world order will have enemies at home and abroad that must be overcome by the peaceful methods of enlightened democracy. Lukewarm support of co-operative institutions is not enough. With the motto of “Each for all and all for each”, believers in co-operation must go forward with a great educational campaign for the co-operative way of life.30

This kind of rhetoric was something cooperators had acquired and learned to be comfortable with by the 1940s. It was this idealism that was picked up by the province’s new political party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (ccf), many of whose activists were experienced cooperative members and leaders. As the party’s name suggests, the ccf consciously borrowed from the cooperative movement. In 1956 Premier T.C. Douglas (who at the time also served as Minister of Co-operation and Co-operative Development) provided an eloquent statement of the role of cooperatives in the province: The history of the co-operative movement in Saskatchewan is the story of our struggle for economic democracy…. Visitors … often ask why the co-operative movement is so much stronger in Saskatchewan.… The answer is to be found in economic necessity. Climate, geography and the vulnerability of a one-crop economy have all combined to make living on these prairies a hazardous undertaking…. Under the pressure of sheer necessity our people have turned to cooperation as offering the best means of survival in a highly monopolistic economy. During the past quarter of a century our people have proven that co-operation not only means their economic salvation but also a finer and more democratic way of life.31

“Sheer necessity” helped teach people how to cooperate, so that by midcentury they aspired to “a finer and more democratic way of life.” But a democratic way of life is a harder thing to provide than is an advantageous price. Limits of Inclusiveness

Cooperatives in Saskatchewan were introduced to further the interests initially of farmers, that is, mainly white, landowning, male heads of families. These

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men did not see themselves as an elite, and were in fact contesting their relatively low status within national and international hierarchies. Nor did they see themselves as exclusive, since they attempted to reach out to others within categories of difference seen as relevant at the time: different Christian religions and European nationalities in the same organization. Looking back, we can see that there were also others excluded from participation. But the different claims of legitimacy introduced by cooperatives—claims of legitimacy based on equality, of serving the interests of ordinary people— set in motion a generations-long process by which these hierarchical and exclusionary power structures were gradually opened up, a process that is still underway. Social class was one limitation. The communitarian social movement that emerged in Saskatchewan by the mid-twentieth century represented an important broadening from the early agrarian interest groups. More people than just farmers could join and benefit from consumer stores and credit unions. Anyone who bought food or had debt to manage could conceivably join these organizations. But undoubtedly it was easier for those with at least modest resources, a fixed address, and a good reputation in the community. The very poor were necessarily often excluded from a self-help movement organized in this way. Race was another significant exclusion. True, cooperatives prided themselves that people of all nationalities and religions were welcome. As one cooperative leader recalled in his memoirs, the first co-op in which he became involved in the 1930s united all the disparate “nationalities” of the area, including Americans, English, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, and “Assyrians.” “At the Co-op we tried to cater to each of their individual wants and tastes—right down to the ‘Lutefish’ for the Norwegians at Christmas time,” he wrote.32 This openness was driven not only by principle, but also by commercial considerations. Cooperatives would achieve greater benefits if more people joined and used them. The business logic of consumer-based cooperatives helped impel them to act as agencies of social inclusion and cohesion. But this inclusiveness did not extend very far to visible minorities; and it generally hit a wall at the boundary of First Nations reserves. First Nations people were governed then under the arbitrary authority of federal Indian agents who restricted their movements and activities; their efforts to adopt agriculture were undermined and subverted; they were subjected to policies of cultural assimilation, but kept separate. Cooperatives at

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the time found no way to take root in such settings or to cross such boundaries. There is little evidence that they tried to do so. An exception was cooperative development in northern Saskatchewan. The new ccf government of 1944 expanded the government’s cooperatives branch (created in 1913) into a full-fledged Department of Co-operation and Co-operative Development. The department, with a field staff, trained adult educators, and a developmental mandate, set out to develop new kinds of cooperatives that had not existed before. In the south, these included cooperative farms for returning war veterans, and other kinds of production-related agricultural cooperatives.33 But perhaps the department’s most interesting work was in the north, beginning in the 1950s. Here, officials attempted to set up Aboriginal-run cooperatives to promote development and a better quality of life in a hitherto somewhat ignored part of the province. A fish-marketing agency and a string of government stores were converted to cooperative ownership in a serious effort to turn over some control to northern residents and Aboriginal people. These initiatives did not quite escape from a colonial framework, but they could also be taken as the first beginning of formal Aboriginal participation in the cooperative sector.34 Another boundary faced by the cooperative movement was gender. Most agricultural cooperatives were male institutions, linked intellectually to the idea of the male farmer as an economic actor, a landowner, and a head of a family, and linked practically to the patterns and places and modes of association among men. In some cases, such as egg marketing, the organization of coops meant formalizing under male control activities that had previously been performed informally by farm women. In the first generation of cooperators, a few exceptional women found in the agrarian cooperative movement an important avenue for civic involvement. They participated in men’s meetings, and also set up separate women’s sections in agrarian organizations. Violet McNaughton and Annie Hollis stand out as two who were active in Saskatchewan in the 1920s.35 They did not just speak to and encourage women, but also contributed to the overall cooperative movement by helping to articulate its ideals and spread support for the movement to new groups of people. Such visible early leaders often came from relatively privileged circles (white, British, respectable, married, and not overwhelmed by poverty or family responsibilities at home), but we can suspect that women were often spreading and supporting the cooperative movement at local levels even when not many were visible higher up.

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

The growth of the consumer cooperative movement, and especially its systematic expansion outside farm supplies and petroleum, provided a more identifiable opening for women. It was accepted, at the time, that household purchasing was a woman’s activity. Women’s cooperative guilds had emerged in connection with British consumer cooperatives in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and spread from there to other countries. After some isolated early efforts, the guild movement took off in Saskatchewan in the 1930s and 1940s. The guilds flourished for several decades, providing important opportunities for women in an era when there were few alternatives. Guilds promoted and supported the cooperatives, educated women to take on leadership roles, and examined and made proposals about societal issues of concern to their members.36 The guild movement was not sufficient to transform the existing cooperatives into fully egalitarian organizations. Although in 1952 there were 1237 well-trained, well-qualified, and actively engaged guildswomen, only ninety-nine served on the boards of only thirty-three cooperatives, out of the hundreds of cooperatives in the province.37 Even though women’s opportunities in co-ops were not equal to men’s, from about the 1920s to the 1950s co-ops could at least have said that they provided more opportunities for women than did most other businesses and organizations in the province. They probably can’t, as a whole, still say this today. However, in recent decades newer types of cooperatives—health care co-ops, housing co-ops, child-care co-ops, some worker co-ops—have more equal gender participation or even a preponderance of women leaders.38 Comparing race and gender as two basic limits on cooperative inclusiveness, we can say that both have been incompletely resolved. Cooperatives were meant to change society in some defined and often quite specific ways; and yet in other ways they merely reflected it. Perhaps another way to say this is that, with their egalitarian, democratic, and inclusive values, cooperatives have many opportunities to demonstrate leadership and have not, in their first hundred years, exhausted all the possibilities. Community and Consolidation, 1955 to 2005

By comparison with its tumultuous and far-reaching impact in the first half of Saskatchewan’s century, the cooperative movement seemed less noisy thereafter. This was partly due to the way that the models of cooperative action, developed by trial and error, were now being ingrained into local economies.

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There were important new models of cooperatives, but except in health care these did not impinge on major political debates. The bigger change in the cooperative movement was that its roots in rural communities and small towns exposed it to the full impact of massive socio-economic, cultural, and demographic challenges. In a long, grinding, inexorable process, farms have enlarged, businesses and services have relocated to larger centres, and towns have declined or vanished, as documented by Rose Olfert and Jack Stabler in Chapter 7 of the present volume.39 The colonization process in which the cooperatives were originally created—the vision of settling a mass population on the land—proved to be unsustainable. Cooperatives had to adapt. “We are living in an era of vast and rapid change,” Harry Fowler wrote to cooperative shareholders in 1955. “Bigness is the order of the day. … The first challenge to us, therefore, as co-operative people, is that we must meet the threat of ‘bigness’ by being big ourselves.”40 For the large, established cooperatives—the wheat pool, the credit unions, and the consumer co-ops—the half-century after 1955 was mostly about competition and efficiency. In all three large branches of the cooperative movement there were periodic debates about centralization: how much is necessary, how important is local or provincial autonomy, how much is too much. In one sense the wheat pool was the extreme because it was a centralized and integral organization—local points had committees and delegates, but not control of the local pool facilities. But the pool in another sense limited itself by continuing to identify as a Saskatchewan-based, Saskatchewan-owned company, rather than amalgamating with the pools of the other Prairie provinces. Federated Co-operatives Limited (fcl) went the amalgamation route, merging with its counterparts in Manitoba (1955), Alberta (1961), and British Columbia (1970) to produce a large central wholesale to support all the independent local consumer co-ops in the West. The growing size of the central wholesale helped keep the relatively small, local retail co-ops in business. The credit unions pursued a middle path, neither centralizing like the pool nor expanding geographically like fcl. Instead, interprovincial joint ventures of various kinds developed and became ever more important to the credit unions. And gradually, the local retail co-ops and credit unions grew larger and larger. A characteristic of the 1950s and 1980s was that cooperatives appeared troubled by their bigness and believed they were losing something in terms of closeness to their individual members. A remarkable amount of thought and energy went into initiatives to reproduce the conditions of the mass social

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

movement through education and use of new media. There were the women’s guilds, which for a time were supported to study consumer problems and conduct extension education of members. There were the cooperative youth camps, which had developed in the 1930s and 1940s, and which were now systematized (and which continue to the present day). The cooperative print organs were distributed in vastly increased numbers, hundreds of thousands of copies of each issue being distributed. Public Relations Federations were created on a regional basis around Saskatchewan, supported by grants from the central co-ops, to conduct promotional work about cooperatives.41 Co-ops brainstormed about how to expand in urban centres and emphasized the need for research and new approaches.42 In 1959 a Western Cooperative College was launched in Saskatoon as training and educational institute for the movement; later renamed the Co-operative College of Canada, it existed until 1987. Also in 1959, a Centre for Community Studies was launched at the University of Saskatchewan.43 The centre attempted to provide more of a scientific and research basis for education and adaptation among the cooperatives, as indicated by the title of a 1960 paper, “Methods of Gathering Data on Which to Base Educational Programs” by research economist Leo F. Kristjanson.44 Kristjanson, later president of the University of Saskatchewan, created a new Centre for the Study of Co-operatives at that institution in 1984. These efforts were laudable and likely had positive effects. However, they did not reproduce for new generations the same idealism and “philosophy” that had dominated the cooperative movement in the preceding decades. New generations joined cooperatives and used them in growing, even record numbers as they became larger; but these members did not turn out in high percentages for annual meetings and did not respond to any trumpet call to build a new world order. In retrospect, the cooperative culture of 1940 to 1960 was a one-generation phenomenon—but what a difference that generation made to the province. In the post-1970s world, it was the wheat pool that ultimately changed the most. Through to the 1990s, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool appeared to be doing all right. It was the biggest corporation in Saskatchewan, it was almost synonymous with Saskatchewan agriculture, and it was considered a model of member democracy, education, and involvement. The pool’s annual meetings were still something like a farmers’ parliament, where positions were taken on important agricultural issues of the day and communicated to governments that still

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listened. The pool field staff were no longer missionaries of rural development, but they did have an important educational role in supporting and animating delegate democracy. All this was impressive, even world-class for co-ops, but there were emerging problems, linked to rural transformation, on the economic side of the organization.45 The purchase in 1971 of federal elevators gave the pool an immense elevator network, dominating rural Saskatchewan. It is possible that this extensive (and costly) network enabled the pool and its members to take each other for granted; perhaps members supported the pool because its elevators were everywhere, not necessarily out of conviction. Perhaps the pool assumed it had member support when what it had were locations. And yet many elevators were not very profitable; the pool was not accumulating capital, and was likely not investing enough in new business development. The pool’s low earnings might not have mattered so much if not for the far-reaching changes that hit the agriculture industry in the 1980s. Transportation regulations changed— the “Crow Rate” was lost—and grain movement and transport charges began to shift around in ways that were not advantageous for the pool, with its huge fixed network. Large transnational corporations began to play a greater role and offer increasing competition. By the mid-1990s the pool’s analysis was that, in a few years’ time, only a handful of companies would be left in its industry. As a result, the organization determined on a strategy of securing more access to capital, rapidly consolidating its elevator network to a much smaller system of higher volume concrete terminals, and at the same time diversifying and investing in value-added processing to obtain additional revenue streams. The pool’s capital conversion, carried out in 1996, involved the transformation of the members’ accumulated share capital into equity on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The cooperative relationship with members was to be maintained by reserving voting control for farmer-members only. With large amounts of membership shares off its books, the pool was free to borrow more from banks and bondholders for its elevator modernizations and diversification initiatives. Unfortunately, the agricultural economy remained tough, market share dropped as elevators closed and farmers took their business elsewhere, and investments went bad, some of them in spectacular ways like the company’s joint venture in a grain terminal in Gdansk, Poland. By about 2000 the company was losing money, suffering under a crushing burden of debt, and beginning to divest itself of saleable assets to satisfy its creditors. It was not

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

only the Saskatchewan pool, but the whole sector of large agricultural marketing cooperatives in western Canada that were in trouble. The wheat pools in Alberta and Manitoba were merged with a competitor. The Dairyworld dairy producers’ cooperative sold its processing facilities to a transnational corporation, Saputo. As this essay was being revised in January 2005, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool appeared to be back in the black, but was preparing to transform its legal structure to give voting control to its creditors—a change that would end its character as a cooperative. An obvious contrast to the troubles of the marketing co-ops is the constant success of Federated Co-operatives Limited, at the time of writing in its thirteenth consecutive year of record earnings—this in the retailing industry, a tough industry increasingly dominated by national and transnational corporations. The simple explanation is to say that fcl and the Co-operative Retailing System (all the consumer co-ops working together) lived within their means, did not go into debt, did not invest lavishly, focused on marketing, and cultivated their connections to local communities. In fact, this was a complex and lengthy learning experience. The consumer co-ops began talking in the mid1960s about becoming “one system,” reducing their internal strife, voluntarily amalgamating small neighbouring stores, and working together more effectively.46 That vision was not fully achieved until much later. In 1982 and 1983 the co-ops were hit by the recession of those years at a time when many had overextended themselves with debt and expansions. The system drastically cut back; draconian measures were imposed on staff and stores; a number of coops, including high-profile ones, were painfully shut down. It did not seem, at the time, like a success. But what followed was a long period of improvements in marketing, human resources, facilities, and collaboration, so that by the 1990s the consumer co-ops entered into what seems like the most economically successful phase of their existence.47 The same consolidation processes that affected all Saskatchewan towns and businesses has, in a sense, strengthened the credit unions. As the chartered banks shut down small-town branches, these were in many cases purchased by credit unions, so that the credit union system continued to grow even in shrinking markets. A number have amalgamated to form very large regional entities, such as Conexus Credit Union around Regina. Meanwhile, various credit unions have become more active in business lending, in community economic development, and in inner-city development projects. The central organizations of the credit union system have evolved to mirror, support, and

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adapt to these changes among the local credit unions. The Credit Union Deposit Guarantee Corporation, created in 1953 as a cooperative–government partnership, provides financial backing to the whole network of credit unions.48 Credit Union Central is involved in joint ventures with other credit union and banking systems in order to provide credit cards, technology, and other services to the system as a whole. These sorts of partnerships enabled the credit unions to introduce the first automated teller machine (atm) in Saskatchewan in 1977.49 Saskatchewan today presents the character of a mature cooperative movement. But there have also been new applications of the co-op model. Since the 1960s there have been community clinics organized on a cooperative basis, of which the surviving ones are mostly urban.50 Since the 1970s there have been housing co-ops in the two largest cities, and numerous child-care cooperatives. Since the 1980s there have been rural-development cooperatives, and since the 1990s neighbourhood development organizations (ndos) have supported many urban cooperative projects, including new kinds of housing co-ops and worker co-ops. While many kinds of cooperatives have emerged, it would be fair to say that the most prominent types are more urban, more involved in services, and more connected with public-sector responsibilities such as social programs and health than their predecessors. The new cooperatives reflect the new Saskatchewan and some of its issues. The fact that cooperatives have remained and grown stronger—except for in agricultural marketing—hints at a remarkable transformation. Cooperatives completed the transition, most of them, from farmer organizations to community organizations. The kind of “community” they represent also changed, enlarging from the local village to a small region. They became better at marketing and much better at working together with each other through their federations and centrals. In other words, their continued survival and seemingly constant role in local economies are best explained by their almost continuous transformation. Unfinished Business, 2005

Saskatchewan people can be proud of their history of community entrepreneurship, displayed in creating novel kinds of businesses when conventional businesses would not do the job. We did not invent most of these cooperative business models ourselves, but rather—as a society open to the world, a society of immigrants and traders and pragmatic inventors—we borrowed, adapted,

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

and gave new meaning to continental and global models. Saskatchewan people took the idea of wheat pooling, an American idea, and gave it a scale and longevity unmatched anywhere else in the world. We took the idea of the credit union, popularized in the United States, Quebec, and Nova Scotia (on the basis of European roots), and we changed it to suit rural circumstances by creating open-bond, community credit unions. We took one of the oldest of cooperative models, the co-op store, and made Saskatchewan the strongest base in Canada for the development of that kind of cooperative. And, when pressed by necessity, we created more or less wholly new cooperatives, among the firsts of their kind in the world: community health clinics, cooperative farms, Aboriginal co-ops in the north, parent-run child-care co-ops, community recreation co-ops, and community-development co-ops. None of this absolutely distinguishes Saskatchewan from the neighbouring provinces and states, which have similar histories, or even from other parts of the world where cooperatives are well-developed. What we can say is that community innovation in businesses and services is strongly evident in Saskatchewan—and that through this activity we are linked to the rest of the world, not separated from it as a unique case. The issues of incomplete inclusion remain to be resolved by Saskatchewan cooperatives, including categories like gender and youth, but most glaringly, the divide between the descendants of the settlers and of the First Nations who were here before them. In the last few years there have been important beginnings towards serious development of Aboriginal cooperatives—towards linkage of cooperative institutions to Aboriginal cultures and traditions—that may presage a true departure from a century of non-development. Perhaps we will finally get beyond the settler society to one that is settled in this place.

Notes 1.

John W. Warnock, Saskatchewan: The Roots of Discontent and Protest (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2004), xvi and 8.

2. There were 561,119 memberships in financial cooperatives in Saskatchewan in 1998 and 963,415 active memberships in all types of cooperatives in a province of about one million people. Because of overlapping memberships, it is difficult to say how many different individuals had at least one cooperative membership. To say approximately 500,000 is a conservative estimate. See Roger Herman and Murray Fulton, An Economic Impact Analysis of the Co-operative Sector in Saskatchewan: Update 1998 (Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, 2001), for this and the following statistics.

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3.

“Saskatchewan’s Top 100,” Saskatchewan Business Magazine, August 2003, pp. 17ff.

4. See Lou Hammond Ketilson et al., The Social and Economic Importance of the Co-operative Sector in Saskatchewan (Saskatoon: Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, 1998). 5. Ian MacPherson, “The ICA Statement on the Co-operative Identity,” in Co-operative Principles for the 21st Century (Geneva: International Co-operative Alliance, 1996), 1. 6. A recent example: Warnock, Saskatchewan, xiv–xv. 7. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, expanded edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991) (original French edition 1957), 10. I am indebted to Georgina Taylor for showing me this way of reading this text. 8. There seems to be little specific information about the early dairy cooperatives, though they are often mentioned in government publications. See Choosing a Business Structure, from Co-operatives in Saskatchewan: An Information Series (Co-operatives Directorate, Saskatchewan Economic and Co-operative Development, 1997). 9.

First Annual Report of the Co-operative Organization Branch, Department of Agricutlure, Saskatchewan, 1914 (Regina, 1915), 7 and 12.

10. Jim F.C. Wright, Prairie Progress: Consumer Co-operation in Saskatchewan (Saskatoon: Modern Press, 1956), 37. 11. On early cooperatives in Canada generally and for a broad overview of the movement, see Ian MacPherson, Each for All: A History of the Co-operative Movement in English Canada, 1900–1945 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1979). 12. W.J. Hansen and A.H. Turner, Some Facts Concerning the Dissolution of Co-operative Purchasing Associations in the Province of Saskatchewan 1914–1938, Saskatchewan Archives Board [hereafter: SAB] R261 f. 1. 13. John Archer, “An Early Co-operative: The Saskatchewan Purchasing Company,” Saskatchewan History 5 (1953): 55–56. 14. Louis Aubrey Wood, A History of Farmers’ Movements in Canada: The Origins and Development of Agrarian Protest 1872–1924 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1924) remains useful. The most comprehensive and analytical account, from the early years through to later periods, is V.C. Fowke, The National Policy and the Wheat Economy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957). On UGG, specifically, R.D. Colquette, The First Fifty Years (Winnipeg: The Public Press Ltd., 1957). 15. See MacPherson, Each for All. 16. On the political connections of the elevator co-op’s leadership, and criticism of them, Robert Irwin, “‘The Better Sense of the Farm Population’: The Partridge Plan and Grain Marketing in Saskatchewan,” Prairie Forum 18 (1993): 35–52.

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

17. On the formation of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, the best sources are Fowke, The National Policy (locating it within the general issues of the grain industry) and Garry Fairbairn, From Prairie Roots. The Remarkable Story of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1984). 18. W. Waldron, Acting Co-operation and Markets Commissioner, Saskatchewan Agriculture, to George Keen, Co-operative Union of Canada, 17 October 1923 (commenting on government circular), National Archives of Canada, Co-operative Union of Canada papers [hereafter: CUC] 30 General Correspondence 1923 file “A.” 19. “Agrarian class consciousness”: George Keen, General Secretary of the Co-operative Union of Canada, to Waldron, 16 March 1926, CUC 37; “agricultural trade union”: Keen to William Halsall, Alberta Co-operative Wholesale Society, 7 January 1936, in CUC 167 Societies Correspondence 1936 A-C, file “Alberta Co-op. Wholesale Assn. Ltd.” 20. Murray Knuttila, “That Man Partridge”: E.A. Partridge, His Thoughts and Times (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1994). 21. See Ian MacPherson, “Selected Borrowings: The American Impact upon the Prairie Co-operative Movement, 1920–39,” in The Canadian Review of American Studies 10 (1979): 137–51. 22. See Brett Fairbairn, Building a Dream; also Brett Fairbairn, “Visions of Alternative Futures: Three Cases from the Prairie Consumer Co-operative Movement, 1914–1945,” in Jerome Martin, ed., Alternative Futures for Prairie Agricultural Communities (Edmonton: University of Alberta Extension, 1991), 97–139. 23. “CCRL Minutes Dec. 1936 to Oct. 1944.” I consulted these minutes at Federated Co-operatives Ltd. home office in Saskatoon in 1988. 24. On the origins of credit unions in Saskatchewan: Muriel Clements, By Their Bootstraps: A History of the Credit Union Movement in Saskatchewan (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Co., 1965). On their later history: Christine Purden, Agents for Change: Credit Unions in Saskatchewan (Regina: Credit Union Central of Saskatchewan, 1980). 25. Garry Fairbairn, From Prairie Roots, 158. 26. Brett Fairbairn, Building a Dream: The Co-operative Retailing System in Western Canada, 1928–1988 (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1989), 109ff. 27. B. Fairbairn, Building a Dream, 126. 28. Christine Purden, Agents for Change: Credit Unions in Saskatchewan, 257. 29. The New Opportunity for Co-operation and Other Selected Addresses ([Saskatoon]: The Co-operative Union of Canada (Saskatchewan Section) et al., [1941]), 38. 30. In ibid., 38. 31. Douglas, foreword to Wright, Prairie Progress.

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32. H[arold] L[inton] Benson, My Heritage and Memoirs ([Saskatoon]: Self-published, c. 1985), 46. 33. Dion McGrath, “A Challenge to Tradition: Co-operative Farming in Saskatchewan, 1944–1960” (MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1997). 34. On the current state of Aboriginal cooperatives in Canada, including their development in the North and their relatively weak development on First Nations reserves in the South: Lou Hammond Ketilson and Ian MacPherson, A Report on Aboriginal Co-operatives in Canada: Current Situation and Potential for Growth (Saskatoon: Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, 2001). 35. On McNaughton: Georgina Taylor, “Violet McNaughton’s Ground for Common Action: Agrarian Feminism and the Origins of the Farm Women’s Movement in Canada” (PhD dissertation, Carleton University, 1997). On Hollis: Cathy Holtslander, “Annie Hollis: An Organic Intellectual of the Saskatchewan Farm Movement,” (MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1997). 36. Based on unpublished research by Lou Hammond Ketilson and Louise Simbandumwe of the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, University of Saskatchewan, including Simbandumwe, “Saskatchewan Co-operative Women’s Guild,” 1990. See also History of the Saskatchewan Women’s Co-operative Guild, Jubilee Edition (n.p., 1955). 37. “Summarized Report of Local Guild Activities for the Year 1952–53,” SAB R110 f. 51a. 38. See Leona Theis and Lou Hammond Ketilson, Research for Action: Women in Co-operatives (Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, 1994), and Proceedings from the Women in Co-operatives Forum, 7 and 8 November 1997, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan (Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, 1998). 39. Rose Olfert and Jack Stabler, “One Hundred Years of Evolution in the Rural Economy,” present volume. 40. H.L. Fowler, foreword to Report to the FCL Special Meeting of Shareholders, June 1955, 4. 41. On these initiatives, see, for example, Federated Co-operatives Limited Annual Report, 1964, 40ff. 42. FCL Annual Report, 1966, 42ff. 43. On Baker, the Royal Commission, the Co-op College, the Centre for Community Studies, and other initiatives of this era, see Harold Baker, James Draper, and Brett Fairbairn, eds., Dignity and Growth: Citizen Participation in Social Change. Essays in Honour of Bill Baker (Calgary: Detselig Press, 1991). 44. SAB R 110 f. 100d, “Miscellaneous.” The Centre for Community Studies was disbanded in the 1960s after the new Liberal government of Ross Thatcher (1964) eliminated its funding.

Canada’s “Co-operative Province”

45. On the pool’s history up to the early 1980s, see Garry Fairbairn, From Prairie Roots; on the pool’s delegate democracy and member education, Lou Hammond Ketilson, “Saskatchewan Wheat Pool,” in Making Membership Meaningful: Participatory Democracy in Co-operatives, The International Joint Project on Cooperative Democracy (Saskatoon: Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, 1995), 201–16. 46. Brett Fairbairn, Building a Dream. 47. Brett Fairbairn, Living the Dream: Membership and Marketing in the Co-operative Retailing System (Saskatoon: Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, 2004). 48. See Dennis Schroeder, Deposits Fully Guaranteed: A History of Saskatchewan’s Credit Union Mutual Aid Board 1953–1983 (Regina: Credit Union Central of Saskatchewan, 1983). 49. Purden, Agents for Change, 190. 50. Stan Rands, Privilege and Policy: A History of Community Clinics in Saskatchewan (Saskatoon: Community Health Co-operative Federation, 1994).

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M e d i c a r e : S a s k at c h e w a n ’ s G i f t t o t h e N at i o n ? H a r l e y D . D i c k i n s o n a n d R e n e e To r g e r s o n

Medicare is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century Canadian public policy. It provided universal access to a comprehensive range of physician and hospital services regardless of a person’s ability to pay. In so doing, it became a cherished part of our national identity—something that made us different from and, in the view of many, better than Americans. The prototype of medicare was developed in Saskatchewan and later emulated in the rest of Canada. Saskatchewan people are rightly proud of medicare as their gift to the nation. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that this gift is something of a white elephant. Not only is it widely seen as becoming too expensive to sustain, it also is seen as an increasingly ineffective response to the contemporary health needs of Canadians. Thus, many are of the view that medicare is in crisis. There is no agreement, however, on how to resolve this crisis. At least three general solutions have been proposed. The first is to retain its defining principles while attempting to ensure that in the future we spend better, and smarter, than we have in the past. In 2002 the Romanow Commission advocated a version of this position. At the other end of the policy spectrum are proposals to privatize the provision of, and payment for, a wider range of health-care services. There are many contemporary advocates of user pay

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approaches to the problem, including some provincial governments. A third approach advocates developing a community-based and controlled healthcare system that gives priority to health promotion and injury and illness prevention, while maintaining the principles of medicare for diagnosing and treating the injured and the ill. The regionalization of health-care planning and service delivery in the early 1990s exemplified this approach. The status quo and privatization approaches differ primarily in terms of who should own health-care facilities and who should pay for health-care services. Defenders of the status quo argue that health-care facilities must be publicly owned and financed in order to ensure equal access and equitable treatment. Many proponents of change, however, argue that introducing market incentives into the provision and financing of medical care and hospital services will increase efficiency and solve problems of access and waiting lists. Advocates of regionalization argue a new model of health-care governance is necessary to better integrate and coordinate prevention and treatment services and, thereby, to ensure equal access to health, not just health care. From this perspective, medicare is, at best, only part of the solution and, at worst, part of the problem that Canadians are facing. Set against these reform alternatives, this chapter focuses on the issue of health-system governance. We argue that a tension between professional autonomy and democratic control characterized the introduction of medicare and all subsequent reform initiatives. We conclude that the balance of forces currently at work is pushing towards an increasingly privatized, professionally managed, two-tiered system of medical care. This chapter is organized into three sections. In the first, we provide a brief overview of the key initiatives in health reform that laid the foundation for medicare in Saskatchewan. Following this we discuss historical shifts in the locus of power and control within the health-care system. The third section describes major reform initiatives that have occurred since the introduction of medicare; namely, the adoption of a “health promotion” policy framework, and regionalization of health-system governance and service delivery. The Search for Collective Health-care Solutions

When it was introduced, medicare solved the problem of how to ensure equal access to physician and hospital services. It wasn’t, however, the first solution tried. In Saskatchewan physician and hospital services were originally provided

Medicare: Saskatchewan’s Gift to the Nation?

within a fee-for-service market relationship. A sparse, geographically dispersed rural population characterized by low and unstable incomes, however, posed insurmountable challenges to the market as a means for fairly and efficiently distributing health-care services. Thus, within a few years of the province’s establishment, people were experimenting with alternatives to the market. Between 1905 and 1946 four main initiatives were taken—municipal doctor plans, union hospital plans, municipal hospitalization insurance plans, and the regionalization of public health services and health-care planning and service delivery. In addition to these initiatives, the province also centralized the provision of a number of public health and diagnostic and treatment services. These included programs for the prevention and treatment of venereal diseases, tuberculosis, cancer, and mental illness. The development and evolution of these programs each constitute important stories in their own right. In this paper, however, we concentrate on the development of hospital and physician services and the long and contentious relationship between the provincial government, the medical profession, and regional lay boards. The legislative expression of these relationships began in 1909. That year the government passed the first provincial Public Health Act, and, in so doing, enabled the establishment of health districts.1 These health districts were agencies of municipal government responsible for providing local public health services and for the hospital costs of needy residents. Several municipalities, however, voluntarily paid for the hospital services of all area residents.2 Under the 1909 Public Health Act, the provincial government was responsible for providing general laboratory and consultative services.3 In 1914, the Rural Municipality of Sarnia, with a population of 221, hired the first municipal doctor in the province.4 In 1919, the provincial government passed legislation that empowered other municipalities to introduce similar schemes.5 These municipal doctor plans were grassroots efforts designed to attract and retain physicians in rural areas and to eradicate the “fear of heavy doctor bills.”6 During the Depression of the 1930s, many parts of Saskatchewan operated municipal doctor plans funded from property taxes.7 However, few rural municipalities had a tax base sufficient to provide a full range of physician or hospital services. In 1916, the provincial government addressed this problem when it passed legislation that enabled residents of adjacent municipalities to collect taxes to pay for constructing, maintaining, and operating hospitals. Twenty-six union hospital districts were formed between 1917 and 1945. Between January 1945

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and June 1946 an additional twenty-two union hospital districts were formed. This model was also adopted in other Prairie provinces.8 Having hospitals was of little use, however, if people could not afford to use them. Following the lead of the most progressive municipalities, in 1919, the provincial government passed the first legislation in Canada authorizing establishment of universal, publicly financed hospital care insurance plans for the residents of municipalities.9 In 1927, the provincial government amended both the Rural Municipalities Act and Union Hospital Act in order to authorize the growing number of non-market initiatives that were being introduced by citizens in response to local health-care needs. Property taxes remained the sole source of revenue to pay for these healthcare innovations until 1934 when another amendment to the Rural Municipalities Act allowed a personal tax to be collected to pay for health-care services. This appears to be the first time that any jurisdiction anywhere in Canada authorized this.10 Levying personal taxes significantly expanded the revenue available to municipalities for health-care services. Despite this, the revenue bases of rural municipalities were small, even when they pooled their resources. In the 1930s, the Great Depression underscored the inadequacies of both the market as a means of providing health-care services and the various locally based collectivist solutions discussed above. The capacity to implement new public policy, or to extend the existing collectivist models, however, was limited by the fact that the collapse of the provincial economy was amplified and prolonged by several years of drought that added to the vulnerability of the “boom and bust” wheat economy. The combined effects of drought and depression on the people of the province were devastating. At the depth of the Depression, for example, twothirds of the population received twenty cents a day in relief payments, and were unable to pay physicians, or others, for their goods and services,11 resulting in a decline in the number of physicians. By the end of the Depression, Saskatchewan had the lowest physician-to-population ratio in Canada.12 Increasing physician numbers thus became and remained a policy priority for the provincial government until the 1990s, when doctors and policy makers decided that the problem was no longer a physician shortage, but a surplus.13 Whereas World War II marked an economic revival for much of the rest of the country, in Saskatchewan it simply added to the economic woes by closing key international markets for wheat. The search for non-market solutions to the provision of medical and hospital care accelerated in the context of

Medicare: Saskatchewan’s Gift to the Nation?

this prolonged economic distress.14 The early experiments in locally funded health plans began the process of the pooling of resources to cover health-care costs. Yet, while these collective actions provided health care to municipalities too poor or underpopulated to support market-based, fee-for-service practices, they only mitigated a portion of the direct out-of-pocket financial burden—they did not eliminate it.15 For instance, only a narrow range of services was covered under the municipal doctor plans, and these plans covered only part of the costs for the services provided.16 In addition, the terms and conditions of the plans varied widely between municipalities. The solution for the residents of rural Saskatchewan was a more comprehensive and coordinated system of service delivery and payment for health care, one that tapped a larger pool of resources so that the range of services could be increased and the costs shared more broadly. Responding to this challenge in the early 1940s, William J. Patterson’s Liberal government passed the Saskatchewan Health Insurance Act. This Act positioned the province to take advantage of aid anticipated to come as part of the federal government’s post-war reconstruction plans.17 No action was taken, however, until 1944 when T.C. Douglas and the newly elected ccf government identified universal access to hospital services and medical care for all the people of Saskatchewan as a government priority.18 As a preliminary step towards this goal, the Sigerist Commission was established in 1944. The report of this commission provided a blueprint for the development of a comprehensive system of socialized medicine in the province. In order to implement that plan, it recommended establishing the Health Services Planning Commission (hspc) and a regionalized system of publicly financed and administered preventive and treatment services. Under this plan the province was to be divided into fourteen health regions, each with a population of approximately 50,000 people. This was estimated to be a necessary number to adequately support a full range of public health services. The 1946 Health Services Act established the Health Services Planning Commission and gave it authority to set up regional health boards at the request of municipal authorities.19 Under this Act, health regions were required to provide public health services, but the provision of therapeutic services was voluntary. The reasons for this were twofold. First, the newly elected ccf government was sensitive to the fact that residents of rural municipalities were keen to expand the tax base, but they were often less enthusiastic to give up control over the form and content of their various municipal medical care and

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hospital services plans. In order to assuage fears about loss of local control, the 1946 Health Services Act vested local governing bodies with the sole authority to initiate establishment of health regions.20 Second, the medical profession had established physician-sponsored, voluntary, medical-care services insurance schemes, in part to counter the trend towards lay governance and salaried remuneration associated with regionalization, both of which were seen as threats to professional autonomy. In light of this, and the importance given to increasing physician numbers in the province, the government didn’t want to unnecessarily provoke conflict with the profession. Under the 1946 Health Services Act, once a health region was established, each village, town, or rural municipality selected a member of the community to attend the annual meeting of the Health Region Council. It was through this council that local delegates were elected to serve on regional boards of health.21 The regional boards were given the mandate to set up a complete system of medical, dental, and hospital services for the people of the region.22 Moreover, the 1946 Health Services Act gave regions the power to levy both property and personal taxes for the financing of a health insurance system.23 In July 1946 Swift Current Health Region No. 1 was established and became the first jurisdiction in North America to provide a universal, comprehensive system of hospitalization and medical-care insurance financed entirely through taxation and administered on a non-profit basis by a public body.24 This experiment in regionalization was popular with everybody directly involved with it. From the point of view of area residents, the benefits were immediate and obvious—a wider range of public health and treatment services and no out-of-pocket expenses for medical or hospital care at the point of service delivery. For doctors practising in the region, the plans increased both incomes and the number of practising physicians in the region. From the point of view of provincial government planners and policy makers, regionalization provided an opportunity to build up both infrastructure and human healthcare resources in rural areas of the province. It also ensured increased citizen participation in health-care decision making and service delivery, and provided the basis for the establishment of a more comprehensive and integrated healthcare delivery system throughout the province.25 Despite these advantages, the small tax base of the regional health districts continued to limit their ability to provide a comprehensive range of health-care services to all the residents of the regions. In order to address this limitation, and in anticipation of federal government financial support, in 1946 the prov-

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ince introduced a province-wide hospitalization insurance plan. Under this scheme the role of the provincial government was limited to paying hospital bills. Thus, it was well received by everyone, including the medical profession, because it did not threaten the established balance of power between the provincial government, local lay authorities, and the medical profession. Despite its support for the provincial hospitalization insurance system, however, the organized medical profession remained opposed to the principle of lay governance, regardless of whether this occurred at the local, regional, or provincial levels. The profession was especially opposed to boards that did not have medical representatives. Furthermore, the Saskatchewan College of Physicians and Surgeons was concerned that its control would be eroded as a result of area physicians negotiating directly with the regional boards over fees and working conditions. The tensions between the organized medical profession and the growth of an increasingly lay-administered health-care system became apparent in 1955 when steps were taken to set up the Assiniboia-Gravelburg and Regina rural health regions.26 In Regina, for instance, the developing regional authority put a cap on physician incomes, a move the doctors vehemently opposed. To the organized profession this seemed like a step towards the eventual transformation of physicians into the public servants of a “legislative authority unapproved by them and potentially capable of becoming arbitrarily dictators of methods of medical practice.”27 Both the regional boards and the physicians launched publicity campaigns based on their respective positions. In the end, the proposed boards were voted down, an indication of the medical profession’s growing strength and “determination to oppose government-sponsored medical-care proposals whatever their form.”28 Establishing a complete system of socialized medicine, however, had been, and remained, a priority for the ccf government. Costs and politics had dictated a slow and incremental approach. By the end of the 1950s, however, several factors converged and the next step was taken. One of these factors was the introduction of the federal hospitalization insurance in 1958. In 1959–60 the province received a windfall of about $13.3 million because of the federal–provincial cost-sharing formula. From the provincial government’s perspective these were funds that could offset the costs of introducing a medical-care insurance program. Another factor prompting action was the decision to form the New Democratic Party (ndp) of Canada. Introducing a medical-care insurance program in Saskatchewan

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was seen as an important launching pad for the new party and for Tommy Douglas himself, who was being persuaded to accept the nomination to run as the first leader of the national ndp. A third factor was the fact that the provincial ccf government had been in power since 1944 and the long promised system of socialized medicine had not yet been introduced. Sagging support for the ccf led some to believe that a major policy initiative was required in order to revive its political fortunes. Thus, in December 1959 Premier Douglas announced in a radio broadcast that the province would be introducing a universal, compulsory, comprehensive, and publicly financed and administered medical-care insurance system.29 Thus, the stage was set for confrontation when medicare was introduced 1 July 1961. Medicare: Government-by-Proxy

By the end of the 1950s the ccf government still had not fulfilled its promise to introduce a complete system of socialized medicine into the province. Behind the scenes, however, they had been in more or less constant discussions with the medical profession regarding three elements of the 1946 plan for socialized medicine: the form of payment, the nature of the proposed governing body, and the form of service delivery. The Health Services Planning Commission (hspc) had recommended putting physicians either on salary or a capitation system of payment. The College of Physicians and Surgeons insisted on a fee-for-service system. During the course of these protracted discussions, the government conceded the profession’s demand for the fee-for-service method of payment. There were two issues related to governance: the nature of the provincial commission proposed in the hspc plan and the regionalization of health service delivery and governance. The hspc proposed a commission that was responsible to the provincial legislature. The college insisted on an independent, non-political commission. The government resisted this demand because of fears that such a commission “would be dominated by physicians who were hostile to the objectives of the plan.”30 The doctors, on the other hand, were afraid that if the commission were responsible to the legislature, it would be a political entity that would eventually turn doctors into civil servants. The profession also became increasingly opposed to the regionalization of health services, especially if it involved lay governance. The government’s commitment to regionalization waxed and waned over time, in part because of local-

Medicare: Saskatchewan’s Gift to the Nation?

and regional-level politics. Regionalization always resulted in some communities’ gaining and others losing both resources and control over health-care services and facilities. This had contradictory consequences for provinciallevel partisan politics with the result that doing nothing was often seen to be the best policy option—a tendency reinforced by the provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons’ mounting opposition to regionalization. The college viewed regionalization of health-system governance as a threat to its autonomy and control over the form and content of medical practice. At a more general level, the nature and extent of the college’s control has been described as a private government, and a state within a state. The basis of this was its control over revenues, membership, and practice. The college was vigilant in watching for, and vigorously responding to, both real and perceived threats to professional sovereignty. Despite this, on 16 December 1959, Premier Douglas announced his government’s intention to introduce medicare. The College of Physicians and Surgeons immediately issued a policy statement outlining what it considered to be acceptable and necessary. This statement has been described as “a declaration on the part of the private government of the profession to the Government and people of Saskatchewan that it was prescribing unilaterally the rules of the game.”31 Thus, a line was drawn and when medicare was introduced on 1 July 1962, the doctors withdrew services. The story of this strike has been well documented.32 In part, its resolution, twenty-three days after it started, was a result of the skillful mediation of Lord Taylor, who was able to elicit compromises on both sides. The doctors accepted the principles of universal pre-payment and comprehensive coverage, and the government agreed to limit the role of the Medical Care Insurance Commission to the payment of doctors’ bills, thereby ensuring continued professional autonomy and control. All references to management and quality-control functions were removed from the Act. In addition, the Act was revised to “provide that the Government had no intention of establishing a full-time salaried government medical service.”33 Thus, medicare was born and the medical profession’s power and autonomy were even more firmly entrenched. As a consequence, the capacity to introduce and develop democratic and other lay forms of health-care delivery and management was limited. Indeed, it has been claimed that medicare heralded the death of regionalization.34 In 1966, when the federal government modelled

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its medicare legislation on Saskatchewan’s, it extended the principle of medical government-by-proxy to the entire country. This legislation also built inflation into medicare. Largely as a result of provincial government concern about, and resistance to, federal incursions into areas of provincial jurisdiction, the original federal-provincial cost-sharing arrangements meant the federal government’s share of the costs was directly tied to, and determined by, provincial government expenditures on hospital and medical-care services. The federal government had no direct control over its health-care expenditures. Provincial government expenditures were determined by three factors—the help-seeking behaviours of the public, the negotiated physician fee structure, and the aggregate of diagnostic and treatment decisions of physicians. Thus, the provinces too had little or no control over health-care costs as these were entirely driven by patients’ and doctors’ behaviours. The system has no direct financial disincentives for patients, and the fee-for-service payment system for physicians motivates overservicing. Thus, the form and functioning of medicare’s financing ensured strong inflationary forces would predominate. In addition, the terms of the federal-provincial cost-sharing arrangements discouraged innovation and experimentation with forms of service organization and delivery. Health-care services not provided by physicians or in hospitals were ineligible for federal funds. Provincial governments, therefore, were financially penalized for experimenting with community-based, non-medical forms of health-care delivery. This impeded the development of multidisciplinary community clinics and regionalized forms of integrated health-care service delivery. The original federal–provincial cost-sharing arrangement even discouraged provincial government initiatives to increase the efficiency of hospital service delivery inasmuch as every dollar of reduced provincial government expenditure on hospital services resulted in a one-dollar reduction in federal government transfers. Thus, from the beginning both federal and provincial governments began renegotiating the terms of the cost-sharing arrangement. The 1977 Federal–Provincial Arrangements and Established Programs Financing Act (epf) was the result of these efforts. The federal government’s epf had a number of effects, including reducing its share of total health-care costs from approximately 50 to 25 percent, uncoupling them from provincial government expenditures, and limiting future federal government increases to the rate of growth of the gross national product (gnp). Provincial government expenditures

Medicare: Saskatchewan’s Gift to the Nation?

that exceeded the rate of growth in gnp were ineligible for federal cost sharing. In these ways, the epf penalized provinces for allowing costs to continue to rise. The epf was made acceptable to the provinces by the transfer of “tax points” that enabled them to increase their level of income taxation to offset the reduction in federal government cash transfers. Additional reductions in the federal government’s contribution to total health-care costs occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. In the mid-1980s, for example, federal government transfers to the provinces were further limited to the rate of growth in the gnp minus 2 percent. In the 1990s, the federal government froze its transfers to the provinces for two years at 1989-90 levels. In 1992–93 they were allowed to increase at the rate of growth of gnp minus 3 percent. As a result of these reforms the federal government’s share of total public health-care costs dropped to about 16 percent. In 1999 the federal government announced it would increase the amount of its transfers to the provinces and has done so. The level and timing of future increases, however, remains a hotly contested and high-priority political issue. These changes to the structure and levels of cost-sharing arrangements did contribute to provinces rationalizing and restructuring hospital services throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Fiscal measures of this sort, however, are rather blunt and imprecise tools for fine-tuning anything as complex as health-care systems. And besides, health is a provincial jurisdiction, so the federal government cannot be, nor be seen to be, too directly involved in forming and implementing health-care policy or developing and managing health-care services. After 1977 the provinces all became active in health-care reform and in the search for new revenue sources to offset the declining federal contributions. Some provinces tried to cap physician incomes, with predictable results. Others introduced user fees, or delisted insured services. Many of these initiatives, however, were in direct conflict with the founding principles of medicare. Thus, in 1984 the federal government introduced the Canada Health Act. This Act reaffirmed the principles of medicare—universality, comprehensiveness, portability, public financing, and administration—and enabled the federal government to withhold transfer payments on a dollar-for-dollar basis to those provinces that allowed extra billing or that charged user fees. Other factors were also contributing to, and shaping the direction of, health-care reform during the post-medicare period. A major development was the elaboration and advocacy of the “health promotion” policy framework. In Canada, the determinants of population health framework was

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initially elaborated in a federal government working paper entitled A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians. This document was published in 1974 and put out under the name of Marc Lalonde, then Minister of National Health and Welfare. This document introduced the health field concept as a way to comprehensively conceptualize the important factors influencing morbidity, mortality, and population health status. Four factors were identified: human biology, environment, lifestyle, and the organization of health-care services. It argued that most of Canada’s health-care resources were being spent treating diseases that could be prevented. Continued improvements in health status through reduced disability and early death required more attention and resources to be devoted to understanding and modifying human biology, lifestyles, and social and physical environments and the interactions between them.35 In 1984, the Honourable Jake Epp, then Minister of National Health and Welfare, released another policy document entitled Achieving Health for All: A Framework for Health Promotion.36 This was an important document insofar as it marked the clear expression of a new goal for health policy and a new means to achieve it. The new goal was achieving health for all. This compared to the previous policy objective that was achieving equal access for all to health-care services. The means to achieve health for all was termed health promotion, whereas the means to achieve access to health-care services was medicare. The promise of the “health promotion” paradigm was that investing in the promotion of health and the prevention of injury and illness would, in itself, contribute to increased health status for Canadians and, as a result, contribute to reduced use of expensive health-care services for the treatment of preventable injury and illness. By the late 1980s, several provincial governments were actively seeking ways to shift the balance between the treatment of injury and illness after it occurred, and health promotion intended to prevent injury and illness and, thereby, reduce the need for health-care services. In the early 1990s, in Saskatchewan, the health promotion policy paradigm was developed and presented as the province’s Wellness Plan.37 From the health promotion perspective, health is a resource that is maximized when “individuals are able to attain a state of complete physical, emotional, and social well-being.”38 Empowering individuals is the best means to attain and maintain good health.39 This is achieved by fostering public participation in the definition of health needs; strengthening community health services as the most appropriate means of achieving health; and coordinating healthy

Medicare: Saskatchewan’s Gift to the Nation?

public policy.40 Thus, health promotion is premised on the notion that communities will be more involved in identifying local health needs, planning health services, and strengthening links with local health-care institutions.41 In the 1990s, regionalization was widely believed to be the primary means to realize these goals. Regionalization Resuscitated

In the early 1990s, all provinces except Ontario regionalized health-care planning and service delivery. This was the most dramatic reform of the Canadian health-care system since the introduction of medicare. As we have seen, the birth of medicare had ostensibly marked the death of regionalization. This, however, wasn’t exactly the case, although it is true that regional health authorities were disempowered. In 1961, Saskatchewan had thirteen health regions. This number was eventually reduced to ten. By 1984, staffing, budgeting, and resource-allocation decisions were the responsibility of the provincial government, leaving the regional boards little actual control.42 Thus, by that time, the regional health authorities were simply advisory bodies, with no real decision-making powers.43 In the late 1980s and early 1990s, several provinces set up task forces and commissions that diagnosed a number of problems with their respective health-care systems. These problems included continually rising costs; lack of responsiveness to changing health-care needs; lack of flexibility in health-care services; poor coordination and integration of services; inadequate citizen awareness of, and participation in, health-care planning and service delivery; and poor health outcomes. Regionalization was widely seen as a solution to all these problems. Social forces outside the health-care system are also driving reforms. For example, educational attainment among the general population has increased, reducing the educational gap between physicians and their patients, compared to a generation or two ago. Also, since the introduction of medicare, people have become more experienced with, and knowledgeable about, the health-care system and its functioning. An epidemiological shift, such that chronic health problems are more common than in the past, has resulted in many patients and their families being very knowledgeable about the management of illness.44 This, combined with the advent of the Internet and unprecedented accesses to health-related knowledge, has contributed to the empowerment of individuals

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and the demystification of the medical profession. There also has been a move towards greater political accountability and an increasing unwillingness of the public to accept closed and exclusive decision-making processes. As a result, by the early 1990s, the demand for, and acceptance of, the principle of citizen involvement in health-care planning and service delivery were widespread. In 1991, for example, the newly elected ndp provincial government introduced its Wellness Plan. This plan proposed establishing new alliances between communities, governments, health organizations, health-care providers, and health-care consumers.45 Based on the health promotion model, it proposed shifting the main locus of health care from costly medical and hospital-based services to a community-based system of prevention and treatment. Within this proposed system, communities were to have more say regarding policy formation and the distribution of health-care dollars.46 In 1993, thirty regional health districts were created in order to realize the Wellness Plan. Unlike the old health authorities, however, the new regional health districts had considerable control over health-care planning and service delivery. Indeed, while the provincial government retained control of the purse strings, the district boards had considerable discretion over how to allocate the resources for their own district. Another important component in the regionalized program was the institutionalization of public elections in an attempt to make the district health boards more accountable to, and representative of, the local population. The regionalization of health care required a paradoxical structure of both centralization and decentralization. Under the old system, numerous local boards managed a range of hospital and long-term care facilities with little or no inter-institutional coordination or integration of services. These local boards were responsible for the day-to-day administration of their facilities, and they often competed for resources with other boards. For instance, members of ambulance services boards were local people appointed by the minister of health. Each board then directly operated, maintained, and provided ambulance services for their district and were responsible for the hiring and firing of personnel.47 The home-care boards were likewise appointed by the provincial government and were responsible for the administration of home care within their district.48 Section 16 of Saskatchewan’s 1991 Health Districts Act dissolved union hospitals, ambulance services, and other single-facility boards, replacing them with the new district health boards. Indeed, 435 single facility and hospital

Medicare: Saskatchewan’s Gift to the Nation?

boards were amalgamated into thirty district health boards. The goal was to go beyond the “inertia” and “parochialism” characteristic of the previous fragmented system of governance.49 The responsibilities for hospitals, ambulance services, and home care were subsumed under one regional authority, displacing a large number of community members. Ironically, the centralization of authority that resulted from regionalization reduced citizen control over local health-care institutions and services.50 Another component to the regionalization plan in Saskatchewan was the decentralization of authority to the regional health boards. The decentralization of authority implicit within the Health Districts Act created the possibilities for local control over certain areas of health-care service provision. Control over health-care institutions and service delivery was devolved to the district health boards. In this respect, the district health boards had legal authority to set policy and provide services, being constrained only by the distribution of funding from the provincial government. One important omission, however, was physician services. Saskatchewan Health signed an agreement with the Saskatchewan Medical Association (sma) and the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations (saho) that ensured the professional autonomy of physicians.51 Physician services, therefore, remained under the mandate of Saskatchewan Health. Physicians in Saskatchewan, however, did have access to the regional health boards and they were eligible to run for board positions.52 The second structural change shifted accountability for decision making to local citizens. Here, the nature of representative governance differed dramatically from that of the 1946 regional program. Rather than being elected by the members of municipal councils, two-thirds of the twelve new district health board positions were elected on a rotating basis by district residents. The remaining four members of each board were appointed by the provincial government, ostensibly to ensure the representation of women, Aboriginal people, and ethnic and other minorities on the district health boards. Skeptics pointed out, however, that these appointments could also have been made so as to ensure politically friendly representatives were also present. How are we to understand this apparent rush to the regionalization of health care? Most commentators agree that regionalization is an attempt to move away from professional dominance and collegial control of health-care planning and service delivery and towards some form of democratic community or managerial system of governance.

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Blishen, for example, sees regionalization as a system of control in which “a community, or a community organization such as a consumer’s group, rather than an occupational group, such as physicians, or a third party such as the government, seeks to define the needs of members and the manner in which they are satisfied.”53 Thus, he maintains that regionalization redefined relationships between the state, the medical profession, and consumers in the direction of increased consumer control, but he felt there was no evidence to show that it was actually a more effective way to organize and deliver health care. Crichton and colleagues also saw regionalization as a shift in the nature and organization of health-care planning and service delivery that is part of a major structural transformation of modern societies.54 The main dimensions of this change are the decentralization of decision making and the increased involvement of various stakeholders in partnerships intended to facilitate the achievement of consensus in a variety of policy domains. The so-called welfare society that these changes defined was contrasted to the centralized, bureaucratic, and professionally dominated mode of decision making characteristic of the welfare state. In the newly emerging social order, Crichton et al. note, “the former power holders have to share their power with other groups of corporate decision makers.”55 In Western societies, enthusiasm for a neo-corporatist approach to policy making grew throughout the 1980s. In 1981, for example, Wilensky argued that neo-corporatist models of policy making were more likely to enable policy makers “to contain the bargaining power of physicians and other provider groups and thereby move the system towards real health outputs.”56 He identified Britain, Canada, and the us as countries least likely to accomplish this because of the nature of their policy-making processes. The Canadian federal government did, however, over the 1980s, adopt more of a corporatist approach to policy making.57 Picking up on this theme, Lomas saw the new regional health authorities (rhas) as both allies and fall guys for provincial governments in their struggle for control of the health-care system.58 As allies, the rhas were intended to increase community participation in policy making and health-system governance. The putative goal was to generate the critical mass of political power needed to break the “medicare pact” and, thereby, eliminate those features of medicare that entrenched medical dominance, inflationary cost increases, and the curative approach to health problems. As fall guys, rhas were intended to

Medicare: Saskatchewan’s Gift to the Nation?

deflect criticism from provincial governments as budgets were cut and healthcare systems rationalized. Even if this was the goal of regionalization, Touhy argued that it has not successfully de-medicalized health care or altered the accommodation between the state and physicians that is at its heart.59 This is correct. In fact, it appears that the first round of regionalization was not designed to directly demedicalize and deinstitutionalize the health-care system. Rather, it appears that one of its main goals was to develop a range of non-medical, non-institutional, community-based alternatives to doctors and hospitals before taking on the daunting task of renegotiating the so-called “medicare pact.” None of the provincial governments that regionalized their health-care systems in the 1990s, for example, gave the rhas control over physicianprovided medical-care or pharmaceutical budgets. Without such control, regional health authorities had no capacity to adopt a command-and-control governance strategy relative to physician services. The exclusion of control over medical-care and pharmaceutical budgets was not an oversight. As we have seen, the organized medical profession fiercely resists organizational reforms that are seen to threaten their professional autonomy and collegial control. Thus, provincial governments, including Saskatchewan’s, took an incrementalist approach to the reforms of the 1990s. The first step was the rationalization of institutional, particularly hospital, services. The second was the vertical and horizontal coordination and integration of institutional and community services. The provinces, however, have differential priorities in this regard. Some, like Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, rationalized hospital services prior to regionalization. In Saskatchewan this entailed closing or converting fifty-three small rural hospitals to community health centres. It was hoped that in this way the new rhas would not be held responsible for these very unpopular decisions, and, therefore, would be able to form effective collaborations with area residents regarding implementation of other reform priorities. Other provincial governments left the task of closing and converting hospitals to the newly created rhas. The reform-supportive alliances that were hoped for did not always develop. In many cases, local citizens did not perceive the rhas as giving them effective control over the best way to satisfy their health-care needs. Rather, disgruntled citizens and health-care providers often joined forces with rhas against provincial government reform initiatives. Thus, regionalization can be

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seen as a successful experiment in community empowerment, but a failed effort to wrest control of health-care services and system governance from providers. Anticipating this possibility, some provinces prohibited health-care providers from serving on rhas from the outset. Others that had announced intentions to introduce elected boards backed away from that commitment. After 2002, there was a rapid abandonment of regionalization as an experiment in health-care democratization. This period also marked the end of health promotion as an ascendant policy paradigm. Interestingly, it did not signal the end of the experiment with regionalization as such. Rather, the new system of regionalization was centralized and less democratic in nature. In Saskatchewan, for example, the 2002 reforms included the reduction of the number of regions from thirty-three to twelve. They also included elimination of the partially elected boards that had decision-making power and their replacement with entirely appointed boards that have mainly an advisory role. Despite repeated assurances, concerns remain that current health reforms are simply paving the way for the dismantling of medicare.60 In one sense, as we have just seen, this is the case. Government is trying to limit medical autonomy and dominance relative both to health policy and health-care services, and shift resources towards health promotion and illness- and injuryprevention activities. In itself, however, reduced medical autonomy and dominance is not a threat to medicare. There is, however, a more serious threat to medicare related to its structure. Currently, medical and hospital-based services are covered by medicare. Other services, in general, are not. As the system shifts the locus of treatment from hospital to community, and as service providers other than physicians come to play a larger role in health-care delivery, there also is occurring a de facto privatization of health care. Pressures also are mounting for privatization of the medical and hospital care sector of the health-care system. Leading the charge in this regard is the medical profession, private-sector health-care corporations, many of which are us-based, and those provincial governments that are ideologically committed to the market as a social policy tool. Pressure to adopt market solutions to social-policy problems is given added impetus through various multilateral and bilateral trade liberalization agreements and organizations such as the General Agreement on Trade and Services (gats) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta).

Medicare: Saskatchewan’s Gift to the Nation?

Conclusion

Historically Saskatchewan has played an important role in pioneering the development and reform of health care in Canada. In this chapter we have examined the changing goals of health policy and their relationship to the changing nature and organization of the health-care system. A central theme in this analysis is the nature and locus of health system governance. More specifically, health-care policy and service delivery have been greatly influenced, if not dominated, by the organized medical profession. Current reform initiatives, including the adoption of the determinants of health policy framework and the regionalization of health-care decision making and service delivery, were the most recent manifestation of the struggle to control the health-care sector and improve population health status. The outcome of these efforts is, at this time, indeterminate. It is not certain what the future holds. There is a potential for a more needs-based, publicly funded, and democratically controlled health-care system to emerge. Evidence suggests that this possibility is real. There is also, however, the potential for an increasingly privatized, corporate-controlled health-care system to develop. There is, perhaps, even more evidence to suggest that this is the future of health care in Canada.

Notes 1. Saskatchewan Department of Health, Report of the Study Committee on Health Region Boundaries (Regina: Queen’s Printer, 1967). 2.

M. G. Taylor, Health Insurance and Canadian Public Policy: The Seven Decisions that Created the Canadian Health Insurance System (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1978), 72.

3. Saskatchewan Department of Health, Saskatchewan’s Health Regions (Regina: Queen’s Printer, 1974). 4. Saskatchewan Department of Health, Saskatchewan Health Information Sourcebook, Working Draft (Regina: Queen’s Printer, 1995). 5. Saskatchewan Department of Health, Division of Health Education, History of Public Health in Saskatchewan (with special reference to the history of the Swift Current Health Region) (Regina: Queen’s Printer, 1958). 6. K. MacTaggart, The First Decade (Ottawa: Canadian Medical Association, 1973), 11.

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7. See for instance R.F. Badgley and S. Wolfe, Doctors’ Strike: Medical Care and Conflict in Saskatchewan (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1967), 16; and H. D. Dickinson, “The Struggle for State Health Insurance: Reconsidering the Role of Saskatchewan Farmers,” Studies in Political Economy 41 (1993): 140. 8. T.C. Douglas, “Saskatchewan Plans for Health,” Health (1946), reprint; Saskatchewan Archive Board (SAB), T.C. Douglas R33.1, XIV 580 (14-31). 9. Taylor, Health Insurance, 72. 10. Ibid. 11. MacTaggart, First Decade. 12. Ibid. 13. H.D. Dickinson, “Health Care, Health Promotion, and Health Reform,” in B.S. Bolaria and H.D. Dickinson, eds., Health, Illness and Health Care in Canada, 3rd edition (Toronto: Nelson/Thompson Learning, 2002), 356. 14. Saskatchewan, of course, like other jurisdictions, had developed a public response to various health problems, such as tuberculosis, cancer, venereal diseases, and mental illness. 15. Dickinson, “Struggle.” 16. Ibid. 17. D. Mombourquette, “‘An Inalienable Right’: The CCF and Rapid Health Care Reform, 1944–1948,” Saskatchewan History 18 (1991): 101–16. 18. Ibid. 19. Department of Public Health Research and Planning. History of the Swift Current Health Region Medical Care Plan, 1946–1966 (Regina: Saskatchewan Health, 1969). 20. Douglas, “Saskatchewan Plans for Health,” 3. 21. Department of Public Health, History of the Swift Current Health Region. 22. Ibid. 23. A per capital tax of $5.50 and a property tax of one and a half mills were levied to pay for the collective services. The land tax was later raised to 2.2 mills and the personal tax was tripled in 1947. The province also contributed funds for the running of the region. The provincial government paid for 9 percent of the total cost in the form of grants. 24. J. Feather, “From Concept to Reality: Formation of the Swift Current Health Region,” Prairie Forum 16 (1991): 59–80; J. Feather, “Impact of the Swift Current Health Region: Experiment of Model?” Prairie Forum 16 (1991): 225–48. 25. Taylor, Health Insurance, 247. 26. McTaggart, First Decade. 27. Ibid., 48. 28. Ibid., 49.

Medicare: Saskatchewan’s Gift to the Nation?

29. Taylor, Health Insurance, 266–69. 30. S.M. Lipsett, Agrarian Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), 290–91, quoted in Taylor, Health Insurance, 247. 31. Taylor, Health Insurance, 247. 32. Badgeley and Wolfe, Doctors’ Strike; McTaggart, First Decade; C.D. Naylor, Private Practice, Public Payment: Canadian Medicine and the Politics of Health Insurance, 1911–1966 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986). 33. Taylor, Health Insurance, 325. 34. Ibid., 316. 35. M. Lalonde, A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians: A Working Document (Ottawa: Department of National Health and Welfare, 1974), 32. 36. J. Epp, Achieving Health for All: A Framework for Health Promotion (Ottawa: Department of National Health and Welfare, 1984). 37. World Health Organization, “The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion,” in Health Promotion (1986), 1. 38. H. Dickinson, “The Changing Health-Care System: Controlling Costs and Promoting Health,” in B. Bolaria and H. Dickinson, eds., Health, Illness, and Health Care in Canada, 2nd edition (Toronto: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1994), 121. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. J. Epp, Achieving Health for All. 42. Saskatchewan Health, Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Role of Regional Boards of Health (Regina: Queen’s Printer, 1984). 43. J.T. McLeod Research Associates, Consumer participation, regulation of the professions and decentralization of health services; a report submitted to the Minister of Public Health, Saskatchewan (Toronto: J.T. McLeod Research Associates, 1973). 44. B. Blishen, Doctors in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press in association with Statistics Canada, 1991). 45. Saskatchewan Health, A Saskatchewan Vision for Health: A Framework for Change (Regina, Queen’s Printer, 1992). 46. J. Steed, “Health Crisis isn’t Unique to Ontario,” The Toronto Star, 24 September 1995, p. A1. 47. Province of Saskatchewan, An Act respecting the Establishment of Ambulance Districts and Boards, the Licensing of Ambulance Operators and Emergency Personnel and the Provision of Ambulance Services in Saskatchewan, Chapter A-18.1 (Regina: Queen’s Printer, 1986). 48. Province of Saskatchewan, An Act respecting the Provision of Home Care Services, Chapter H-4.01 (Regina: Queen’s Printer, 1986).

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49. S. Lewis, Regionalization and Devolution: Transforming Health, Reshaping Politics? Paper based on a Presentation to the Robarts Centre Symposium, Toronto, 1 and 2 April 1996. 50. Lewis, Regionalization and Devolution. 51. Canada Health, Health System Reform in Saskatchewan (Ottawa: Minister of Supplies and Services, 1996). 52. J. Lomas, “Devolving Authority for Health Care in Canada’s Provinces: 4 Emerging Issues and Prospects,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 156 (1997): 817–23. 53. B. Blishen, Doctors in Canada, 145. 54. A. Crichton, A. Robertson, C. Gordon, and W. Farrant, Health Care a Community Concern? Developments in the Organization of Health Services (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1997). 55. Ibid., 40. 56. H. Wilensky, “Democratic Corporatism, Consensus and Social Policy: Reflections on Changing Values and the ‘Crisis of the Welfare State’” in The Welfare State in Crisis (Paris: OECD, 1981), 194. 57. Crichton et al., Community Concern. 58. J. Lomas, “Devolving Authority for Health Care.” 59. C. Touhy, What Drives Change in Health Care Policy? A Comparative Perspective, Timlin Lecture, University of Saskatchewan, 1995. 60. P. Armstrong, “Privatizing Care,” in P. Armstrong, H. Armstrong, J. Choiniere, E. Mykhalovskiy, and J. White, eds., Medical Alert: New Work Organization in Health Care (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1997); C. Fuller, Caring for Profit: How Corporations Are Taking Over Canada’s Health Care System (Vancouver and Ottawa: New Star Books and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 1998); M. O’Neill, “Community Participation in Quebec’s Health System,” in D. Coburn, C. D’Arcy, and G. Torrance, eds., Health and Canadian Society: Critical Perspectives, 3rd edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 517–30; G. Tsalikis, “The Political Economy of Decentralization of Health and Social Services in Canada,” International Journal of Health Planning and Management 4 (1989): 293–309.

T h e P r a i r i e Fa c e o f L a b o u r Beth Bilson

Saskatchewan. The mind’s eye conjures up waving wheatfields, not smokestacks; grain elevators, not factories. The history of labour in Saskatchewan has not been the subject of extensive study. It is a subject that repays closer examination, however, for it reveals that, as with many aspects of the political, economic, and social history of the province, this history has features that mark it as distinctive and unique in Canada. It is a history that provides examples of acrimonious conflict, and, indeed, violence, but it has also often been characterized by legislators who have sought a statutory regime that will meet the needs of workers, by working people who have asked for ways to assert their rights and at the same time emphasized their willingness to contribute to society, and by employers who have never mobilized very aggressively in opposition to the regulatory regime. Prior to the formation of the province, there were some workers who were members of labour organizations, primarily on the railways and in the printing trades. The first significant manifestation of trade-union activity on behalf of workers, however, was connected with a project of appropriate symbolic importance, the construction of the legislative buildings in Regina. The members of the building trades in Saskatchewan were small in number and peaceable in outlook, but the retention of an out-of-province firm for the

198 Perspectives of Saskatchewan

project, Lyall and Sons, a firm known for anti-union practices, had the perverse effect of drawing these workers together and uniting them regarding the common principles of fair wages and insistence on the use of unionized labour.1 In this cause, the building trades had a somewhat unexpected ally in the premier, Walter Scott. Scott had himself been a member of a typographical union in Winnipeg and had some sympathy for the tenuous position of workers in the new province. A story about the premier prior to the 1908 election played on his union roots, with the headline “The Premier Himself a Union Man is in Full Sympathy and Accord with the Working Men of the City and Province—Vote for Walter Scott and ‘Boost the Union Label.’”2 Though Scott was reluctant to see his government become drawn directly into dealings between employers and labour,3 he did to some extent act as a broker and acceded to requests from labour that he considered to be reasonable and consistent with the welfare of the province. In 1909, for example, he appointed Thomas M. Molloy, a former president of the Regina Trades and Labour Council, as the provincial Fair Wage Officer, with a mandate to ensure that fair-wage clauses were included in government contracts and that employers like the legislative building contractors respected the craft jurisdiction of the building unions. Scott and other government representatives met annually with members of the Saskatchewan executive of the Trades and Labour Congress (tlc) and the national confederation of Canadian craft unions, and in 1910 the government created a Bureau of Labour within the Department of Agriculture to focus specifically on labour issues. The government also passed legislation that was meant to establish workplace standards and provide protection for employees. The Factories Act passed in 1909, for example, limited the working day to ten hours for female employees and prohibited the employment of children under fourteen years. A Workmen’s Compensation Act enacted in 1910–11 permitted injured workers to pursue redress from their employers in court. In these first years of Saskatchewan’s existence as a province, there was a certain amount of flexing of labour muscle, especially in the construction sector. In the building boom taking place in major centres—Moose Jaw, Regina, Saskatoon, Prince Albert—the building trades could exploit the reliance of employers on the skills of their members, and labour councils emerged in all four of these cities as a voice for the collective interest of workers from all the craft-based unions.

The Prairie Face of Labour

Even in this context, however, the situation of workers was tenuous and insecure. Since much unionized employment was in construction, there was a strong seasonal element to the employment picture. It was common for workers to move from unionized employment at their trades to work on farms as a means of evening out the unpredictability of their working lives. Much of Saskatchewan’s labour force was, of course, on the farm, and agricultural workers were often badly paid and worked under arduous, unpleasant, and dangerous conditions. In the 1920s, these circumstances made farm workers the focus of organizing efforts by the Industrial Workers of the World (iww), who tried in particular to protect the interests of these workers from being undermined by the incursion of other groups of workers displaced from their own employment. These initiatives were never terribly successful for a variety of reasons. In part, the failure of labour organizations to become a platform for representing farm workers resulted from government measures to discourage the activity of radical organizations such as the iww in Saskatchewan and from the barriers presented to organizing by the dispersed and transient nature of agricultural work. It has been suggested, however, that another important hindrance to organizing farm workers was that many of them saw this kind of waged work as a temporary arrangement that was necessary to allow them to acquire their own land to farm, a realistic ambition for many of them, at least prior to the Depression.4 The distance of Saskatchewan from the eastern centres of population that were the primary source of union members on the national level meant that the issues facing workers in Saskatchewan did not often rise to the top of the tlc agenda, and the organization was reluctant to invest the resources that would be required to carry out effective union organizing and support in a sparsely populated and geographically challenging region. Within the province itself, the small labour organizations in different centres found it difficult to maintain communication with each other, and to reach consensus on major issues. In Regina, for example, where union members were mainly of British extraction, the Trades and Labour Council opposed the federal policy of encouraging immigration from eastern Europe; in Saskatoon, on the other hand, a larger proportion of workers were from eastern European backgrounds, so labour organizations did not hold the same view. The period of World War I was not, contrary to the experience in eastern Canada, a time of prosperity or high employment in Saskatchewan. The precariousness of employment and increases in the cost of living fuelled by

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inflationary pressures in other parts of the country placed new burdens on Saskatchewan workers and created new challenges for the small and relatively weak labour organizations. Though there was some resistance to compulsory military registration, and subsequently to conscription, on the grounds that capitalists and profiteers should be made to contribute as well—“conscript capital before labour”—workers generally supported the war effort, particularly once their co-workers began to return from active service. In many parts of the country, the difficult conditions of the post-war period helped a new kind of labour radicalism to flourish. The political philosophy of radical or revolutionary socialism and the growth of industrial unionism based on class rather than craft gave rise to numerous political and labour groups and organizations and found expression in events like the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. The radical themes of organizations like the One Big Union elicited only a limited response in Saskatchewan. There was little activity in solidarity with the Winnipeg strikers, except in Saskatoon where there was a “general strike” of sorts, involving perhaps 1200 workers at its height.5 Even there, however, it was a quite decorous affair; it enjoyed measured support from City Council, and the movie projectionists were asked by the Trades and Labour Council to return to work in order to keep up the morale of the citizenry. The competition from mainstream industrial unions did become a continuing challenge to the existing craft unions in Saskatchewan, particularly as the erratic and inadequate support from the national tlc hampered their organizing efforts in comparison to the increasingly aggressive efforts of the industrial unions and other radical labour groups. Nonetheless, the radicalism that took hold in industries like lumbering and longshoring elsewhere in Canada failed to gain much purchase in Saskatchewan. This was not only because of hostility from employers—a One Big Union organizer in the coalfields in 1920 was abducted and released in North Dakota with instructions never to return—but because the fragmented nature and conservative temperament of the labour constituency did not lend themselves easily to a radical mass movement. William Martin, who became premier in 1916, was somewhat less astute than his predecessor about labour issues,6 but his government continued to play the role of broker and to make efforts to address the matters put before them by employee representatives. The year 1919 saw the enactment of a more comprehensive labour standards statute, the Minimum Wage Act, which

The Prairie Face of Labour

established a floor for wages for both men and women and addressed other issues such as hours of work and the working conditions of women. One of the significant developments of the 1920s was the resolution of the question of constitutional jurisdiction over labour matters. The decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Toronto Electric Commissioners v. Snider7 assigned general responsibility for legislation concerning labour standards and labour relations to the provinces as a matter of “property and civil rights.” Federal legislation had been largely concentrated on a system for preserving labour peace through the use of conciliation boards to investigate and report on labour disputes. In order to preserve this aspect of the federal system, all provinces with the exception of Prince Edward Island enacted legislation in 1925 to replicate the federal Industrial Disputes Investigation Act. The provincial version of the legislation, the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act (Saskatchewan) [idia (Saskatchewan)], did not, unlike its federal counterpart, make conciliation mandatory, but it did provide a mechanism for parties to a dispute to obtain third-party assistance.8 Through the 1920s, labour organizations in Saskatchewan were increasingly critical of government. Despite the frustration of government representatives at the absence of a unified labour position on many issues and their feeling that they had accommodated reasonable requests on the part of labour—Premier Dunning declared “in fact practically all of the recommendations made by [the tlc executive in Saskatchewan] have been given effect to”9—workers and their representatives expressed mounting dissatisfaction and many welcomed a new Conservative government in 1929, which had promised to improve conditions of employment. The Anderson government did enact new workmen’s compensation legislation in 1929, which replaced the cumbersome system under which an injured worker was required to initiate a prosecution, in favour of a model based on a fund to which all employers contributed and the administration of claims by a three-person board. The onset of the 1930s Depression, however, turned the attention of the government to other issues. They dismissed labour proposals for further enhancements of labour standards and indeed reduced the minimum wage for women in 1931, a development that was the subject of much criticism from labour organizations who feared this would be a prelude to a general retrenchment on the labour standards front. Nineteen-thirty-one also brought the shock of a tragedy in the coalfields of southeastern Saskatchewan.10 In the surrealistic badlands landscape of this

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region, lignite coal had been mined for some decades prior to 1905, and these operations were really the sole example of large-scale extractive industry in the province. Though there was some variation in the working conditions under different operators, and though there was some regulatory protection provided by legislation passed before 1905, the miners, many of them of eastern European origin, generally worked in uncomfortable and dangerous conditions and lived in substandard housing owned by their employers. The difficulties under which they lived created, at least sporadically, fertile ground for the organizing efforts of union organizations such as the One Big Union, the Workers’ Unity League (wul), and the Mine Workers’ Union of Canada, a union with ties to radical socialist politics. In any case, some of the miners themselves were active in organizations like the Ukrainian Farmer–Labour Temple Association, in which some branches had links with the wul and the Communist Party. As the Saskatchewan government made a concerted effort to encourage coal production in the 1920s, union organizing and employer reaction escalated. On 29 September 1931, a group of miners from Bienfait, many accompanied by their wives, set off for a demonstration in Estevan in connection with a strike. Though the exact reasons have remained unclear, the demonstration turned rapidly into a confrontation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; when the police opened fire, three miners were killed and many were wounded. This event, and the trials of union organizers that followed, cooled union activities in the coalfields for nearly a decade; the United Mine Workers of America, a less radical union, eventually took up organizing in 1938 and still represents the unionized miners in the area. This dark moment in Estevan was perhaps a fitting symbol of a decade that was a difficult time for labour in Saskatchewan. For many workers, employment was not secure at the best of times, and unemployment levels rose dramatically during the Depression. Nor was agricultural work, the traditional fallback, a viable option at this time. The small and fragmented organizations that represented workers were further weakened by loss of membership and lack of economic clout. All levels of government spent considerable amounts of money on urban relief, but calls by worker organizations for the extension to urban dwellers of the debt-relief legislation passed to assist farmers went unanswered. The federal government responded to proposals for investment in public works to ameliorate unemployment by creating work camps for unemployed men, and this created tension; a confrontation at the camp in Saskatoon in 1933 resulted in the death of one police officer.11

The Prairie Face of Labour

The brief enthusiasm of labour for the Anderson government did not survive the early years of the Depression, and labour organizations expressed approval when the Liberals were returned to power in 1934 under the leadership first of Gardiner and then of William Patterson, who became premier in 1935. The new government was not, however, facing the docile and obliging labour groups who had met with Scott and Martin. Despite the continued weakness and fragmentation of the Saskatchewan labour movement, and the ongoing pressures of the Depression economy, representatives of workers took a more forceful and insistent position with respect to a number of issues, including the enhancement of labour standards, the extension of publicly funded health care, and improvement of social programs for families and the elderly. Looking to the example provided by the New Deal government of the United States, the labour movement also began pressing for collective bargaining legislation modelled on the Wagner Act, which would require employers to bargain with trade unions representing their employees and offer protection to employees who were active in unions. The government responded by enacting an Industrial Standards Act in 1937. The statute set out basic standards for hours of work and wages. It also provided that these standards would be binding for a year in an industrial sector once employers and employee representatives across the sector had agreed to adopt them. An appeal board would rule on disputes over the standards. Though the statute generated some labour support, particularly since the trades and crafts were brought under its umbrella, it proved to be difficult to administer or to apply consistently. Many smaller employers were not caught by the administrative system because they had eluded municipal tax and licensing requirements during the difficult years of the Depression. The requirement of sectoral agreement to adopt the standards engendered resistance from employers and made it difficult for employees to insist on adherence to the provision of the Act. A further disappointment to the labour movement was the collective bargaining legislation put forward by the government at the beginning of 1938. Though the bill, entitled the Trade Union Act, did purport to protect union organizing and to permit employees freer access to union representation, it did not impose any penalties on employers for failing to bargain with unions; it granted status to company-sponsored unions, and it limited representation of workers in Saskatchewan to “Canadian” representatives—an affront to the members of the international unions that were prevalent by this time. One union representative wrote to Attorney-General T.C. Davis, who

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had introduced the bill, that if it passed, “it will be the biggest joke that Organized Labour had to contend with in History.”12 A labour deputation met with the premier and the attorney-general to press for changes in the bill. They asked for the addition of penalties for recalcitrant employers, a change in the name of the statute to the Freedom of Trade Union Association Act, and greater protection for the closed shop—a cause dear to the hearts of the craft unions, which had always operated on the hiring hall model.13 Though the amended bill reflected some accommodation of these requests— the name was changed and the restriction to Canadian representatives was removed—the new legislation was still a disappointment as there was no sanction for employers who failed or refused to bargain with unions, and the companysponsored union was still recognized as a legitimate voice for employees. The economic situation was improving by the end of the 1930s, but Canada’s participation in World War II became a new preoccupation for the provincial government. Nonetheless, in the 1943 session of the legislature, a labouraffiliated government member, W.G. Baker of Moose Jaw, introduced a bill designed to combine features of the idia (Saskatchewan) and the Freedom of Trade Union Association Act, at the same time adding new provisions, including a legal and enforceable obligation to bargain for employers. This bill was warmly welcomed by the labour movement, but was set aside by the Select Standing Committee on Law Amendment so that a Commission on Employer– Employee Relations under the former premier and now chief justice of Saskatchewan William Martin could consult with the public on labour relations issues. The Martin commission made some recommendations, and a new bill was introduced into the legislature early in 1944. This new Labour Relations Act, however, was not based on existing provincial legislation or on the results of the commission, but was really intended to enshrine the federal wartime labour relations regulations, known as pc 1003, in Saskatchewan legislation. While pc 1003 did bear some resemblance to the American Wagner Act, it also incorporated a number of restrictions on union activity and industrial disputes tailored for wartime conditions. By the late 1930s, the political winds in Saskatchewan were beginning to shift. Populist and progressive political groupings, many of an ephemeral nature, had been appearing and disappearing across Canada, but particularly in western Canada, through the 1920s and 1930s. On the Prairies, these groups had a strong agrarian base, as well as support from social gospel-minded adherents of several Christian denominations and from social welfare-minded

The Prairie Face of Labour

members of the middle class. In some places, notably Winnipeg and Calgary, there was a strong labour element to these public interest coalitions, political parties, and single-issue organizations as they attempted to marshal support for causes from the restructuring of debt to temperance to the prevention of youth crime. There was support for many of these causes and the political organizations that represented them among Saskatchewan workers and labour organizations, though this support was somewhat intermittent and unfocused. This was in part because of the absence of a forum for developing strong and consistent positions across the isolated labour organizations that existed in various parts of the province, and in part because of the traditional view of the craft unions and the tlc that there were dangers for unions in becoming tied directly to the political fortunes of particular parties. The advent of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (ccf) in the early 1930s provided a new platform for populist political activity, and the impetus for the new party was based in part on a wish to assist workers. The philosophy represented by the ccf was attractive to many people in Saskatchewan. Under a charismatic leader, Tommy Douglas, the ccf came close to defeating the Patterson government in 1938 largely on the basis, as Patterson himself ruefully observed, of vigorous and systematic grassroots activity in rural areas. As this comment suggests, the ccf in Saskatchewan was largely an agrarian movement and was preoccupied with issues related to the rural economy. Though Douglas himself was sympathetic to labour—as a Baptist minister in Weyburn he had been to the coal-mining communities during the 1931 strike to speak to the miners and distribute gifts of food and clothing from his congregation—and many labour organizations in Saskatchewan did contribute their support to the new party, labour issues were not high among the priorities of the ccf. During the war, however, the ccf in Saskatchewan made overtures to labour and worked on developing a platform that would be attractive to working people, a platform that included promises to strengthen the right to organize and to establish a separate government department of labour. In addition, the ccf platform featured other assurances that were appealing to workers, such as extended public health care and public ownership of key industries. The ccf did not depend heavily on labour for their landslide victory in the 1944 election, but for various reasons the new government accepted that they should carry through with the pledges they had made to labour during the

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campaign. They were under considerable pressure to do so from outside the province, and in particular from the national ccf organization through its secretary, David Lewis, who had strong connections with the industrial unions. ccf supporters from more heavily industrialized and heavily unionized areas of Canada saw the victory of the ccf in Saskatchewan as an opportunity to experiment with labour legislation that would more overtly promote collective bargaining and provide additional protection to unionized workers. Indeed, some of those supporters were concerned about the ability of members of the Saskatchewan government, especially the new Minister of Labour C.C. Williams, to draft legislation adequate to the objectives they wished to see articulated. Thus it was that the 1944 Trade Union Act was primarily drafted by two eastern labour lawyers, Andrew Brewin and Ted Jolliffe, before being presented to a special session of the legislature. The new Trade Union Act had a number of features that set Saskatchewan apart from other Canadian jurisdictions at the time, though other provinces passed legislation that was similar in many respects. Unlike earlier federal legislation, which, as we have seen, was adopted in Saskatchewan during the war, the focus was less on preserving industrial peace and more on encouraging collective bargaining as a medium for the employer-employee relationship, recognizing the right of workers to form and join trade unions,14 and placing on employers a legal obligation to participate in bargaining. In order to give effect to these objectives, the Wagner Act model was adopted, which gives a trade union the exclusive right to speak on behalf of a group of employees among whom that union enjoys majority support. The group of employees that is used as the basis for determining whether the trade union enjoys majority support—the bargaining unit—is defined by assessing whether it will provide a coherent basis for a viable bargaining relationship with the employer, often by reference to the extent to which employees in the group have common employment interests. Like other legislation following this pattern, the administration of the statute was put in the hands of an independent tripartite labour relations board reflecting the perspectives of both employers and workers. In the Saskatchewan legislation, the idea that employees had a right to form and join trade unions in order to bargain collectively with their employers was followed through in an unusually thoroughgoing way; the legislative regime whose major elements were put in place in 1944 has remained in some ways unique. In contrast to collective bargaining legislation enacted elsewhere

The Prairie Face of Labour

in the same period, for example, the Trade Union Act did not preclude groups of employees from participation in collective bargaining. Public sector employees, including members of the public service, who in most jurisdictions would not be able to bargain collectively for at least another two decades, were permitted to engage in trade union activity. Indeed, the first certification orders issued by the new Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board in 1945 were granted to public-sector unions, and the first collective agreement for the public service was signed in 1945.15 The statute did not preclude workers like firefighters or police officers from taking part in collective bargaining. It did not differentiate among groups of workers on the grounds that some of them might provide “essential services.” Though there have been instances of striking workers being legislated back to work—power workers, nurses, university professors, and health-care workers—and the Liberal government of Ross Thatcher enacted a more comprehensive statute restricting the right to strike of some groups of public sector workers,16 the notion of systematic and continuing restrictions on the collective bargaining rights of public-sector workers has remained a foreign notion in the province. Agricultural workers are not barred from access to collective bargaining, as they have been in some provinces, although, until the advent in recent decades of large-scale commercial livestock operations, there has been relatively little organizing among these workers. It must also be pointed out that their collective bargaining has a different starting point from that of other workers; as they are excluded from coverage by the Labour Standards Act, they are not starting from a guaranteed floor of minimum conditions. The Trade Union Act was also unusual in that it did not impose a so-called “peace obligation” of the kind common in legislation that was more focused on the objective of forestalling industrial action. Under the Saskatchewan Act, unionized workers could reopen negotiations or take industrial action during the life of a collective agreement. It is somewhat difficult to gauge the significance of this distinction in practice. The majority of trade unions bound themselves in their collective agreements not to take industrial action during the life of the agreement, but to make use of a system of grievance arbitration instead, and wildcat strikes have not in any case been a prominent feature of the Saskatchewan industrial relations scene. The absence until the 1980s of any provision making arbitration compulsory, however, is indicative of the priority accorded in the legislation to collective bargaining rights as opposed to industrial harmony.

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A third distinctive feature of the 1944 legislation was that it addressed the issue of union security in a new way, as Saskatchewan became the first Canadian jurisdiction to provide for the deduction by employers of union dues for all employees in a certified bargaining unit.17 Despite the groundbreaking nature of the legislation, and the overt support it provided to trade unions, there was relatively little resistance to it. There was, to be sure, some overheated rhetoric, as employers commented that the statute was “discriminatory, class legislation of a coercive and punitive nature,” and thundered, “it is inconceivable that any government in a British country could seriously bring before the legislature a proposal of this kind. The bill outrages every principle of British justice.”18 There was, however, no concerted campaign opposing the legislation on the part of employers. This was perhaps because, just as geographical separation and small numbers made it difficult for employees to work in solidarity on issues that were important to them, the small scale of Saskatchewan enterprises and the limited degree of commonality in their interests hampered the development of a common front with respect to the new legislation. The muted level of employer response can certainly not be explained by any optimism on their part that the government would not lend full support to the new legislation. One of the early acts of the new Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board was to place a box factory in Prince Albert under government trusteeship as a remedy for a failure to bargain in good faith on the part of this employer. Though the ccf government supported public ownership in principle and in practice, the acquisition of a small enterprise of this kind was not an experience they relished, and they divested themselves of the factory within a relatively short time. This event did demonstrate, however, somewhat to the surprise of labour and other enthusiasts for the legislation, that the government was willing to back up the statute when the need arose, notwithstanding the fact that the needs of labour were not usually the first item on the government agenda. It may seem paradoxical that a piece of legislation that incorporated many features borrowed from an American model and that was drafted by two outsiders driven by conceptual and ideological aims not directly inspired by the local context should become so clearly identified as characteristic of Saskatchewan. This slight and open-textured statute,19 administered by a pragmatic and conscientious labour-relations board, and linked to a specialized

The Prairie Face of Labour

Department of Labour, proved to be a flexible basis for addressing collectivebargaining issues. By the time the Trade Union Act was enacted, and certainly in the period after 1945, the labour movement was undergoing significant change. The industrial unions affiliated with the Canadian Congress of Labour (ccl) replaced the tlc craft unions as the dominant force in the labour movement across Canada, including Saskatchewan. The ccl organized the first Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (sfl) in 1944 to create a unified voice for ccl affiliates. Though the tlc organized a rival body in 1953, this failed to have a marked effect before the merger of the ccl and the tlc into the Canadian Labour Congress (clc) in 1956. The sfl was the first of the provincial federations to welcome the old tlc craft unions into their organization.20 The relationship between labour and the provincial government was not always harmonious, especially in the case of the large proportion of Saskatchewan workers who were employed in the public sector. Nonetheless, the labour movement did identify its fortunes more closely with those of the governing party, particularly once the ccf at the national level became a “labour” party with the New Democratic Party (ndp) label in 1960, and the industrial union groups did not have the same repugnance for partisan political activity that the older craft unions had displayed. In light of this identification of labour’s interests along party lines, it was perhaps natural that the Liberal government of Ross Thatcher elected in 1964 viewed labour issues in a more ideological way than Liberal governments prior to 1944. The Thatcher government made some changes to the Trade Union Act that were explicitly “pro-business” and favourable to employers, including placing the onus on the union to establish a wrongful motive in the dismissal of an employee and extending the scope for employer communication with employees about issues related to union activity. It was also to be expected that the ndp government under Allan Blakeney, elected in 1971, would reverse these changes. The Blakeney government also introduced further legislative innovations on labour issues. Among changes made in the Trade Union Act was the addition of an unusual technologicalchange provision. Under this clause, an employer was required to provide ninety days’ notice to the trade union representing their employees of any proposed changes that would introduce technology or would otherwise have a significant impact on the workforce; during this period, the union could ask to bargain about the change.

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The government also established a new bargaining regime in the construction industry under which a group of employers in a sector defined by trade jurisdictions would bargain a single agreement with the union representing employees in that trade. This legislation eventually came under heavy criticism from both employers and unions; employers objected to the limitations placed on them by mandatory sectoral bargaining, and unions thought the statute provided insufficient protection against “double-breasting”—the creation by contractors of separate non-union companies. It was, however, an experiment that was repeated in the 1990s with the passage of a new and somewhat modified version of the Construction Industry Labour Relations Act. Outside the sphere of collective bargaining covered by the Trade Union Act, the Blakeney government also introduced pioneering legislation. Revisions to the Labour Standards Act introduced three weeks of vacation as the minimum for all workers. The occupational health and safety legislation was revamped as well to consolidate earlier statutes dealing with workplace safety issues. This new legislation also created a new consultative framework in which employees would participate in the resolution of health and safety matters through workplace committees on which both employers and employees, whether unionized or not, would be represented. In addition, workers were granted the right to refuse unsafe work under certain conditions. These initiatives to improve labour standards and enhance the ability of workers to exercise their rights under the Trade Union Act did not mean that the relationship between organized labour and the Blakeney government was altogether peaceful. Indeed, the anti-government campaign resulting from the decision to legislate a group of health-care workers back to work has been identified as one of the factors that contributed to the victory of the Conservative party under Grant Devine in the 1982 provincial election. The Conservatives again had promised to take steps to modify labour legislation in response to representations from employers. The amendments to the Trade Union Act redefined the kinds of communication by employers that would be objectionable, placed new restrictions on the conduct of strikes, limited the power of unions to discipline their members, and focused attention on the procedural and constitutional obligations of trade unions towards those employees represented by them. Most important, in symbolic terms, was the decision to prevent strikes during the course of a collective agreement. These changes were by no means as far-reaching as the neo-conservative rhetoric used by some employers and government representatives in the public debate

The Prairie Face of Labour

on labour issues may have led unions to expect, and the basic shape of the statutory regime was little altered. The amendments did, however, signal government sympathy for employer resistance to collective bargaining aspirations on the part of employees. The labour movement was therefore hopeful that the election of the ndp in 1991 would lead to improvements in labour legislation and in government support for the labour cause. The government of Roy Romanow was somewhat cautious about making wholesale changes in labour legislation, as it was their ambition to encourage economic development in the province. In any case, they were preoccupied with addressing Saskatchewan’s desperate fiscal situation. The government established a tripartite committee to review the Trade Union Act, hoping that this forum would foster discussions leading to a consensus on any amendments to be made. This proved to be optimistic, and the review committee in the end submitted three different sets of recommendations. These recommendations were in turn reviewed by a three-person committee. A complicated sectoral system of consultation was set up to review the Labour Standards Act, and a review was also conducted of the occupational health and safety legislation. With the exception of a new statute in the construction industry, the new legislative measures were delayed until 1994. Though the government had approached the matter of labour reform in a measured way, the new legislation still showed signs of the interest in innovation that had motivated previous Saskatchewan governments. Pressure from the labour movement failed to convince the government to include such things as “anti-scab” provisions among the amendments to the Trade Union Act, but the amended Act did provide for interest arbitration in connection with a first contract and eliminated the concept of “termination” of a collective agreement.21 Both these changes had important symbolic value for trade unions. In amending the Occupational Health and Safety Act, Saskatchewan became the first province to include a provision that defined workplace harassment, including all kinds of personal harassment, as an issue of employee health and safety, to be dealt with through the administrative structure provided for addressing other safety questions. Representatives of workers also heralded an amendment to the Labour Standards Act that would entitle part-time workers to claim the “most available

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hours” on the basis of their length of service. This section was included in the Act when it was passed, but it was exempted when the statute was proclaimed, and was ultimately repealed in 2005, over the vociferous objections of labour. The government also withdrew a proposed amendment that would have extended the minimum wage to babysitters. What has been laid out here is a brief and not a comprehensive history. It does, however, reveal some of the paradoxes of the evolution of labour in Saskatchewan. On the one hand, this is a picture of a place where the labour movement has often been fragmented and divided on questions both of principle and strategy, where the impulses that fuel labour activism seem to have been fairly muted, where relationships with government and employers have generally been more collaborative and courteous than confrontational. For much of Saskatchewan’s century, the challenges of the grain economy and the issues facing a largely rural society have preoccupied successive governments and monopolized public debate, and in this context attention to the peculiar interests of labour has been weak and sporadic. Yet against this backdrop has developed a labour regime that is unlike anything else in the country, and a story that is marked by moments of true innovation with respect to labour issues. The moment that has most often been been alluded to in this respect is 1944, when the first democratic socialist government in Canada permitted a group of eastern lawyers and intellectuals to draft a path-breaking piece of collective-bargaining legislation, and then threw itself behind the implementation and entrenchment of the principles of that legislation. But both before and after 1944, there are other instances of experimentation, of accommodation, of efforts to devise arrangements that would improve the lives of workers and contribute to the stability and prosperity of the province. Though these developments have not had a high profile, they are consistent with, and shed light on, other aspects of the evolution of Saskatchewan as a province.

Notes 1. For a discussion of this period, see W.J.C. Cherwinski, “The Formative Years of the Trade Union Movement in Saskatchewan, 1905–1920,” MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1966, 21–35. 2. W.J.C. Cherwinski, “Organized Labour in Saskatchewan: The TLC Years 1905– 1945” (PhD thesis, University of Alberta, 1972), 277.

The Prairie Face of Labour

3.

Gordon L. Barnhart, “Peace, Progress and Prosperity”: A Biography of Saskatchewan’s First Premier T. Walter Scott (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2000), 76.

4. For a discussion of the circumstances of Prairie farm workers, see Cecilia Danysk, Hired Hands: Labour and the Development of Prairie Agriculture, 1880– 1930 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995). The author points out that a proportion of farm workers on the Prairies did in fact farm their own land, and saw labour on the farms of others as a means of augmenting their income in order to sustain their own farm operation. 5. Tom Mitchell and James Naylor, “The Prairies: The Eye of the Storm,” in Craig Heron, ed., The Workers Revolt in Canada, 1917–1925 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 197. 6. Cherwinski, “Organized Labour,” 279. 7.

[1925] A.C. 396.

8. See Glen Makahonuk, Class, State and Power: The Struggle for Trade Union Rights in Saskatchewan 1905–1977 (Saskatoon: Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 1975, 1997), 10. 9. Ibid., 281. 10. For a discussion of the coal mining strike and the Estevan “riot” of 1931, see Stephen L. Endicott, Bienfait: The Saskatchewan Miners’ Struggle of 1931 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), and Stan Hanson, “The Estevan Strike and Riot, 1931” (MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1971). 11. For a discussion of the actions taken by and on behalf of unemployed workers during the depression, see Bill Waiser, All Hell Can’t Stop Us: The On-to-Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot (Calgary: Fifth House, 2003). 12. Cherwinski, “Organized Labour,” 288. 13. In this system, the union maintained control over the supply of labour and the process of training and qualifying workers, and employers would obtain workers by requesting them from the union. 14. See Trade Union Act, R.S.S. 1978, c. T-17, s. 3. 15. See the web site of the Saskatchewan Government Employees’ Union, available at , consulted 3 June 2004. 16. Larry Haiven, “Saskatchewan: Social Experimentation, Economic Development and the Test of Time,” in Mark Thompson, Joseph B. Rose, and Anthony E. Smith, eds., Beyond the National Divide: Regional Dimensions of Industrial Relations (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 173. This legislation was repealed by the New Democratic Party government under Allan Blakeney in the 1970s. 17. Haiven, “Saskatchewan,” 168.

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18. “‘Class’ Law,” The Leader-Post (Regina), 7 November 1944, quoted in Mariusz Kijkowski, “Charles E. Lindblom’s Pluralism and the 1994 Reform of the Saskatchewan Trade Union Act” (MA thesis, University of Regina, 1997), 16. 19. The statute does not, unlike the legislation of a number of provinces, take the form of a detailed code; it is, rather, a succinct statement of principles. 20. “A Brief History of the Saskatchewan Labour Movement,” Web site of the Union of National Defence Employees, available at , consulted 4 June 2004. 21. The implication of this is that, though a collective agreement may contain an expiry date, the provisions of that agreement will continue in force until a revised agreement is reached through bargaining, and there will never be a period when the employer can unilaterally implement new terms and conditions of employment. Saskatchewan is the only jurisdiction where this is the case.

T h e P e o pl e ’ s U n i v e r s i t y ? T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f S a s k at c h e w a n a n d t h e P r o v i n c e o f S a s k at c h e w a n Michael Hayden

More books have been written about the history of the University of Saskatchewan than about any other Canadian university. Despite all the extant histories, few people, including most alumni, students, administrators, and faculty of the university, realize how unusual that institution once was and how usual it now is. The characterization of the university as “the people’s university” is a case in point. There is no question that the University of Saskatchewan was founded in 1907 as the people’s university, remained such through the next fifty years, and that no other Canadian university can make that claim. Whether the University of Saskatchewan continued to be the people’s university during the following half century and remains so today is the subject of this chapter. “The people’s university” has the ring of trite public relations verbiage about it, like the currently fashionable phrases favoured by university publicists: “cutting edge,” “world class,” and “research-intensive.” The three words were first used publicly to describe the University of Saskatchewan by Walter Murray, its first president. In his initial annual report he wrote, “There should be ever present the consciousness that this is the University of the people, established by the people, and devoted by the people to the advancement of learning and the promotion of happiness and virtue.”1

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On the occasion of the opening of the first buildings of the new university, Walter Scott, the first premier of Saskatchewan, spoke of “the beginning of the home of the people’s University.” He went further and said, “Next to the Legislature of the Province itself this seat of higher learning is the most important institution that Saskatchewan will ever possess.”2 For Walter Scott and Walter Murray, who together could be called the founders of the University of Saskatchewan, the phrase “the people’s university” was not public relations verbiage. They believed sincerely that the university belonged to the people of the province because they paid for it with their taxes. It was the university’s duty to provide the people of the province with postsecondary education and with the specialized training and technical assistance needed to enable them to earn a living and to create and maintain a fully functioning society.3 Murray’s most eloquent statement of the purpose of the University of Saskatchewan came in a speech delivered to the annual convention of the Agricultural Societies of Saskatchewan in 1909: “We should have a University that will leave no calling, no sphere of life untouched; a University that is as broad as these plains, as deep in richness as this marvelous soil, and as stimulating in spirit as the breezes which sweep over our fields.”4 Even earlier, while on his way to Regina for the interview that led to his appointment as president of the newly created University of Saskatchewan, Murray wrote to a friend: “A State university cannot confine itself to the realization of an idea but must serve the many sided life of the community. It must keep in close touch with practical needs and yet must be true to the best University traditions. The problem is a difficult one, yet it must be solved.”5 Murray’s operational interpretation of the words, “the people’s university,” was first expressed publicly in his 1908–09 presidential report: “What is the sphere of the university? Its watchword is service—service of the state in the things that make for happiness and virtue as well as in the things that make for wealth. No form of that service is too mean or too exalted for the university.” Murray continued in the same paragraph of his report: “It is as fitting for the university . . . to place within reach of the solitary student, the distant townsman, the farmer . . . the mothers and daughters . . . the opportunities for adding to their stores of knowledge and enjoyment, as it is that the university should foster researches into the properties of radium or the causes and cure of swamp fever.”6

The People’s University?

In addition to the phrase, “the people’s university,” Walter Murray routinely used three other words that are commonly employed throughout North America to describe the role of a university: teaching, research, and service. Murray, however, habitually qualified his use of these words by adding that the University of Saskatchewan had to meet the specific needs of the people of Saskatchewan. As Murray wrote to a Harvard professor when he was recruiting the first faculty members, he wanted people with a PhD who combined proven research ability with teaching experience and who would continue to develop as scholars. He warned, however, that “mere scholars will not do.” The faculty members he wanted were individuals who could both adapt to and improve the conditions of life in Saskatchewan.7 The University of Saskatchewan was the first Canadian university founded with both a College of Arts and Science and a College of Agriculture located on the same campus. This was done so that the professors and students of both colleges could influence each other and future farmers would learn the sciences to improve their work and the humanities to improve their lives, while nonfarmers would be constantly reminded of the importance of agriculture to the lives of every inhabitant of the province. It was always intended that the University of Saskatchewan should have many professional colleges because it was designed to be the source of all postsecondary education in the province. It took a long time for this goal to be attained.8 The College of Agriculture came at the beginning. The other eleven colleges were founded over time between 1913 and 1973.9 Even though the colleges have always fought among themselves for greater shares of available funding, most faculty members have always recognized the value of the various colleges that exist. A university by definition needs more than one college. Sometimes the nineteenth-century English creation—a university made up of a series of colleges, all of which teach the basic humanities and sciences, is held up as an ideal. But from their mediaeval origins onward the majority of universities in the Western world have combined liberal and professional colleges. Walter Murray believed his university should unite the University of Wisconsin tradition of service as “the scientific arm of the State for Research . . . carrying the benefits of Science to all and sundry in the state,” and as the source of information for governments with the Oxford tradition of “a place for Liberal Culture and preparation for the Learned Professions.” But, he consistently added, the University of Saskatchewan had to be staffed with

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individuals who appreciated Saskatchewan as it actually was and who were willing to provide its people with what they needed to develop fully both a civilization and a modern economy.10 Despite Walter Murray’s conviction that the University of Saskatchewan could be many things to all people in the province, there were a series of tensions present from the founding of the University of Saskatchewan in 1907 that have continued to interfere with that goal. Four of these tensions are especially relevant to the role of the University of Saskatchewan as the people’s university. The first of the tensions was created and is maintained by the attitude of leaders of the city of Regina toward Saskatoon. The second developed between the natural and applied sciences, on one hand, and the other university disciplines, on the other. The third tension is a complicated one that exists between teaching and research and also between those two activities and service. The fourth tension results from the dichotomy between the ideal of university autonomy and the threat of provincial and federal government (and more recently private enterprise) control. The first of the four tensions developed before the university existed. The economic and civic leaders of Regina were convinced that their city deserved the university. The Liberal government, however, was determined to gain political support by spreading out public institutions. Regina was already the seat of the provincial government. Saskatoon got the university, Moose Jaw the normal school, Prince Albert the penitentiary, and North Battleford the mental hospital. Reginans agitated for a university from 1907 until the University of Regina was founded in 1974. From that date to the present the Regina struggle has been to try to obtain the same (or more) resources for the University of Regina as those possessed or gained by the University of Saskatchewan. From the University of Saskatchewan perspective, while there may have been good reasons to develop a strong liberal arts college in Regina, the province does not have the people or the resources to support two fully developed universities.11 The primary tension on campus in the early days of the University of Saskatchewan did not exist between colleges but rather within the largest of them, the College of Arts and Science. The issue was the relative places and consequent funding of the sciences and the humanities. The struggle continues until the present. Over the course of time some of the professional schools

The People’s University?

joined the science side while the fine arts and social sciences became allies of the humanities. Originally, Walter Murray had intended to develop the humanities and sciences together because he believed both had a role in educating students and serving the province. In his report for 1916, however, he wrote that the science departments had received the major attention so far “largely because of their importance for all phases of University work.” He said that he planned to work to develop the “linguistic and humanistic departments” along with “departments in the Social and Political Sciences.”12 Unfortunately, added Murray, this would have to wait until the end of the war. World War I ended, but the science departments insisted that they needed special buildings and expensive equipment and the humanists did not protest loudly enough. Then the engineering building burned down in 1925 and funds were diverted to its immediate replacement. In his 1928–29 presidential report Murray wrote: “The oldest and largest Faculty in the University has become the Cinderella of the University. While provision has been made for the accommodation of the other senior faculties, the members of the Arts Faculty have no common meeting place, nor have they adequate accommodation in the scattered quarters assigned to them on the University campus. Moreover, to the Arts Faculty has been assigned all the preparation and eliminating work required for the other faculties.”13 In 1929 the university was ready to erect the building for humanists (and assorted others) that had been planned as one of the focal points of the campus in 1909. Then came the Depression—the Dirty Thirties. A version of that building was finally built in 1959, but only after the federal government literally forced then President W.P. Thompson, a biologist, to do so or face loss of funding from the Canada Council. Thompson also tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent the development of the social sciences at the University of Saskatchewan because he believed they had nothing of value to offer society. The humanities and social sciences have long since outgrown the Arts Building, which, because of its floor plan, never did provide a “common meeting place” where scholars could interact with each other or with their students. Nevertheless, despite all the construction on campus in the past decade and that planned for the foreseeable future, there is no place for any real improvement of the situation. The only changes have been a few instances of finding places here or there across campus where a few humanists, artists, or social scientists can be fitted in. Lack of funding, of course, restricts the ability

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of these faculty members to serve the people of the province, not only through research, but also through teaching and service. The third major tension connected with the role of the University of Saskatchewan as the university of the people concerns the relative roles of teaching, research, and service. As noted above, these words are commonly used in North America to describe the roles of a university—and they are always listed in the same order with teaching first and service last. There is no doubt that teaching, especially at the undergraduate level, was paramount through the first fifty years of the University of Saskatchewan. Unfortunately, despite a few initiatives such as establishment of the Master Teacher Award and the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness, encouragement of undergraduate teaching in reasonably sized classes by tenured professors has not been a priority at the University of Saskatchewan in living memory.14 Despite the important roles of teaching and service in the early days of the University of Saskatchewan, research has always been a part of life throughout the university, not just in the sciences. Nevertheless, before the mid-1960s research activity was concentrated in several of the sciences, as well as in history, economics, and political science. From the mid-1960s through most of the 1990s, involvement in research spread to many more parts of the university, despite a chronic lack of funding and heavy teaching loads in many colleges. The spread of research is still uneven across departments and colleges, but involvement in research or, rather, securing of external research grants has become a prerequisite for advancement in what is now unflinchingly selfdescribed as a “research intensive university.”15 As for service—since the 1930s it has always come last at the University of Saskatchewan. In most other North American universities, service has always come last. From 1907 through the 1920s this was not the case at the University of Saskatchewan. From the beginning it was recognized both by politicians and by university leaders that education, training, and technical assistance would have to take place not only on campus but throughout the province. In the early years a special appropriation for extension activities was provided by the government, but, as Walter Murray soon complained, there was never enough money. Nevertheless, the university continued to provide these services as an essential part of its mission by diverting funds from other parts of its budget. The golden years of university extension work in Saskatchewan came during the two decades between the opening of the University of Saskatchewan in

The People’s University?

1909 and the coming of the Depression at the end of 1929. The first faculty members of the College of Agriculture concentrated heavily on extension work until the college began accepting students in 1912. After that date extension continued as an important part of the life of the college. The best-known example of this activity was the Better Farming Train that toured the province during the years from 1914 to 1922. Other activities included short courses, institutes, and exhibitions held throughout Saskatchewan. Until the 1930s all professors were expected to be involved in extension work. An Extension Department was established in 1910 and the government turned its agricultural extension work over to it. Unfortunately, this department gained a bad name because its director played a key role in accusing Walter Murray of illegal activity, which led to a very difficult moment in the history of the University of Saskatchewan in 1919. After this, extension activities were reorganized and the department was active throughout the province during the 1920s. An important and influential part of its activities was sponsorship of homemakers clubs for women and farm camps for rural children. During the 1920s and 1930s one of the policies of the College of Agriculture created a long-standing problem for the University of Saskatchewan and its extension programs. The College of Agriculture did not oppose the then current orthodoxy of encouraging methods of agricultural production that rapidly depleted the soil. According to at least two members of the agricultural faculty in the 1920s, both of whom subsequently resigned, this policy contributed to what became the disaster of the 1930s when Saskatchewan went through a long drought. Partial solutions to the urgent problems facing farmers in the Dirty Thirties came from scientists at the federal government research stations. From the beginning the faculty of the College of Agriculture concentrated on collecting information to provide the basis for future solutions for problems that became too real too soon, while the dean of the college concentrated on developing well-bred farm horses. Substantial anecdotal evidence indicates that, as a result, a residue of resentment directed toward the “professors” at the University of Saskatchewan can still be found in various places in the province. On the positive side during the 1930s, the College of Agriculture and the Extension Department developed Field Days and Farm and Home Week, and continued the agricultural camps for boys and girls. In recent years the College of Agriculture has been active in promoting improved tillage methods and organic farming among other endeavours and has improved its contact with farmers through the use of modern communication technology.

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During the 1930s the University of Saskatchewan cut its extension budget as it cut everything.16 Then, immediately after World War II, a choice was made to use university funds to provide the infrastructure for research in a broad range of scientific areas rather than to fund extension work adequately. The pressure to do this came from newer faculty members who had been trained as research scientists and also from the availability of a significant amount of federal money to support such research—as long as the university provided the infrastructure such as labs, heat, and electricity. From the mid-1940s through the 1970s, scientists were very influential both in administration and in faculty affairs at the University of Saskatchewan. This led to research and publication becoming recognized as the means to obtain promotion and salary increases, rather than teaching or public service. The faculty in the sciences also wanted graduate students to help them carry out their research. As a result, university funds were diverted to the development of what eventually became the College of Graduate Studies in 1946. These developments continued despite the recommendations of bodies such as the Royal Commission on Agriculture and Rural Life in the mid1950s that the University of Saskatchewan should rededicate itself to community service. The only changes in the extension field were that the name of the department was changed from Agricultural Extension to Extension and the until then separate organization known as Women’s Work was amalgamated with it. Adult education programs were supposed to be developed, but adequate funding was not provided by the university. In the 1960s, as the university expanded rapidly, a new generation of faculty was hired to do research (largely theoretical in nature), to publish, and to teach (in moderation). These new faculty members were not told about the long history of extension work and applied research at the University of Saskatchewan, nor were most of them, outside the College of Agriculture, assigned any extension duties. Evidently, senior faculty and administrators wanted to make the University of Saskatchewan what they considered to be a “real” university—one that emphasized research. In addition, there was less demand for the “general education” type of public lectures as the rural population declined, automobiles and improved roads made travel easier, entertainment opportunities increased, and television became common. To obtain government funding to develop a university that emphasized theoretical research, administrators at the University of Saskatchewan, as was the case throughout North America, made a very serious mistake, perhaps

The People’s University?

their worst to date. They promised politicians and parents that a university education guaranteed jobs for young people. This promise brought money for expansion in the 1960s, but has haunted universities ever since—they could not deliver on their promise. This contributed to governments’ decision to cut university funding in the 1970s, as the economy ran into serious problems and politicians faced growing demands for expanded and improved health care and social services. The situation was not helped by the fact that many faculty members were much more interested in research and publication than in redesigning universities to improve teaching, help create jobs, or provide service to the community through extension work. The era of the ivory tower university and consequent decreasing public respect had arrived. A constant theme throughout the last thirty years of cutbacks has been “Should the University of Saskatchewan have a formally organized group of employees whose duties are related to extension? If so, how should their activities be funded? What should this organization be called and what should be the status of those who staff it?” Until recently, every time these questions were asked, the answer has been that the University of Saskatchewan should be involved in extension work, but preferably someone other than the university should pay for it. Unfortunately, no one else was willing to pay. The government became much less interested once it took back agricultural extension work for itself in 1933 as a way to create a good relationship with rural communities. When community colleges (later called regional colleges) were created, there was even less reason for governments to fund university extension work. During the past quarter century and more, most faculty members have had no connection with extension work and have not been sympathetic to its goals or its practitioners, especially when it has come to sharing steadily decreasing resources for research and as the size of classes on campus has continued to grow. Administrators were not much interested in extension. It seemed like a good place to cut—hardly anyone on campus would care and, therefore, their lives would be easier. A positive trend in extension work in the past twenty-five years was the development, beginning in the late 1980s, of distance education especially through televised and, later, online education with both credit and non-credit offerings. The effort expended in this area by the university’s Division of Media and Technology and by the Extension Division has borne fruit. A spinoff of these activities has been the creation of a growing number of classrooms on

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campus that are equipped with state-of-the-art audiovisual facilities. Unfortunately, the Extension Division has been eliminated. The extent to which the new, entirely cost-recovery, Centre for Continuing and Distance Education will replace it remains to be seen. The fourth of the tensions is that between university autonomy and the desire for control by government or business. University autonomy was important to the two founding Walters—Murray and Scott—and the degree of autonomy granted originally to the University of Saskatchewan contributed significantly to making it, once upon a time, an unusual university. The original University Act gave ultimate academic decision-making power to a senate, elected by university alumni, which also chose the majority of members of the board of governors. In addition, the university was guaranteed part of its core funding. The latter provision disappeared in 1920. Effective academic power was transferred fairly quickly to the faculty council, but the senate continued to choose the majority of the board. That was changed by the province’s first ccf government in 1946. The move to what amounted to government control of a majority of the board had the support of a significant number of faculty members who believed that a new era of a university-friendly government was at hand. That did not come to pass, especially during the years when the ccf or its successor, the ndp, were in power. One of the long-term effects of this restriction on university autonomy was that the politicians in power were more able to push the university in directions they wanted, whether through the board or by withholding or directing money. In 1941 Walter Murray described the importance of the original Saskatchewan plan for protecting university autonomy by making some of its funding automatic: “A state university cannot presumably defy the will of the people expressed through the government, of course, but it may escape the caprices of a single session or the petty threats of a government which wishes to express displeasure over actions or statements that a professor or official may make.”17 As scientific research has become more and more expensive, both the federal and provincial governments and private corporations have been asked for, and have provided, research funding. A problem with this is that those who pay have the ability to direct the scope and aims of the research, specifically toward the short-term achievement of so-called practical goals. As a result, curiosity-driven research, which has been responsible for most of the breakthroughs that have improved the health and welfare of humans and has

The People’s University?

provided an understanding of the universe and its inhabitants, is either not being done or has had to be hidden in funding applications for the types of research that governments and companies are willing to support. Applied research has always been part of the life of the University of Saskatchewan and government suggestions in this area have always been welcomed, but the freedom of university faculty to be guided by their expertise toward the most fruitful types of research is now threatened. In constant dollars, university funding in Saskatchewan was almost continuously cut from the early 1970s onward, despite the creation of an independent University of Regina in 1974 and the overall significant increase in student enrolment.18 This led to twenty years of efforts to reposition the University of Saskatchewan to ensure that it will have adequate funding either through an increase in public support or through increased government and private-sector funding. Until Walter Murray retired in 1937, there was little change in the University of Saskatchewan, except that governments had become less willing to let the university control its own destiny. This process continued through the 1970s as the University of Regina developed and became independent, and the Universities Commission, appointed by the government, took charge of university planning. With the disappearance of the Universities Commission, planning returned to the University of Saskatchewan with the creation of Issues and Options in 1985. Despite lack of support from most administrators and the belief of many faculty that no planning was necessary, Issues and Options produced a number of studies of the possible future of the University of Saskatchewan that were innovative yet fit the university’s tradition. Unfortunately, the process took too long as its leaders sought the “perfect” final report. In 1990 a new president disbanded Issues and Options and began a planning process that still continues. What began as an information-gathering exercise became an effort to re-emphasize the importance of teaching in a university that was aware of its responsibilities to the people of the province. The result was the university’s mission statement of 1993. After this, the process was more and more led by people who, at crucial moments, were neglectful of the University of Saskatchewan tradition. Planning became an attempt to create a research institution concentrating on selected sciences, while paying only lip service to other disciplines and to the traditional teaching and service functions of the University of Saskatchewan.

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The years 1994 and 1995 saw the work of the Academic Planning and Priorities Committee of Council and the development of the Program Audit Project. While these were working their way through the system, a new planning initiative was developing that resulted in the March 1998 document, A Framework for Planning at the University of Saskatchewan. In February 1999 the Systematic Program Review burst upon the scene. June 2000 saw faculty council’s endorsement of an increase in “research intensiveness” at the University of Saskatchewan. Buttressing these efforts were the new standards for tenure and promotion of February 2002. Later in 2002 the “Integrated Planning Process for Priority Setting” was announced. The whole process was woven together in the same year with President Peter MacKinnon’s document, Strategic Directions: Renewing the Dream, and put into practice with the 2003 to 2007 Integrated Plan and multi-year budget. What had happened was that the central administrators of the university decided that the university had to find a significant amount of money to rebuild decaying infrastructure, provide space for students, and hire new faculty to replace the rapidly retiring large cohort who had been hired in the 1960s as the university expanded. Since the only sources of this money were the federal and provincial governments and private enterprise, the price to be paid was concentration on research that promised immediate concrete results. That was the new governmental requirement for funding. Those who remember the trade-off with governments that allowed the expansion of the 1960s—money for jobs—shudder to think what the cost to the University of Saskatchewan will be this time. The move of the University of Saskatchewan to the selfdeclared status of a “research intensive” university was aided by the coming of the first Canadian synchrotron, dubbed “The Canadian Light Source.” The campaign to obtain this significant piece of research equipment began with the well-intentioned efforts of the head of the campus-based Saskatchewan Linear Accelerator to find jobs for his research staff when the National Science and Engineering Research Council announced that it would no longer fund the accelerator. University of Saskatchewan president George Ivany joined the effort to convince local and provincial business persons and politicians that a synchrotron would be of great benefit to the economy of Saskatoon and Saskatchewan. After a long and intense campaign of political and scientific lobbying the synchrotron came to the University of Saskatchewan. This research instrument enables cutting-edge research, but much of it will be done by scientists

The People’s University?

from other institutions or for the benefit of private companies located outside Saskatchewan. Neither the scientists nor the companies will be buying houses, buildings, or supplies in Saskatoon. Despite government grants for operating funds (whose continuation is not guaranteed beyond five years) and private investment, the University of Saskatchewan had to find money internally to support the operation at the beginning and may well have to find significantly more in the future. This, combined with the funnelling of scarce resources to synchrotron-related disciplines, has had a significant detrimental effect on the university’s other academic and community programs, many of which have been forced to accept significant budget cuts and hiring freezes. Unfortunately, the majority of the university’s students study everything except the nowfavoured synchrotron-related sciences. Now that the province of Saskatchewan and the University of Saskatchewan have celebrated their 100th anniversaries, a question needs to be asked. What should be the future direction of the University of Saskatchewan? It could be the Athens of the Prairies—a university that emphasizes research for the sake of research while letting teaching and service take care of themselves. This was the goal of the university’s leaders in the late 1950s and 1960s. It could be the Sparta of the North—a university that concentrates on the research that politicians and businesses will support while providing limited funding and encouragement for teaching and largely ignoring service. This seems to be the goal of the present-day central administration of the university. Or it could reclaim its original role as the people’s university—a university that truly combines research, teaching, and service to provide the people of Saskatchewan with what they need to build and maintain society by encouraging and supporting theoretical and applied research, and general and specific education, in the natural and social sciences, the humanities, and the fine arts, as well as community and personal development, both on and off campus. There is no sense in pretending that it would be an easy task for the University of Saskatchewan to become once again the people’s university. But if faculty and administrators, supported by the board and senate, wanted to achieve this goal, they could do so. There is no question that provincial funding has been decreasing and that federal funding and an increasing percentage of provincial funding are directed to research, especially research that promises relatively immediate concrete results applicable to perceived current problems. Additional funding would

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have to be found, perhaps most easily from alumni, to support the improvement of teaching on and off campus. There is no doubt that the needs of the people of the province of Saskatchewan are different from what they were in the first half of the twentieth century. Initiatives already exist in a number of colleges and departments, covering a wide range of disciplines, that are directed at meeting the practical needs of all the people of Saskatchewan, rural and urban, female or male, of every ethnic group. Creative ways need to be found to encourage these programs. There is no doubt that most faculty have become accustomed to emphasizing research, and that innovative means would have to be found to encourage the revival of teaching by all faculty members. More realistic would be a program that would allow those who most want to teach to concentrate on that activity, while those who most want to do research would concentrate in that area. Both groups would do some teaching and some research, and both groups would be rewarded equally. The problems exist. But the result of solving them would be a revived University of Saskatchewan that could take pride in its many achievements, instead of concentrating on only a few areas of research while largely ignoring the intellectual interests and needs of the vast majority of undergraduate students and the people of Saskatchewan.

Notes 1.

University of Saskatchewan, President’s Report, 1908–09, 12. For the early history of the University of Saskatchewan, see A.S. Morton, Saskatchewan: The Making of a University (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959). For its history from its remote origins to the early 1980s, see Michael Hayden, Seeking a Balance: The University of Saskatchewan, 1907–1982 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1983). See also Michael Taft, Inside These Greystone Walls: An Anecdotal History of the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 1984). Where sources for statements are not given in this article, readers are referred to Seeking a Balance for the evidence upon which they are based.

2.

Quoted in University of Saskatchewan, President’s Report, 1912–13, 1913–14, 1.

The People’s University?

3. For Walter Scott, see Gordon Barhhart, Peace, Progress and Prosperity: A Biography of Saskatchewan’s First Premier, Walter T. Scott (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2000). For Walter Murray, see David R. Murray and Robert Murray, The Prairie Builder: Walter Murray of Saskatchewan (Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1984). Neither Scott nor Murray left any extended account of his career. Three of the later presidents did so: James S. Thompson, Yesteryears at the University of Saskatchewan, 1937–1949 (Saskatoon: Modern Press, 1969); W.P. Thompson, The University of Saskatchewan: A Personal History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), which covers the years 1907 to 1959; J.W.T. Spinks, A Decade of Change: The University of Saskatchewan, 1959–1970 (Saskatoon: Mercury Printers, 1972), and Two Blades of Grass: An Autobiography (Saskatoon: Prairie Books, 1980). 4.

Quoted in the film, Saskatchewan: Our University, produced for the fiftieth anniversary of the university in 1959.

5.

Quoted in Hayden, Seeking a Balance, 23.

6.

President’s Report, 1908–09, 11.

7.

Quoted in Hayden, Seeking a Balance, 50.

8. Among the histories of the professional colleges that make up the University of Saskatchewan, the College of Medicine has had the most written about it. See Douglas J. Buchan, Greenhouse to Medical Centre: Saskatchewan’s Medical School, 1926–1978 (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 1983), and Louis Horlick, Medical College to Community Resource: Saskatchewan’s Medical School, 1978–1998 (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 1998). See also Christopher Bigland, WCVM, The First Decade and More: The History of the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 1990), and R.H. Macdonald, Thorough: An Illustrated History of the College of Engineering, 1912–1982 (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 1982). Among the federated and affiliated colleges, only one has a published history, Margaret Sanche, Heartwood: A History of St. Thomas More College and Newman Centre at the University of Saskatchewan (Muenster, SK: St. Peter’s Press, 1986). Two departmental histories have been formally published: Balfour Currie, Physics Department, 1910–1976, University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 1976), and Shirley Spafford, No Ordinary Academics: Economics and Political Science at the University of Saskatchewan, 1910–1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). 9.

The list of colleges and dates of founding are Arts and Science and Agriculture (1907), Law (1912), Engineering (department 1912, school 1914, college 1921), Pharmacy (school 1913, college 1921), Education (department 1913, school 1927, college 1946), Commerce (school 1917, college 1936), Home Economics (department 1917, college 1942, disbanded 1990), Medicine (school 1926, college 1946), Physical Education (now Kinesiology) (department 1931, school 1958, college 1972), Nursing (school 1938, college 1973), Graduate Studies (1946), Veterinary Medicine (1964), and Dentistry (1965).

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10. Walter Murray to President Falconer of the University of Toronto, 22 February 1930. Quoted in Hayden, Seeking a Balance, 36. 11. For the early history of the University of Regina, see James M. Pitsula, An Act of Faith: The Early Years of Regina College (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1988), and As One Who Serves: The Making of the University of Regina (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), and W.A. Riddell, The First Decade: A History of the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus, 1960–1970 (n.p., n.d). Pitsula created his own myth by describing the University of Saskatchewan’s goals of being politically independent and the sole university in the province as a myth designed to mislead the people and politicians of Saskatchewan. See James Pitsula, “Higher Education Policy in Saskatchewan and the Legacy of Myth,” The Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy, Public Policy Paper 12 (February 2003). His paper, my reaction to it, his response to my reaction, and my reply to his response can be found in SIPP Policy Paper 15 (May 2003), “Saskatchewan’s Universities—A Perception of History.” Professor Pitsula recycled his original article, almost word for word, in “History, Myth and the University of Saskatchewan, 1907–1974,” Saskatchewan History 55 (2003): 27–41, but did not cite either its earlier appearance or my reaction to it. See also Saskatchewan History 56 (2004): 2. 12. Quoted in Hayden, Seeking a Balance, 49. 13. Quoted in ibid., 138. 14. One example of ways in which other Canadian universities have made teaching a priority can be found in Pierre Zundel, “Nurture Your Teachers and Help Them Grow,” University Affairs (January 2003): 4–19. 15. For research and its relationship to teaching and service before the mid-1960s, see Carlyle King, The First Fifty: Teaching, Research and Publication at the University of Saskatchewan, 1909–1959 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959), and Extending the Boundaries: Scholarship and Research at the University of Saskatchewan, 1909–1966 (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 1967). For the period 1960 to 1982, see Hayden, Seeking a Balance, 291–317. See also the annual reports of the President (and, for the years 1968 to 1974, the annual reports of the Principal of the Saskatoon campus) available in the University of Saskatchewan Archives. 16. For an interesting treatment of the effect of Walter Murray’s policies on the failure of the University of Saskatchewan to take an important role in solving the problems of Saskatchewan in the 1930s, see Roger Petry, “Walter Murray and the State University: The Response of the University of Saskatchewan to the Great Depression, 1930–1937,” Saskatchewan History 56 (2004): 5–23. 17. W.C. Murray, “The University of Saskatchewan,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd ser., sec. 2, 35 (1941): 103.

The People’s University?

18. The university’s failure to keep its jobs promise and the competing claims of health care started the process. The 1995 cut in federal transfer payments to provinces for post-secondary education was the crowning blow.

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S c i e n c e i n S a s k at c h e w a n : T h e E a r ly Y e a r s R o b e r t J . Wo o d s

On 22 October 2004, the Canadian Light Source (cls), Canada’s largest science project in a generation, was officially opened in Saskatoon. The cls is a world-class synchrotron capable of generating extremely brilliant light1 for studies in a broad range of disciplines from chemistry and physics to biology and medicine. The breadth of support for this prairie science venture was remarkable. The project received backing from all three levels of government, industry, and twenty-seven Canadian universities. Completion of the cls will be a lasting legacy for science in Saskatchewan—a legacy from the scientists who laid the foundations for the sciences in the province to their successors who planned and will use the facility. Events that led to the synchrotron’s being located in Saskatoon date back to the late 1920s when physics professor E.L. Harrington began research on the medical uses of radiation. The original sources of radiation in 1931 were radium and its daughter element radon, supplemented in 1935 with a 400-kVp radiotherapy x-ray unit, and in 1949 with a 24-MeV betatron. The betatron was used under the guidance of Professor Harold Johns for both physics research and cancer treatment. In 1964, a higher energy (150 MeV) machine in a new facility, the Linear Accelerator Laboratory, was officially opened on the campus for research in nuclear physics. Some thirty years later the same

234 Perspectives of Saskatchewan

linear accelerator was retired as a research tool and refurbished to become the first stage of the 3000-MeV synchrotron. Many individuals contributed to the foundations of science in Saskatchewan. In the agricultural field, Dr. Walter Murray, the first president of the university, initiated studies to develop rust-resistant wheat for the Prairies. John Bracken was the first professor of field husbandry and established a scientific basis for crop production on the Prairies. The Department of Soil Science at the university was established in 1919, and has been led by a number of distinguished scientists. Prominent among them was John Mitchell, who later gave his name to the building housing the department. In the physical sciences, Professor Thorbergur Thorvaldson became an international authority on the chemistry of cement, while Professor Balfour Currie was well known for his studies on the aurora and climatology. The latter studies led to establishment of the Institute of Upper Atmospheric Physics at the university, and later to commercial applications by sed Systems. In physiology, Professor L.B. Jaques earned an international reputation for his work on blood clotting, an offshoot of which was identification of the cause of sweet clover disease in Saskatchewan farm animals. The list of contributors and fields of study is endless, and it is impossible in a short review to do justice to all but a few pioneering scientists. This chapter, therefore, concentrates on a single discipline, chemistry, and attempts to show how chemists contributed to the province through the years from 1909 to 1966. Any one of the other agricultural, medical, or science disciplines could equally well have been chosen to show how the sciences developed and contributed to the province during its early years. The chapter looks at the profession of chemistry in Saskatchewan over the first decades of the twentieth century. In the early years most of the chemists employed in the province were associated with the Department of Chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan, and the department is therefore used as the basis for the review. The other sciences followed similar paths and, like chemistry, built on the foundations established by pioneering scientists during the opening years of the century. Chemistry is a central science in the sense that it has links to the other sciences and to many everyday activities. Organic chemistry and biochemistry, for example, deal with the properties and reactions of materials containing the element carbon, a vast group that includes the components of living systems, foodstuffs, drugs, polymers, and much else. Inorganic chemistry deals primarily

Science in Saskatchewan: The Early Years

with the other elements and includes metals, gases (even if they do contain carbon), minerals, and construction materials such as glass and concrete. Physical chemistry looks at the way atoms are bonded together to form molecules and the way molecules react with one another to form new molecules in chemical reactions. Analytical chemistry determines the chemical composition of materials, and contributes to the analytical work necessary in occupations as varied as engineering, health, and mining. Students from the colleges of agriculture, dentistry, education, engineering, graduate studies and research, kinesiology, medicine, nursing, and pharmacy and nutrition, in addition to students registered in the College of Arts and Science, all take classes taught by the Department of Chemistry. Before the University of Saskatchewan came into existence in 1909, science on the Prairies was almost certainly restricted to a few interested amateurs: farmers, physicians, veterinarians, and others who found the scientific advances of the day interesting and on occasion applicable to their own activities. The unstructured nature of Prairie science changed when the university came into being. The arrival of professional scientists provided teachers and researchers to teach, inform, and address local topics of interest. The first professional chemists coming to Saskatchewan were employed by the new university in Saskatoon. They brought to the province expertise and experience gained in the established universities of eastern Canada, the United States, and Europe. As the years passed, the University of Saskatchewan returned the favour and sent well-trained students back for advanced studies to the same eastern, American, and European universities that had trained their teachers. Some students returned to Saskatchewan to furnish the next generation of university teachers, while others went into agriculture, industry, teaching, and the whole range of occupations that benefit from a sound university education and training in the disciplines of science. From the earliest days university staff provided advice, tackled problems facing their communities, and carried out research (the process of trying to discover facts by critical investigation). The range of courses taught and research carried out grew as the university became larger and the numbers of students increased. The growth was enhanced following each of the world wars, though held in check by the Depression of the 1930s. The directions taken are a reflection of the backgrounds and interests of the talented and dedicated scientists working in Saskatchewan over the years.

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The Chemistry Department and Its Faculty

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan was established in 1910 with the appointment of Dr. R.D. MacLaurin as professor of chemistry. Dr. MacLaurin was joined in 1912 by Dr. L.L. Burgess as assistant professor. The year 1912 was memorable for the Department of Chemistry as it was able to move out of temporary accommodation in the town into the basement of the university’s recently completed Administration Building, to a larger space that included a lecture room and a laboratory for forty students. The two chemistry professors offered a range of chemistry classes whose titles would be familiar to first- and second-year students of chemistry today: introductory, analytical, inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry, and biochemistry. The success of the new classes can be gauged by the fact that another large basement laboratory was opened in 1913, in part to allow special chemistry classes for agricultural students and to provide space for an extensive program of analytical work for the College of Agriculture. Provision of special classes for students from other colleges (agriculture, engineering, medicine, home economics, among others) became normal practice for science departments in the College of Arts and Science. These classes were clearly of value to the colleges and students involved, but were also instrumental in building valuable bridges between the client colleges and the departments giving the instruction. Since the new University of Saskatchewan had no graduates of its own to hire as teaching staff, teachers were of necessity trained elsewhere. The chemistry department appears to owe a considerable debt to Harvard as a source of well-trained faculty (the first three faculty appointed, MacLaurin, Burgess, and Thorvaldson, were post-graduate students at Harvard), though other universities in Canada, the United States, Britain, and Germany also provided valuable experience. Germany was a particularly desirable training ground for chemists at the time since it already had well-established schools of chemistry and a long history of chemical research. In 1914, Dr. Thorbergur Thorvaldson joined the chemistry department after studies at Harvard, Liverpool, and Dresden. T.T., as he was affectionately called by his colleagues and students, became head of the department in 1919, and was to remain with the department for the next forty-five years as head and emeritus professor. A dedicated teacher, researcher, and administrator, Dr. Thorvaldson’s first concerns were always his students and the well-being of his department. The development of post-graduate programs at the University of

Science in Saskatchewan: The Early Years

Saskatchewan was largely the result of his efforts, and he served as the first dean of the College of Graduate Studies. He retired as head of the chemistry department and dean of graduate studies in 1949, but continued to be active in research until shortly before his death in 1965. Steward Basterfield also joined the department in 1914. He was appointed as an instructor to teach the first chemistry classes to students in the newly opened School of Pharmacy. The original members of the faculty of chemistry (Dr. R.J. Manning having replaced Dr. Burgess in 1916) expanded and taught the chemistry classes and laboratories during World War I without the help of assistants, a tribute to their dedication and hard work. Dr. Manning was appointed to teach organic and biochemistry. Biochemistry appears to have been part of the chemistry department’s curriculum from its earliest days, probably because of the department’s close association with the College of Agriculture. However, when Dr. Manning retired in 1946, a separate Department of Biochemistry was created to serve the proposed new medical school. Following the armistice in 1918, the university grew to accommodate the returning servicemen and to meet the expanding needs of Saskatchewan. The chemistry department added seven new instructors and professors between 1918 and 1923 to augment the four faculty who had carried the load during the war years.2 One new appointment was Dr. C.N. Cameron. Dr. Cameron had been a member of the first graduating class from the University of Saskatchewan. He was an honours graduate in classics, fought for three years during World War I, returned to the university to complete a Master’s program in chemistry, and later completed his doctoral program at the University of Chicago. In subsequent years, the path pioneered by Dr. Cameron was followed by other Saskatchewan graduates3 who returned to join the faculty after completing post-graduate work elsewhere. The growing number of staff and students working in the department inevitably led to increasing demands for office, lecture, and laboratory space that could not be met by appropriating extra basement rooms in the Administration Building. Plans were therefore drawn up for a new building to house the chemistry, pharmacy, and soils departments. This was to be an imposing building with a central tower, a large lecture theatre on the first floor, two wings housing smaller lecture rooms, offices and laboratories, and a singlestorey laboratory block to accommodate 100 students at the rear. Construction started in 1922 and was completed in 1924. Construction expenses proved higher than expected and, as a result, only one of the two

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projected wings was completed. The principal problem was the discovery of quicksand while excavations were being carried out for the foundations of the building. This entailed deeper excavations than anticipated and the installation of electrically operated pumps that still run continuously to prevent the subbasement flooding. The additional basement and sub-basement space that resulted eventually proved valuable for storage. The space also proved ideal for Professor Thorvaldson’s cement studies and as a low-radiation area for carbondating work by Professor McCallum. The new building was formally opened in August 1924. The British Association, which had been holding meetings in eastern Canada, spent one day in Saskatoon to attend sectional meetings and to open the building. Initially, some people regarded the new building as excessively large. However, as early as 1930, storage lockers in the elementary laboratories were being subdivided to accommodate additional sections of introductory chemistry classes, and staff were lamenting the absence of the proposed north–south wing of the building, or a second storey on the laboratory wing. It was not until 1966 that additional space was added to the original building. A further addition (the Spinks addition) came in 2003. Temporary space became available following World War II when a wooden, war-surplus structure (the Chemistry Annex) was moved to the rear of the building. This was used by the Department of Chemistry and the College of Pharmacy until the 1966 addition was started. Of the thirteen or so persons joining the department as instructors or professors following World War I, over half were former students from the department and would have been known to the existing faculty. However, appointment procedures were apparently rather informal in those days, even for graduates from other universities, as the late Professor Spinks tells in his autobiography, Two Blades of Grass. In the early summer of 1930, Professor Thorvaldson visited Professor Allmand at King’s College in London (uk). During the visit he met a young research student of Allmand’s, John Spinks. Thorvaldson was apparently impressed and offered Spinks a position in Saskatoon, which was accepted. When Thorvaldson asked Spinks to be in Saskatoon by mid-September, Allmand pointed out that it might be a good idea if Spinks had a PhD, and asked him to prepare five or six copies of a report on his work (comparable to a PhD thesis). This done, an oral examination was arranged, and passed, all in time for Spinks to meet his deadline in Saskatoon. The whole process took no more than a few weeks. The short time frame did not prevent the convening

Science in Saskatchewan: The Early Years

of an impressive examining committee. The committee consisted of two future Nobel Laureates, Cyril Hinshelwood from Oxford and R.G.W. Norrish from Cambridge, a distinguished organic chemist, Ian Heilbron4 from Liverpool, and Professor Allmand. Aspiring scientists and faculty members of today may well be horrified by the apparent ease with which PhDs were handed out, and faculty positions obtained, in 1930. Spinks arrived in Saskatoon on 12 September 1930. At the time Saskatoon had a population of about 30,000, the university about 100 faculty and 1200 students, and the chemistry department its handsome new building. By Christmas of his first year, Spinks was ready to start some research using a mercury arc lamp made by the head of the physics department, Dr. E.L. Harrington, who was an accomplished glass blower. The chemistry faculty benefited a great deal from friends and colleagues in the Department of Physics, one of the great advantages of a small university and a reasonably compact campus. Economies around the world suffered during the 1930s, and Saskatchewan was no exception. The poor economic climate meant that university funds became tighter, resulting in John Spinks being the last new faculty member to be hired by the chemistry department until Dr. A.B. Van Cleave joined the department in 1937. In the intervening period the president of the university, Dr. W.C. Murray, decided that the financial circumstances could be helped if some of the more junior faculty would take twelve months unpaid leave in exchange for a small research grant. John Spinks, newly appointed in 1930 and a bachelor, was an obvious target. Spinks did, in fact, accept the offer of a year’s leave and $500 towards his expenses and, after searching out research opportunities in his area of interest, asked Gerhard Herzberg at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt, Germany, whether he could work with him. Herzberg agreed and Spinks arrived in Darmstadt in the fall of 1933. The collaboration worked well, and produced several scientific papers and an enduring friendship between Spinks and Herzberg. Spinks returned to Saskatchewan when his year was over and resumed his teaching and research activities. Meanwhile in Germany, Herzberg and his Jewish wife were becoming increasingly unsettled with daily life under the Nazi regime, where Jews and their spouses were being singled out for persecution. Eventually Herzberg decided to emigrate and sought out John Spinks for advice and assistance. In 1935 the Herzbergs arrived in Canada with a two-year appointment for Gerhard as guest professor of physics at the University of Saskatchewan. Three months later, one of the

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physics faculty resigned and Herzberg was offered a permanent position as research professor of physics. Herzberg remained at the university from 1935 to 1945 and, in 1971, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The university added chemical engineering to the list of degrees it granted in 1934. The chemistry-related courses were taught by faculty from the Department of Chemistry, which was renamed the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. The chemical engineering activities were initially divided between the Engineering Building and the Chemistry Building. They were later consolidated in new laboratories in the Thorvaldson addition to the Chemistry Building when this was opened in 1966. Sixteen years later the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in the College of Arts and Science split into the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Science and the Department of Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering, bringing a symbolic end to the formal, generally amicable, and mutually beneficial relationship between chemists and engineers on the campus. In 2004 the Department of Chemical Engineering moved into a new building of its own, adjacent to the Engineering Building. The former chemical engineering laboratories in the Thorvaldson Building were integrated into the chemistry renovations and changes associated with construction of the Spinks addition to the chemistry facilities. In 1937 a four-year honours program in chemistry was instituted to provide a more thorough training in chemistry than was possible with the three-year program, which had been designed to equip students with only a general scientific education. The honours designation was changed at the same time to accompany the advanced degree. Previously students could graduate with an honours degree if they had maintained a high standard in the classes they had taken for the three-year degree. The new honours program included more chemistry, mathematics, and physics classes and was intended for students who wished to make chemistry their profession, or who wished to pursue graduate studies in chemistry. Other changes to the curriculum included combined honours courses in biology and chemistry, mathematics and chemistry, and physics and chemistry. These permitted students to specialize in two sciences rather than in chemistry alone. An honours course in food chemistry was introduced in 1947 to meet the needs of the food industry for specialists in this area. The quality of the teaching at the time can be gauged from the subsequent successes of the department’s graduates. One of the most distinguished graduates from the chemistry department was Henry Taube. Taube was born in

Science in Saskatchewan: The Early Years

Neudorf, Saskatchewan, in 1915 and attended Luther College in Regina and then the University of Saskatchewan, where he obtained BSc (1935) and MSc (1937) degrees. Dr. Spinks was Taube’s supervisor for his Master’s studies, which included a physics class taught by Gerhard Herzberg—the first graduate class that Herzberg gave at the University of Saskatchewan. Taube went on take a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and to teach at Berkeley, Cornell, the University of Chicago, and Stanford University. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his research on the mechanisms of chemical reactions. Other chemistry students found employment in industry in the United States (there being relatively little chemical industry in Canada at the time) and went on to become senior scientists and administrators. A number are gratefully remembered for their generosity to the University of Saskatchewan in later life. The Whelan lecture series, for example, was set up following a donation from M.S. Whelan (BSc, 1926; MSc, 1927; PhD [McGill], 1929), who went on to become a senior scientist with E.I. duPont de Nemours. Among other major donors were O.K. Johannson (BSc, 1930; MSc, 1932; Ph.D [McGill], 1936; Dow-Corning Research), and C.V. Wilson (BSc, 1927; MSc, 1929; PhD [McGill], 1933; Eastman Kodak). The University of Saskatchewan did not award the PhD degree until 1949, so that pre-1949 graduates wishing to go on to the doctorate level had to go to another university. McGill was clearly a favourite with the chemists. As might be expected, staff additions during the war years were limited. One significant exception was the appointment of K.J. McCallum as instructor in 1942 and as assistant professor in 1943. McCallum was a graduate from the department (BSc, 1937; MSc, 1939; PhD [Columbia], 1942) and went on to become department head and subsequently the university’s dean of graduate studies. During the war he taught and carried out research in the department (to release Dr. Spinks for other duties) but also spent some time with the National Research Council’s atomic energy project at the University of Montreal and then Chalk River, Ontario. Professor Spinks also served with the atomic energy project, following a period as an operational research officer with the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he worked on search-and-rescue procedures for missing aircraft. Several of the University of Saskatchewan faculty in Saskatoon transferred to Regina College, which in the 1940s was a junior college of the university. These included Professor Basterfield, who was dean of Regina College from

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1940 to 1950; Professor W.A. Riddell, dean and principal of Regina College from 1950 to 1969; and Professor A.B. Van Cleave, who held senior administrative posts with the college. Regina College later became the Regina Campus of the University of Saskatchewan as the number and variety of courses offered increased. Then in 1974 the University of Regina came into existence with the proclamation of a new University Act and repeal of the existing 1968 Act. The chemistry department grew rapidly following the war and nineteen new faculty were hired during the period from 1945 to 1957, and twenty-four during the years from 1960 to 1970. However, whereas the earlier faculty had tended to stay with the university for many years and often until they retired, post-war faculty were more mobile and frequently left relatively quickly to go to other universities, government laboratories, or positions in industry. Younger science faculty were undoubtedly influenced by the increasing emphasis universities were placing on published research when making decisions on appointments, tenure, and promotion. This resulted in many chemists moving to institutions where they felt they were offered the best research support and facilities. The number of faculty in the combined department of chemistry and chemical engineering eventually settled at about twenty, falling somewhat when chemical engineering moved to the College of Engineering in 1982. Service

When the University of Saskatchewan was established, its first president, Walter Murray, described the role of the university as teaching, research, and service, with an emphasis on the needs of Saskatchewan. Certainly in its first half-century, the Department of Chemistry recognized its responsibilities in all three areas. During its second half-century, service became a less important function of the department as other departments and organizations assumed responsibility for analytical and research work in their areas of interest. Teaching has always been a key and highly regarded activity in the chemistry department and, to the extent that it involves students from other colleges, may be seen as a form of service continuing to the present day. In the early days of the university, only the chemistry department had faculty, technicians, and laboratory facilities for chemical and biochemical analyses. Thus, a supplementary activity of the chemistry faculty was conducting analyses for other departments of the university and for outside clients in the city and province. Faculty involvement was eased by the appointment of J.G.

Science in Saskatchewan: The Early Years

Lewis as analyst in 1914, a position that was filled until the retirement of the last analyst, E.C. Bailey, in 1981. The analysts were semi-independent of the chemistry department and also served as public and provincial analysts for the northern part of the province, though several of the analysts also held teaching appointments in the department. Early analytical work included chemical analyses of soils and crops for the agricultural departments, testing of city and well water, and biochemical and bacteriological analyses for city hospitals and physicians. In later years analysis of beer and liquor seized by the city police and rcmp became a sustaining activity. The demand for a full-time analyst had diminished by the time Bailey retired as more rapid and higher volume instrumental methods of analysis were replacing the more time-consuming and technically demanding methods of traditional chemistry. It is now commonplace for university departments, medical facilities, government laboratories, and others to employ their own laboratory staff to meet their analytical needs. In 1927 teaching and research in cereal chemistry was added with the appointment of Dr. R.K. Larmour. Dr. Larmour was an honours graduate of the university (BSc, 1923) who went on to carry out graduate research under Dr. Thorvaldson, graduating with a MSc in 1925 with a thesis entitled “An Investigation of the Action of Sulphate Solutions on Cement by the Method of Measurements of Length of Mortar Bars.” He graduated with a PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1927. Dr. Larmour left the department in 1945 with the rank of professor, though he continued as an honorary lecturer until 1947, and went on to become director of research for the Maple Leaf Milling Company in Toronto. The move from cement chemistry to cereal chemistry is a little unusual, but must surely be a tribute to the broadly based and effective courses in chemistry that Dr. Larmour took as an undergraduate student. Following his appointment as an assistant professor in 1927, Dr. Larmour also became director for Saskatchewan of a cooperative research program on the baking qualities of western wheat sponsored by the three Prairie provinces. Cereal research continued in the department, though with decreasing emphasis, until the retirement of Professor C.C. Lee (primarily an organic chemist) in 1988. The baking laboratory set up in 1927 continued in operation until the last technician responsible for the laboratory and for protein and other analyses associated with cereal chemistry, Robert Teed, retired due to illness in 1986. Bob Teed’s departure marked the last time visitors to the Chemistry Building would be greeted with the fragrance of baking bread rather than the more traditional smells associated with chemical laboratories.

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The cereal research laboratory set up by Dr. Larmour was described as one of the finest grain research laboratories in Canada, and received substantial financial support from the Saskatchewan Agricultural Research Foundation and the Associate Committee on Grain Research of the National Research Council of Canada. Problems investigated covered a wide range and included studies on ways to dry damp wheat and to handle frosted and weathered grain so as to maintain the baking quality. The latter determined whether the grain could be included in export grades since it was important to safeguard the quality of the export wheat. Other studies were carried out to determine whether combine threshing or long-term storage affected the quality of the wheat, and whether the Prairie grains contained significant amounts of selenium (they do not) in response to European concerns. Quality tests were also carried out for plant breeders developing new wheat varieties resistant to diseases such as rust to enable them to eliminate unsuitable varieties at an early stage. The cereal chemistry laboratory also developed analytical methods for proteins and other materials found in cereals, and offered analytical and advisory services to farmers, millers, and feed merchants. The research activities of the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, particularly in the earlier years, often involved problems that fitted the term “service.” Additional examples of these activities are described in the following section. Research

Research in the Department of Chemistry in its early years was largely applied research directed towards development of the natural resources of the province. Attempts were made to utilize straw as a source of gaseous fuel, exploit the province’s lignite resources, convert methane from natural gas to methanol and other useful products, and convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form suitable for use as a fertilizer. Potash, another important component of fertilizers, was obtained from Germany. When supplies of potash were cut off during World War I, Dr. Thorvaldson took part in a search for potassium salts in the alkali lakes of Saskatchewan and initiated a study of the separation of the salts present in the lakes by crystallization. While the search for local sources of potash was modestly successful, the cost of the product was high and not commercially viable once the war had ended. Nevertheless, these early studies did point the way to the successful Saskatchewan potash industry

Science in Saskatchewan: The Early Years

of today, which is based on underground sources of potash rather than surface sources. Europe was also the source of synthetic drugs imported into Canada, and these too were cut off by the war. Dr. Basterfield in Saskatoon carried out studies on derivatives of urea as possibly useful drugs as part of a broad program in Canada and the United States to develop methods to manufacture known drugs and discover new drugs. Although the Saskatchewan studies did not yield any useable drugs, they did serve to train a number of graduate students in the techniques of research, and led to a number of papers published in the scientific literature. To put the research projects into context, a major concern at the beginning of the twentieth century was the growing world population and the possibility that this might soon outstrip the food supplies available. It was feared that the current sources of nitrogen fertilizers (guano, sodium nitrate from Chile, ammonium sulphate from the coal-gas industry) and potash (from the Stassfurt deposits in Germany) would be insufficient to meet world demands; energy was not a particular concern as the industrial nations of the time had adequate coal resources. The nitrogen problem was solved by the German Haber-Bosch ammonia process that “fixed” atmospheric nitrogen in the form of ammonia (the current process uses natural gas as the source of the other key component, hydrogen), and the potential potash problem was resolved some eighty years later by development of the Saskatchewan potash deposits. At the time of World War II, another chemical problem became apparent—the need for increasing quantities of sulphur (or suitable materials containing sulphur) for conversion to sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid is required in many industrial processes and is used in the conversion of phosphate rock to phosphate fertilizer. Several decades later adequate supplies of sulphur became available from the purification of sour natural gas in western Canada and other parts of the world. Research at the university was often directed to solution of local problems. Dr. Thorvaldson’s main research activities at the University of Saskatchewan following World War I, for example, were studies of the chemistry of cement, initially to determine why concrete structures such as building foundations, irrigation dams, and water conduits were failing. Basic studies on the chemistry of cement and its components led him to conclude that the primary process responsible for the degradation of concrete in the ground waters of the Prairies was the presence of the sulphates of calcium, magnesium, and sodium. This led to the development of a sulphate-resistant cement that is now widely used in western Canada. Dr. Thorvaldson gained an international reputation

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for his research on cement systems and at the time of his retirement was regarded as the international authority on the durability of concrete. Other research carried out at the time included studies by Dr. Cameron on sugar chemistry and preliminary work on the extraction and identification of active principles from native Saskatchewan plants that might have uses in pharmacy and medicine. Both areas have continued to be studied at the university and at the National Research Council laboratory on the campus, but unfortunately, Dr. Cameron contracted influenza and died in 1929 without completing his research program. Dr. A.C. Grubb, a physical chemist appointed in 1921, investigated chemical reactions in low-pressure discharge tubes and in corona discharges, similar types of reactions to those studied later by Dr. Spinks and other photochemists and radiation chemists in the department. Sadly, Professor Grubb too became ill and died in 1936 before realizing his full potential as a teacher and researcher. A cursory examination of Master’s theses (the university did not award doctorate degrees over this period) listed for the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering for the years from 1920 to 1939 shows the following distribution: cement chemistry, twenty-six; biochemistry and organic chemistry, twenty-one; inorganic and physical chemistry, twelve; cereal chemistry, ten; chemical engineering, three. In general, thesis titles in the areas of cement chemistry, cereal chemistry, and chemical engineering5 suggest that the studies were directed towards practical problems. This distribution is in contrast to thesis topics in the post-1945 period, when theoretical and more basic studies far outweigh studies of an applied nature. Work on the chemistry of cement came to an end when Professor Thorvaldson retired from active research, and cereal chemistry, at least in the Department of Chemistry, with Professor Lee’s retirement in 1988. During World War II, research in the chemistry department turned towards projects of wartime significance. Professor McCallum undertook two projects in chemical warfare research in collaboration with scientists at the Suffield Chemical Warfare Experimental Station. One was to improve the use of chlorsulphonic acid-sulphur trioxide smoke-producing mixtures in cold climates and the other dealt with the dispersion and inflammability of gaseous hydrogen cyanide (detonation of explosive charges in containers of liquid hydrogen cyanide often resulted in the gas catching fire rather than dispersing). Other chemical warfare or Defence Research Board projects on the reaction of phosgene with water and the stability of cyanogen chloride were carried out

Science in Saskatchewan: The Early Years

under the direction of Dr. Van Cleave. The studies resulted in several Master’s theses (which had the designation “secret” during the war) and, fortunately, no serious accidents, given the poisonous nature of the materials involved. Safety regulations in chemical laboratories were almost non-existent at the time, but common sense and good housekeeping on the part of staff and students clearly served everyone well. At the beginning of World War II, scientists working in Canadian universities were told to stay in place but to be prepared to assist with the war effort as opportunities arose. One academic who did leave the University of Saskatchewan was Dr. C.J. Mackenzie, dean of engineering, who went to Ottawa to head up the National Research Council. Dr. Mackenzie was instrumental in getting Dr. Spinks to Ottawa to work with the Operational Research Centre of the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942. Later in the war, again at the instigation of Dr. Mackenzie, Spinks moved to Montreal to become part of the joint Canada–France–United Kingdom atomic energy project based at the University of Montreal and later Chalk River. Dr. McCallum also spent time with the project. The experience gained by the two Saskatchewan scientists proved valuable when they returned to the university after the war and led to numerous studies involving radioactivity and the applications of radioactive tracers. The National Research Council loaned them the basic equipment to work with radioisotopes, a scaler, several Geiger counters, some lead bricks, and a 250 mg radium-beryllium neutron source that could be used to make small amounts of radioactive isotopes. Using radioactive phosphorus-32 prepared by irradiating carbon disulphide, Spinks and his colleagues in the soil science department were able to determine the fraction of phosphorus in growing wheat that came from added fertilizer. The first tracer experiments were carried out with three or four plants growing in pots and were so original that the paper describing the results was turned down by the first referees because “no-one but Dr. Spinks would be interested in them.” Fortunately, subsequent referees were more positive. The larger amounts of phosphorus-32 required for field trials were not available in Canada but could be produced by cyclotron irradiation. Unfortunately, most of the cyclotrons in the us were covered by the McMahon Act, which did not allow the export of any radioactive materials that they produced. Through friends in the us, Spinks eventually discovered that the cyclotron at the Institute for Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington was not covered by the Act, and he was able to arrange for one millicurie of phosphorus-32 to be sent

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to him each month by mail. To avoid problems at the customs, the shipments were labelled “chalk sticks.” Spinks helped ensure that further tracer applications followed. These included studies of the uptake of soil nutrients, the measurement of phosphorus and calcium in eggs, the movement of wireworms, and the dispersion of grasshoppers, mosquitoes, and blackflies. Medical applications included studies on blood coagulation with carbon-14 labelled dicoumarin (an anticoagulant) and carbon-14 labelled K vitamins. A practical instrument developed at this time for the soil science and civil engineering departments was a neutron soil-moisture meter based on the fact that fast neutrons from a radioactive source are slowed down by hydrogenous materials such as water. At the time it was not possible to buy very many chemicals labelled with radioactive atoms, so labelled chemicals for biological and medical research on the campus were prepared by Professor Spinks’s research associate in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Professor McCallum also made use of experience gained with the atomic energy project to initiate tracer and radiochemical studies on his return to the campus. These included low-level measurements of carbon-14 in historical artefacts (the technique of carbon dating) and of tritium in natural waters: the measurements were essentially a service to archaeologists and hydrologists, respectively. Eventually Spinks switched from tracer research to radiation research and studied the effects of high-energy radiation on chemical systems. One of the factors that made research on radiation chemistry possible was the start-up in 1947 of the nrx reactor at Chalk River, which was able to produce radioactive isotopes in large quantities. One of these, cobalt-60, was an ideal source of gamma radiation for medical purposes, and a 1000 curie cobalt-60 cancer therapy unit was designed in Saskatoon by Dr. Harold Johns of the physics department.6 The first two cobalt therapy units were installed in Saskatoon and London, Ontario, in 1951. Dr. Johns also acquired a betatron, so that Spinks was able to extend his photochemical work to yet higher energy radiation. Some years later the energy range was extended again with the construction of a linear accelerator on the campus at the instigation of Professor Katz of the physics department. Collaboration with Dr. Johns, who was both professor of physics and physicist to the Saskatchewan Cancer Commission, led to studies on chemical systems that might be used to measure radiation (chemical dosimeters). These were interesting chemical studies, but there was also a service aspect since it

Science in Saskatchewan: The Early Years

was critically important to be able to determine the exact radiation dose administered to patients. At the time there was no textbook available to introduce students to the basic principles of radiation chemistry, so Spinks set to and co-authored the first introductory textbook on radiation chemistry in English.7 Its usefulness was apparent when it was subsequently translated into both Japanese and Russian. The book became the standard introductory textbook for some thirty-five years, and proved effective as a key to meeting radiation chemists in other parts of the world. This was particularly helpful in eastern Europe, where Western scientists were generally treated with some reserve at the time the book was published. Probably at Spinks’s urging, in 1949 Saskatchewan became one of the first Canadian universities to have a radiation safety committee, though a full-time radiation safety officer was not appointed until 1963. Early efforts at safety were still fairly basic. The first cobalt-60 source used in the chemistry department in the mid-1950s contained about one curie of the radioisotope and was protected by a rudimentary interlock made from a metal coat hanger. Chemical safety at the time would also be considered rudimentary by today’s standards: hydrogen sulphide was a standard reagent in the undergraduate laboratories, mercury spills were commonplace, and noxious wastes were often poured down prairie gopher holes. Two developments that were to have a major impact on research on the campus were the establishment of the Saskatchewan Research Council in 1947 and the opening of the National Research Council of Canada’s Prairie Regional Laboratory in 1948. Dr. Thorvaldson, head of the chemistry department, was the first director of research of the Saskatchewan Research Council, which, with a secretary and one other staff member, operated from a small office in the Chemistry Building. Initially the council gave grants-in-aid for specific applied research projects at the university. Later it opened its own laboratory to carry out longer-term projects related to the natural resources of the province. The council eventually moved into larger facilities at Innovation Place on the University of Saskatchewan campus. The Prairie Regional Laboratory (prl), part of the division of applied biology of the National Research Council of Canada, was officially opened on the university campus in a newly constructed laboratory and office building on 8 June 1948. The laboratory had groups working on fermentation and microbiology, crop utilization, and engineering and process development, and included chemists studying the chemistry of sugars and fats and oils. One of

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the early achievements of the prl chemists was the synthesis of sucrose (cane sugar) by Ray Lemieux and Herbert Bauer. This was something sugar chemists had been trying to do from the early years of the century. Dr. Lemieux, who joined prl from the chemistry department, achieved the synthesis by looking at the three-dimensional shape of the simple sugars (glucose and fructose) he wanted to join together to make sucrose. This approach is taken for granted nowadays, but was novel in the 1950s when organic chemists were more likely to draw flat structures on pieces of paper than to think in three dimensions and use three-dimensional models. An innovative approach that the National Research Council’s Prairie Regional Laboratory introduced to Saskatchewan was the nrc’s post-doctoral fellowship program. Under this scheme graduate students who had just completed their PhD studies were given a grant to work for one or two years at a National Research Council laboratory. This was undoubtedly considered a sensible way to bring in a constant flow of new ideas and new blood without making any permanent commitments. The approach must have been a success because post-doctoral fellowship programs, financed from many sources nowadays, are fixtures on most university campuses and in many government laboratories. The Chemical Community

The University of Saskatchewan Chemical Society was organized by chemistry students in 1917 to provide a forum where chemical ideas and new theories could be discussed. The society met twice a month to hear papers presented by its members on theoretical and industrial topics. This was the second such society on the campus—the Shuttleworth Mathematical Society had been established in 1916. Fifteen years later, the Chemical Society presented the first “Chemistry Show” to introduce students and the public to chemistry. The precedent has been followed by many other departmental and college shows. The student chemical society later became the student chapter of the Chemical Institute of Canada. The Chemical Institute of Canada (cic) was established as the professional organization for chemists in Canada, corresponding to the American Chemical Society in the us, the Chemical Society and the Royal Institute of Chemistry in Britain, and similar professional societies in many other countries. Until the 1960s, when air travel became more accessible and affordable, the cic and its local sections provided the most frequent means of contact

Science in Saskatchewan: The Early Years

between chemists on the Prairies. The local sections would generally hold monthly meetings that included talks on science and its applications by local members and visiting speakers. One of the more important functions of the cic was to organize speakers’ tours that arranged for several prominent scientists to visit each section during the year. The guests were usually given an opportunity to visit laboratories on the campus and to meet others with similar interests both in the laboratory setting and at social gatherings. The cic had two sections in Saskatchewan, north and south, based in Saskatoon and Regina, respectively. The two sections would meet annually, alternately in Saskatoon and Regina, for a program of scientific papers, a curling game, and a dinner. Regional meetings involving the three Prairie provinces were also held annually and provided an opportunity to share information with colleagues in Manitoba and Alberta. The regional meetings were more significant in the early years than today due to the difficulty in travelling to the annual meetings of the cic itself, which were held in the larger Canadian cities and most frequently in eastern Canada. Travel was often prohibitively expensive and funds difficult to obtain for faculty and students alike. Chemical societies were also important as publishers of scientific journals in which the results of research could be described. This was not the case in Canada, where the National Research Council fulfilled this function with a series of journals such as the Canadian Journal of Chemistry in which much of the research carried out in the country was published. The number of scientific publications has grown since the 1960s, and there are now a number of journals published commercially that deal with specific areas of chemistry, and societies that focus on specific areas. As a result, chemists now have a wide choice of societies to join, journals to publish in, and conferences to attend. Together with the greater ease and lower (relative) cost of travel, this has resulted in some fragmentation of interests, with the result that the national chemical societies appear less significant today than in the 1950s and earlier. The End of the Beginning

The “early years” referred to in the title of this article started to draw to a close for the chemists with the retirement of Professor Thorvaldson in 1949, and can be considered as ending with the opening of the new wing of the building named for him in 1966. Faculty hired in the 1930s and 1940s retired in the 1970s and 1980s and were replaced by younger faculty with interests in

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new directions. Chemists too were no longer concentrated in the chemistry departments of the universities in Saskatoon and Regina, but increasing numbers were spread through other university departments, government departments, the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology (siast) campuses, and industry in the province. Conclusions

While the year 2004 ended with a major scientific event for the province of Saskatchewan, the opening of the Canadian Light Source, it is well to remember that this was but one of many achievements in the field of science over the last 100 years. In cancer treatment, Saskatchewan introduced cobalt60 cancer therapy and the guidelines to use it. In the physical sciences, two Nobel Laureates (Herzberg and Taube; Chemistry 1971 and 1983, respectively) have ties to the province. In agriculture the achievements include the development of rust-resistant wheat, the introduction of canola, studies on blood clotting to combat sweet clover disease, and plant and animal breeding experiments to improve quality and yields. Canada’s Plant Biotechnology Institute, a major Agriculture Canada research centre, the National Hydrology Centre, and the Western College of Veterinary Medicine are located on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan, and many other research-orientated organizations have become established in the research parks on the Saskatoon and Regina campuses. Spin-offs from academic research include sed Systems, which offers advice and support to satellite manufacturers and operators around the world, and the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (vido), which is a world-class player in animal vaccine research. The list is long and, at 100 years, is still in its infancy.

Works Consulted The Department of Chemistry, University of Saskatchewan, 1909–1959. [Saskatoon]: n.p., [1959]. King, Carlyle. The First Fifty: Teaching, Research, and Public Service at the University of Saskatchewan 1909–1959. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1959. King, Carlyle. Extending the Boundaries: Scholarship and Research at the University of Saskatchewan 1909–1966. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 1967. Spinks, John. Two Blades of Grass. Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1980.

Science in Saskatchewan: The Early Years

Spinks, John W.T. and Robert J. Woods. An Introduction to Radiation Chemistry. New York: Wiley, 1964 [2nd ed., 1976; 3rd ed., 1990]. Japanese translation, Tokyo: Sangyo Tosho, 1965. Russian translation, Moscow: Atomizdat, 1967. Stoicheff, Boris. Gerhard Herzberg: An Illustrious Life in Science. Ottawa: NRC Press, 2002. University of Saskatchewan Post-graduate Theses 1912–1966. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 1967.

Notes Most of the information regarding the first fifty years of the Department of Chemistry was taken from a booklet, The Department of Chemistry, University of Saskatchewan, 1909–1959, prepared for the golden jubilee of the university. Unfortunately, the booklet does not identify its authors (or its publisher). One can surmise that the authors would likely have been the more senior faculty and staff of the department in 1958–59. They did a remarkable job researching and recording the history of the department, and their efforts, and use of the information they collected and recorded, are gratefully acknowledged. 1. The synchroton is essentially an advanced microscope that generates the intense beams of light needed to view the microstructure of materials. In this context, the term “light” covers electromagnetic radiation in the range of energies from the infrared to high-energy X-rays. 2.

Dr. MacLaurin, head of the chemistry department, and three other senior university faculty were dismissed in June 1919, apparently for failing to support President Murray in a dispute alleging that the president had falsified a report on university finances. Faculty tenure did not exist at the time. Michael Hayden describes the events leading to the dismissals in Seeking a Balance: University of Saskatchewan, 1907–1982 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1983), 84–115.

3. N.H. Grace (1925), R.L. Larmour (1927), W.A. Riddell (1928), J.H. Fraser (1929), V.A. Vigfusson (1930), A.B. Van Cleave (1937), D.A. Stevenson (1938), H.L. Holmes (1941), K.J. McCallum (1942), L.W. Trevoy (1943), G.M. Harris (1945), R.L. Eager (1947), J.A.E. Bardwell (1950), C.C. Lee (1955), A. Vanterpool (1955), K.M. Thompson (1956), E.B. Tinker (1957), R.P. Steer (1969). 4. Eighteen years later, Sir Ian Heilbron was the author’s senior research supervisor at the Royal College of Science in London.

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5. The first chemical engineering graduate thesis was the 1935 MSc thesis of W.E. Winnitoy, “Low-temperature Carbonization and Hydrogenation of Saskatchewan Lignite Coal.” This was followed in 1938 by the MSc thesis of R.M. Donald, “The Fractional Distillation of Turner Valley Crude Oils with Special Reference to the Separation and Identification of the Compounds Present.” 6. The world’s first cobalt-60 therapy unit, designed and built in Saskatoon, was opened at the University of Saskatchewan in October 1951 (by 1984 there were over 2500 units in use around the world). Professor Johns was one of the founders of medical physics and developed widely used X-ray dosage tables. He was also author of the standard textbook in the field: Harold E. Johns, The Physics of Radiation Therapy (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1953). The textbook is currently in its fourth edition: Harold Elford Johns and John Robert Cunningham, The Physics of Radiology (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1983). The history of radiology in Saskatchewan has been described by C. Stuart Houston and Sylvia O. Fedoruk, “Radiation Therapy in Saskatchewan,” in John E. Aldrich and Brian C. Lentle, eds., A New Kind of Ray (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1995). 7. The first introductory textbook on radiation chemistry was published in Russian by I.V. Vereshchinskii and A.K. Pikaev, Vvedenie V Radiatsionnuyu Khimiyu (Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1963); English translation, Israel Program for Scientific Translations (Jerusalem, 1964). Some thirty years later, Professor Pikaev collaborated on the first, and so far only, book on applied radiation chemistry: Robert J. Woods and Alexei K. Pikaev, Applied Radiation Chemistry: Radiation Processing (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1994).

Cl a i m i n g S a s k at c h e w a n : L a n d s c a p e Pa i n t i n g f r o m 1 9 0 5 t o 1 9 5 0 Keith Bell

You can think about something if you think of something else. For example, you see a landscape new to you. But it’s new to you because you compare it in your mind with another landscape, an older one, which you knew.

—Edgar speaking to Berthe, in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Eloge de l’amour (2001) From the beginning of European exploration and the subsequent settlement of the Great Plains, the incomers constantly felt alienated by the landscapes they encountered. In his narrative of the Stephen H. Long expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819 and 1820, Edwin James, a member of the party, described the effect the plains landscape had on the explorers’ imagination: “The great extent of country contemplated at a single view, and the unvaried sameness of the surface, made our prospect seem tedious,” and later on the same subject, he wrote that the members of the expedition felt “grossly abused by [their] eyesight.”1 Similarly William Francis Butler in The Wild North Land (1873), an account of a winter journey from Fort Garry to the Peace River country and beyond, reported that “during the sixteen days in which we traversed the prairie on our return journey, we had not seen one soul, one

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human being moving over it; the picture of its desolation was complete.”2 And in 1890, visiting Scotswoman Jessie Saxby described the prairie territories as “very featureless and uninteresting compared with the mountain and lake districts; though possessing compensation in the rich level tracts of soil ready for the plough.”3 Faced with the apparent monotony of the view stretching out before them, the incomers hurried on west to the mountains. In this chapter I consider how artists who came to live in Saskatchewan set out to render the “featureless” landscapes of the province both visible and acceptably familiar to the settlers who moved into the west in the first part of the twentieth century. This process of naturalization was not only a matter of picturing an unfamiliar place but in fact played a crucial ideological role in the appropriation both of the land and its representation from the First Nations peoples who occupied it. First Nations art was defined by critics such as Albert H. Robinson in his book Canadian Landscape Painters, published in 1932, as “limited to the field of decoration,” while he dismissed their experience of the land as non-existent—stating that “they did not touch, even lightly, the art of landscape painting.”4 This declared absence of visual title to the land reinforced the generally held notion, found both in Canada and elsewhere among the imperial nations, that the indigenous peoples, supposedly lacking permanent homes and land ownership systems, passed across the land but did not own it or “develop” it for economic purposes.5 As Jessie Saxby’s remark makes clear, the land was seen by the colonizers as essentially untouched and therefore “available” for European exploitation. It followed that the role of the colonial artist was to engage in what W.J.T. Mitchell has called “pictorial colonization,” in which metropolitan modes of visual representation were used with the intention of “inventing a country,” quoting Francis Pound on New Zealand painting, where, by implication, none had existed before.6 For the artists who came west during the pre-settlement era, for example Paul Kane in 1845 to 1848, the difficulty of rendering the Great Plains landscape “interesting” (and marketable) had initially been overcome by the addition of dramatic images of Native people engaged in bison hunts and other traditional activities. In these cases, the landscape was frequently reduced to the background or enlivened by the inclusion of high mountain ranges along the horizon. Travel accounts, notably those written by William Francis Butler—The Great Lone Land (1872), The Wild North Land (1873), and his novel, Red Cloud: A Tale of the Great Prairie (1911)—similarly emphasized the isolation and dangerous experiences of the explorers. Both writers and artists

Claiming Saskatchewan: Landscape Painting from 1905 to 1950

treated the West as a terra incognita, a vast stage set onto which they could inscribe their narratives of exploration and adventure; a space, both literal and figurative, that Mary Louise Pratt has called the “contact zone.”7 Audiences back in the East and in Europe found these painted scenes and the illustrations that accompanied the travel accounts comprehensible, because the artists rendered their subjects through the familiar European conventions of seeing: Romanticism and the Picturesque. In this way, the unfamiliar landscapes, viewed through the encompassing gaze of the viewer, were normalized along with the First Nations who lived there as wild and “savage,” and the “new” spaces were incorporated into both the visual and written narratives of exploration and appropriation of new territories by the imperial powers. These modes of representation did not, however, remain static. They changed decisively in the 1880s with the annexation of the Prairies for settlement and economic exploitation. Earlier depictions of the region as wilderness were now seen as incompatible with the need to create a new construction of the territory as a benign and productive landscape of farms, towns, and cities, even where such amenities did not yet exist. Promotional narratives talking of a pleasant climate, fertile soil, and the possibility of owning tracts of land on a scale unheard of back in Europe rapidly replaced the “lone land” of earlier constructions of the West. Photographs, usually in the form of halftone illustrations printed in a profusion of settlement literature, now supplanted paintings and prints as the most commonly experienced visual imagery of the Prairies. However, although paintings and other work by artists still continued to maintain the cultural authority of “High Art,” they too shifted towards a form of pastoralism couched in the visual language of the metropolitan—that is, European—centre. In May 1887, the English artist and travel writer Edward Roper visited Canada, traversing the country from Quebec City to Victoria before retracing his steps and eventually returning to England. Roper’s purpose was to investigate the country with a view to assessing the state of the land with particular reference to its current and future suitability for British settlement. His copiously illustrated narrative of the trip, By Track and Trail: A Journey Through Canada, published by W.H. Allen, appeared shortly afterwards in 1891. Roper’s book is significant because the author considered the “new” country not only from the by now well-established narrative prose style of visiting journalists but also with the trained visual eye of an artist and naturalist. The imperial sensibility that Roper brought with him, a sweeping panoptic gaze that sought

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to appropriate the landscape and render it familiar through identification with characteristics of the “old country,” provides an early example of the process whereby the visual culture of early settlement was gradually established. As Roper’s account makes clear, this process was not an easy one, involving as it did an attempt to appropriate and interpret for viewers who had never visited the Canadian West. A landscape that, in the case of the Prairies at least, was hard to imagine as home. Stopping to visit friends in Broadview, NorthWest Territories, on the outward journey in May, Roper later recalled that “there was very little grass and none of the turf one associates with England.”8 “I could,” he wrote, “scarcely believe I was actually wending my way across the prairies of the Great North-West,” the “general prospect [being] grey and melancholy.” Returning from the West Coast in August, Roper found the Broadview district more congenial; the prairie was covered in flowers and the roof of his friend Meadow’s sod house had turned into a “lovely garden,”9 for which he would have been “envied” in England. It was on this visit that Roper painted one of his best-known works, Prairie Flowers, which also appeared as a bookplate in By Track and Trail, constructed in the manner of an old-country cottage garden scene.10 But even in the full bloom of a Prairie summer, Roper found it necessary to tinker with his study of another settler house, Jones’s Place,11 explaining that he had “made the most picturesque sketch possible.” In accordance with the terms of the English convention of the Picturesque, the composition is carefully constructed with a busy foreground with tall reeds framing a slough, and a middle ground where the slightly offset house directs the eye toward the tree-framed horizon. Figures appear in the middle distance engaged in various activities, but, like representations of their English counterparts in paintings by Gainsborough or Morland, they are active but anonymous. The hardships of Jones’s life on the Prairies—Roper concluded that there could not “be more unsuitable people for the n.w.t. than these were”—remain concealed within the formal construction of the sketch.12 While Roper’s visit to the Prairies preceded the creation of Saskatchewan by almost twenty years, his responses to the landscape, both verbal and visual, are important because they took place exactly on the cusp of change, when settlement was just beginning to eat away at the natural landscape. It was then still possible to walk out of town onto the open prairie, “leaving all signs of humanity behind,” while only faint trails led to the patchy areas of cultivation that constituted the farms in the Broadview district. Roper’s attempts to

Claiming Saskatchewan: Landscape Painting from 1905 to 1950

interpret the unfamiliar space of the prairie through reference to the familiar—a walk takes him through land that reminds him of the “New Forest, Hampshire” in England, for example—and his attempts to present the Jones farm in the form of a Picturesque English farm scene closely echo the efforts of the new settlers whom he meets to render the landscape into the kinds of farms familiar back in the home countries.13 Pictorial Colonization

This process of “pictorial colonization,” in which Saskatchewan was translated into a series of culturally familiar visual conventions well known to the new colonists, was subsequently carried forward by a series of mainly European-trained artists who came to settle in the province in the early years of the twentieth century. These included, among others, Augustus Kenderdine, James Henderson, Charles W. Jefferies, Ernest Lindner, Robert Hurley, and Inglis Sheldon-Williams. Not surprisingly, most Saskatchewan artists looked for sites that provided the closest approximations to those notions of ideal landscape subjects contained in European landscape conventions. Of these the Qu’Appelle Valley was one of the earliest, attracting Henderson (who lived there), Kenderdine, and C.W. Jefferies. The Qu’Appelle, with its lakes, valleys, and gulleys, had long attracted visitors and explorers to the West, providing as it did a more familiar notion of landscape for European eyes than the flat prairie that had so “grossly abused” the eyesight of the early travellers. In the absence of the vertical forms of the Rocky Mountains with their suggestion of the sublime, the valley presented a site that reminded artists and their patrons of landscapes back “home,” in particular the English Lake District or the Scottish Highlands, both key sites representing British landscape culture. The writer Jessie Saxby, for example, talked of Canada as the “New Scotland” and saw the valley as a “garden of the Lord,”14 a Christian Garden of Eden in which her fellow Shetland Islanders might establish themselves in a landscape not totally dissimilar to the one they had recently left behind.15 Most artists—Kenderdine, Jefferies, and Henderson, in particular— chose elevated viewpoints from which to paint the Qu’Appelle, looking down from the valley rim across the lakes to the hills on the far side. This panoptic view, based on notions of the Picturesque, had also commonly

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been used for landscape bookplates in exploration accounts, where the allseeing eye of the explorer/artist appropriates the view, incorporating it into the narrative of discovery. In other images, scattered stands of trees combined with the broken ground of the valley floor provide a pastoral environment of the kind commonly found in English eighteenth-century landscape painting. In Kenderdine’s work, this translated into an adaptation of the English painter Thomas Gainsborough’s compositions—for example The Harvest Wagon, 1767,16 depicting farm carts wending their way through rustic landscapes, with trees flanking the cart on the rough track and providing a frame for a distant view of the open landscape beyond. In paintings such as Untitled (Valley scene with horses and wagon)17 and several paintings made in the north of the province, Kenderdine used these same Picturesque conventions to map imperial cultural forms onto his prairie subject matter. The landscape has been made familiar—and therefore comfortable—while the presence of the carts with their attendant farmers and woodcutters suggests the busyness of the new settler culture, replicating in visual terms the environments and activities of their former homes in England and elsewhere. While the Qu’Appelle Valley provided artists with a suitable source of scenery, the apparently flat tops of the prairie presented a more difficult subject for interpretation. Following the extermination of the bison and the arrival of the railroad and the settlement grid, explorer narratives like W.F. Butler’s Great Lone Land no longer described the existing landscape, and there was no obvious replacement for the earlier visual forms, as Roper’s Saskatchewan studies make clear. However, the process of visually “inventing” the country continued, notably in the work of Augustus Kenderdine, who immigrated from England to a homestead at Lashburn, Saskatchewan, in 1908. Kenderdine had trained both in the English Picturesque manner and in aspects of French painting— the Barbizon School of landscape painters—the latter encountered while studying at the Academie Julien in Paris during 1890 and 1891.18 From an early stage in his life on the Prairies, he demonstrated an enthusiastic interest in the idea of an active role for painting in the formation of a national “Canadian” culture, based but not entirely dependant upon metropolitan sources. In this he was clearly influenced by the work of the Group of Seven and other eastern Canadian artists, and sought to effect a similar identity for painting in Saskatchewan, both through his own work and by his art teaching at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina College, and Murray Point Art School.

Claiming Saskatchewan: Landscape Painting from 1905 to 1950

Faced with the problem of how to respond to the apparent void of the Saskatchewan prairie, many artists, including Kenderdine, looked elsewhere. The American settler Clarina Nichols, writing in the mid-nineteenth century about the Great Plains, had remarked that “it seems as though nature has gone on a long journey taking her treasures with her.”19 Nichols’s implication was, of course, that the only landscapes worth viewing were the mountains further west, and a number of Prairie artists—including Kenderdine—headed for the Rockies in the summers to paint “real”—and often more saleable—landscape subjects.20 Artists did, however, gradually begin to pay attention to the land back home. Closely following the photographic images of settlement promotional material—newly stooked wheat fields and threshing operations—artists like Kenderdine and Sheldon-Williams began to apply Picturesque compositions found in European painting to the modern world of the newly broken prairie. In Kenderdine’s case, English eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century threshing scenes provided a foundation for his Saskatchewan harvest views, while his vigorous brushwork frequently suggested the dramatizing painterly effects of artists like John Constable. Constable spent the larger part of his career painting in his home county of Suffolk, a part of England that was as flat or flatter than Saskatchewan, and his paintings with their big blustery skies and distant agricultural activities probably provided a model for a number of Saskatchewan painters. Kenderdine’s The Land of Promise (1923),21 for example, with the sky taking up a large part of the painting and with the verticals of a pair of small-town elevators breaking the horizon, essentially repeats the composition and atmospheric effects of Constable’s view series of Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire.22 The pictorial colonization of the prairie landscape also called for a response to the presence of the First Nations peoples. Having rejected, or more usually denied, the existence of Aboriginal representations of the Prairies, incoming artists for the most part also ignored the presence of the people themselves, as traditional lifeways disappeared and their otherness, a key part of the visual conventions that constituted colonial ways of seeing indigenous peoples, receded from the everyday awareness of the colonists. What is missing from view can be as telling as what is shown. When First Nations people appear as subjects in white artists’ landscapes of Saskatchewan, for example, in a number of Kenderdine’s pictures, they do so as anonymous stereotypical figures, recessed deep into the composition: engaged in a bison hunt, beaching a canoe, or watching an approaching storm.23 As such they are both picturesque and

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anachronistic—bison hunts are a thing of the past—and therefore the figures are unthreatening, a part of the sentimental landscape of “vanishing races” that appear throughout the full repertory of imperial painting (and photography) from New Zealand to South Africa. Looking North

In the 1920s, artists also began to look towards the north of the province as the one site that had so far not been absorbed into the repertory of subjects familiarized into settler culture. The north was now more accessible than it had been in the past, and the opening of Prince Albert National Park, with its picturesque forests and lakes, provided painters with new subjects as well as a potential clientele of park visitors. The emergence of northern Saskatchewan as a site of summer recreation and “nature tourism,” an activity already well established in Ontario, developed rapidly as agricultural areas further south became more densely settled and urban populations expanded. The once blurred edges between humanmade and natural environments became increasingly distinct and the settlement grid on the Prairies made it more and more difficult for people to perceive of themselves as living in a “natural” landscape. Moreover, in interwar Saskatchewan, successive droughts and land degradation, together with widespread economic disillusionment, prompted by exaggerated expectations and the failed promises of boosterism (“The Last Best West”), caused many people to look on the Prairies with open dislike. Folk songs like “Prairie Land” (“We do not live, we only stay / We are too poor to move away”) as well as tough realistic novels of prairie life, such as Martha Ostenso’s Wild Geese (1925) and Frederick Philip Grove’s Fruits of the Earth (1933), indicate that the image of the Prairies as a kind of agricultural Eden was rapidly fading. This view was further reinforced by skeptical journalists like the Englishwoman Marjorie Harrison, whose 1930 book, Go West—Go Wise! A Canadian Revelation, recounted a tour of the West in which she attempted to look beyond the all-pervasive settlement rhetoric to a more realistic view of conditions on the prairie. Harrison’s conclusion—that “prairie country is a hard mistress”24—was, she suggested in her preface, only then possible to articulate because the “country has reached a stage in its history when the whole truth may be told.”25

Claiming Saskatchewan: Landscape Painting from 1905 to 1950

Generally, Saskatchewan landscape painters responded to the Depression in a muted fashion or not at all. In this they were in line with promotional photographs that continued to maintain an optimistic image of the Prairie provinces throughout the drought years. Kenderdine, for example, appears to have painted only one prairie disaster scene, Dried Out (1933),26 a view of an abandoned farm shack with a broken-down bridge spanning an empty creek in the foreground. However, the artist did seek to address the experience of agricultural crisis when, in the 1920s, his discovery of the north led him to look beyond the Prairies to the northern woods as a site of spiritual regeneration through the aesthetic experience of “natural” beauty. In this way, the crisis of the Depression and the distinction between the Prairie settlement grid and the northern wilderness could be absorbed more completely into the cultural construction of settler life, in which the “civilized” and the “natural” might assume a comfortable and familiar harmony. Kenderdine’s response to the North was clearly influenced by nineteenthcentury European discourses concerning the divisions between the burgeoning industrial cities and the increasing “otherness” of the countryside beyond their boundaries. As Nicholas Green has demonstrated in his study of art and landscape in the culture of nineteenth-century France, the growth of urban areas quickly led to a new conception of the countryside (notably the forest of Fountainbleau), around cities like Paris as a site where the jaded city dweller, worn out from the stresses of urban life, might rediscover a proper sense of ease and well-being.27 The country, therefore, was seen as being implicitly more healthy than the city, a place of “tactile and aural sensations” where, through “the individualizing structure of perception, the experience seemed to be made for and by you alone.”28 Moreover, where once the experience of travel had previously been merely unpleasant or inconvenient, now the act of crossing the boundary from town to country might provoke a sense of exhilaration at moving into the natural landscape. This pleasure was heightened by the knowledge that this act was a transient one, a “temporary immersion in something else,”29 from which the traveller, cleansed and uplifted by the experience, could return to the “unnatural” urban environment spiritually refreshed by the experience of nature or, as it was known, natura naturans. French landscape painters were early promoters of the ideal of the natural landscape. For example, starting in the late 1830s, Parisian painters regularly travelled to the village of Barbizon in the forest of Fontainebleau, where they worked on a number of landscape motifs that played an active part in defining

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the ways in which the countryside was consumed by their largely urban market. As Nicholas Green states, these (and other modes of representation) also “worked to affirm a sense of individuality. For natura naturans was not just about constructed images and representations; it also delineated structures of feeling and personal experience registered as much in the pleasures of pictorial viewing as in the sense of immersion in healthy sensations.”30 For Kenderdine, trained in these European landscape conventions, northern Saskatchewan represented similar opportunities for individual affirmation through the experience of the natural environment. Starting around 1930, he began painting regularly around Prince Albert National Park and then five years later moved on to Emma Lake, where he subsequently established a summer art school on Murray Point. Classes for university credit were instituted in 1936, and in 1939 the school was taken over by the University of Saskatchewan. Kenderdine continued to run the school every summer until his death in 1947. The idea for the Emma Lake school probably had its origins in the rural artists’ communities that proliferated in Europe in the late nineteenth century. There, artists sought a return to a “simpler” life in the countryside that they contrasted with what they considered to be the materialistic and spiritually degenerate environment of the industrial cities. Kenderdine was probably familiar with the English versions of the artists’ colonies at Newlyn and Cullercoats, as well as the activities of the Group of Seven and other artists active in northern Ontario. The concept of introducing artists to wilderness landscape through the medium of an art camp had also been tried elsewhere in the British Empire. In Australia, the English-born artist Tom Roberts (1856–1931) had set up painting camps as early as the 1880s at Box Hill and Mentone outside Melbourne in the state of Victoria. Roberts and another painter, Arthur Streton, who helped to establish the Heidelberg camp at Eaglemount in 1889, both worked using landscape subjects drawn from the region to define a white Australian identity similar to, but distinct from, that of Britain.31 Translating these ideas into the Saskatchewan environment of the 1930s, Kenderdine saw the experience of the artists and art teachers at Emma Lake as a means towards spiritual regeneration. Having absorbed the transcendental experience of painting in the northern woods, the students from the droughtaffected farming areas would be able to return home with both a strong personal experience and a new optimism about life in the province, which they

Claiming Saskatchewan: Landscape Painting from 1905 to 1950

could pass on to their students. In a “Message” placed in the Murray Point students’ scrapbook compiled after the 1938 summer session was over, Kenderdine wrote: “There are elements of undiscovered beauty in Saskatchewan which many persons in this province do not see, which are waiting for the revealing touch of Saskatchewan artists. . . . The natural surroundings of Murray Point are an incentive to vision. Even if one doesn’t succeed in adequately interpreting their beauty on canvas, the experience of unfolding vision in such an environment is one to be treasured.”32 Kenderdine’s philosophy was evident from the first summer school session in 1936. Writing in Saturday Night on “Murray Point: Saskatchewan’s new Art School,” Edith Butler remarked, “What is most important to the sponsors is the assurance that these students are taking back to their desks, their homes, their neighbourhoods, a personal enthusiasm for art and the appreciation of beauty. They have discovered the lovely north country; they have been taught with eyes that see.”33 And as late as 1949, the artist Reta Cowley wrote in a letter for the art school scrapbook: “Let us carry back with us into everyday life some of the strength and serenity of the woods. Here we are close to nature. Its cycle of growth and decay and new life can teach us a healthy attitude to the eternal change which is in and above us. Memories of the peace and beauty of our northland can fill a corner of our mind to which we can withdraw for renewed courage when times are difficult.”34 It is evident from these three responses that Kenderdine’s artistic interest in northern Saskatchewan did not, as has sometimes been suggested, represent a “retreat” from the Prairie, so much as a response to changes in the social and economic conditions in the region. Nor was he alone in exploiting the opening of the north and in seeking ways of appropriating its landscape into his European sensibility. Other artists, notably the Austrian-born Ernest Lindner, brought his own cultural construct of the town–country divide with him to Saskatchewan and subsequently produced pictures based on his belief in the spiritual experience of growth and decay in the woods, a reference to which probably appears in Reta Cowley’s 1949 letter. A National Style

Kenderdine’s experience of the north was also crucial to his interest in adding a western component to nationalist Canadian art. Together with the Group of Seven in Ontario, Kenderdine, too, saw the landscape as the repository of

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national cultural identity, a discourse that was repeated in Britain and other countries during the 1920s and 1930s. While most public attention was directed toward art produced in Upper Canada, Kenderdine worked through his own painting and at the Murray Point summer classes to provide a distinctly Saskatchewan contribution to the notion of a national style. Discussion about the possible form a national Canadian art might take had been ongoing since the latter part of the nineteenth century. Reviews of the first major display of Canadian painting outside the country at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition held in London, England, in 1886 made it clear that the Canadian contribution was seen as essentially a “reiteration” of European methods applied in a Canadian context. A review in the British Magazine of Art, for example, summed up the prevailing point of view, remarking: “While walking among the Canadian pictures you can imagine yourself in a good European gallery much more easily than you can if you are in the fine arts collection of another colony.”35 The author, J.E. Hodgson, ra, concluded his review by outlining his hopes for the development of a Canadian school of art: “I would like to see Canadian art, Canadian to the backbone, not reminding me of Patrick Nasmith or John Richardson [both British artists], or of the French Impressionists; a thing developed by nature in a special soil and climate like a prairie flower, which grows nowhere else—a great school of art in Canada, and surely of all places in the world there is none more likely to produce such a phenomenon.” By the time of the British Empire Exhibition held at Wembley in 1924, however, developments in Canadian landscape painting prompted a different critical response. While the large Canadian art display (127 paintings) was clearly comprehensible to British reviewers, the pictures on view were judged to have lost much of their previous dependence on metropolitan sources. The reviewer for the 26 May 1924 edition of The Field, for example, found that “Canada above all other countries, has reason to be proud of her contribution, uniting as she does a pronounced love of nature coupled with a vigorous and definite technique—Canada has arrived. She has a national style, however young, and the time is surely not far distant when we shall purchase Canadian examples for our national and provincial collections.”36 And the 31 May 1924 edition of the The Art News, published in New York, commented in a less condescending manner that “modern Canadian pictures have already aroused the very greatest interest. Here are people with something vital to say, who say it well, and with emphasis, and at the same time with a typical emphasis.”37

Claiming Saskatchewan: Landscape Painting from 1905 to 1950

These reviews were later reproduced in a substantial book, Canadian Landscape Painters, written by Albert H. Robson and published by the Ryerson Press in Toronto in 1932. In the concluding chapter, “A Backward Glance,” Robson noted that it was “both necessary and profitable for us to look to the older countries for our development in the craft and theories of art”38 but warned that Canadian artists should avoid “warmed over presentations of another country’s culture.”39 Canada, Robson noted, was “fashioned in a particularly ‘heroic’ mould,”40 where “the physical quality of the landscape offered a more fitting commentary on the mental and spiritual nature of a people.” Robson then went on to declare in the final sentences of the book that “Canadian landscape art is the most significant and therefore Canadian of our arts. It is logical and inevitable that the national spirit in art will first achieve expression by a landscape school of painters inspired by the ‘solemn grandeur’ of Canadian landscape.”41 Kenderdine almost certainly owned or had read a copy of Canadian Landscape Painters, not only because the book was a rare, lavish (seventy-five colour plates), and comprehensive review of the national landscape painting scene, but also because Robson included a reproduction of Kenderdine’s painting, A Western Homestead.42 In his commentary, Robson suggested that the artist’s work “deserves more recognition” and praised Kenderdine’s ability to interpret “the western landscape with a fine feeling for values and atmospheric effects.”43 Robson may have also seen the two paintings that Kenderdine exhibited at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts annual exhibition held at the Arts Association Galleries in Montreal in 1931. Kenderdine had been actively thinking about the issue of a distinct Canadian style for over a decade before his work began to receive national attention. In an address to the University of Saskatchewan Women’s Club in 1923, he defined a national art in terms of the Canadian peoples’ “appreciation of the Canadian scenery and the development of their sense of beauty.” The style that would emerge from such an appreciation would be the product of the “Canadian temperament . . . vigorous, energetic, clear sighted and determined. . . . Underneath it all will be the feeling of a great country, of perfect freedom, the feeling of self-confidence and poise”—all terms that were also a key component of the rhetoric of Western settlement literature.44 At the beginning of the address, Kenderdine admitted that artists like himself, whose “idea of beauty . . . resulted from our observation of nature in other lands,” would not “respond as quickly as we should to the true and the

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beautiful as represented by a ‘Canadian’ artist.’” By comparison, “the younger generation who have spent their lives here . . . will experience the rush of memory which is the real aesthetic experience upon seeing a truly Canadian picture.” Kenderdine continued to develop this idea of an emerging Canadian culture when, in 1933, he published a booklet, Twelve Views of Saskatchewan, illustrated with colour plates of his paintings, each of which was accompanied by a short verse quotation.45 While three of the poets he included—Kipling, Longfellow, and Masefield—were not Canadian, the remainder, including Bliss Carman, Helena Coleman, E. Pauline Johnson, and Frederick George Scott, were. By interspersing Canadian writers with American and British heavyweights, Kenderdine was making the point that Canadian culture equalled that of the metropolitan centres and that the national landscape required its own interpreters. He chose Bliss Carmen, for example (“Therefore I house me not with kin, / But journey as the sun goes forth / By stream and wood and marsh and sea, / Through dying summers of the North.”), to accompany the first illustration in Twelve Views, Waskesieu Lake, a view of the water through a frame of spruce trees and bushes. Edith Butler’s 1936 Saturday Night article, written following her visit to the first summer session at Murray Point, closely reflects Kenderdine’s interpretation of northern Saskatchewan. Butler also described the landscape in poetic terms: “The play of light and shadow on the gnarled old spruce trunks; the grace and poetry of the lovely birch; the sweep of water and the subtle harmony of distance [are] . . . all here, waiting for interpretation.”46 This lyrical response to the landscape is clearly apparent in Kenderdine’s depictions of northern subjects: views framed in the Picturesque manner, like Northern Lakes Through Trees; The Storm or more intimate enclosed scenes in the woods, as in the case of An Old Friend (1942). As in many of his prairie paintings, the artist included Aboriginal people, loggers, and road builders as part of the compositions, repeating the references to English landscape conventions that occur elsewhere in his oeuvre. In one painting, Peter Pan, Kenderdine used the trees at Murray Point as a setting for what was apparently intended as a school reader illustration to the Scottish writer J.M. Barrie’s story first published in 1911. In this scene, a version of Neverland in the Saskatchewan woods, Kenderdine interweaves the written and visual culture of English-speaking settlers with the newly “discovered” landscapes of the

Claiming Saskatchewan: Landscape Painting from 1905 to 1950

north. Existing Aboriginal representations of the woods are erased and a new mythology inserted to take their place. The establishment of summer art classes at Murray Point in 1936 formed a major component of Kenderdine’s declared agenda for providing a “younger generation” with the opportunity to experience the “true and the beautiful” Canadian landscape and to discover both their national and regional identity through the production of landscape paintings. This experience, as Kenderdine explained in his 1938 scrapbook “Message,” was comparable to the “effort of Dutch or Italian painters to reveal the beauty of their own surroundings . . . which millions of other Dutch and Italians had never seen.”47 This was “one of the essentials of real art . . . that it shall have a vital relationship to the life of the community.” Saskatchewan was therefore to be made “visible” to its residents through the eyes of the first generation of young artists born on the Prairies. In this way the process of making the landscape “familiar” would be firmly cemented into the cultural life of the West. Conclusion

By the time Kenderdine died in 1949, his work and that of the majority of other landscape painters who formed the first wave of settler artists in Saskatchewan had been viewed for some time as old-fashioned in the face of more recent developments in art. The fact that Modernism and its successors were yet further imports from Europe and the United States has often been ignored in the face of the universalist claims made for those styles. A whole range of artists, including Ruth Pawson, Mina Forsyth, Catherine Peruhudoff, Dorothy Knowles, Otto Rogers, David Alexander, Greg Hardy, Reta Cowley, Lorna Russell, and Wynona Mulcaster, to name but a few, picked up where Kenderdine, Henderson, and others had left off, adapting more recent modes of depicting the landscape to recast the prairies again for a new generation of Saskatchewan residents. At the same time, Aboriginal artists, including such people as Allan Sapp and Edward Poitras—inheritors of a landscape tradition that had been dismissed by Albert H. Robson and others as “merely decorative” or even non-existent—expanded their view, often returning the imperial gaze by appropriating the incomers’ modes of representation in order to reclaim the spaces that others had sought to colonize.

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Notes 1. Shaunanne Tangney, “But What Is there to See? An Exploration of a Great Plains Aesthetic,” Great Plains Quarterly 24 (Winter 2004): 31. 2. Colonel W.F. Butler, The Wild North Land: The Story of a Winter Journey with Dogs, Across Northern North America, 9th ed. (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1884), 69. 3.

Jessie M.E. Saxby, Wes-Nor’-West (London: James Nisbet, 1890), 29.

4. Albert H. Robson, Canadian Landscape Painters (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1932), 211. 5. See W.J.T. Mitchell, “Imperial Landscape,” in W.J.T. Mitchell, ed., Landscape and Power (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), in particular, page 22, for a discussion of landscape in a New Zealand context. 6. Ibid., 22. 7.

Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 6.

8. Roper, By Track and Trail: A Journey Through Canada (London: W.H. Allen, 1891), 65. 9. Ibid., 385. 10. Ibid., 384 11. Ibid., 393. 12. Ibid., 93. See John Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Landscape Painting 1730–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), for a discussion of the ways in which English landscape painters concealed rural poverty in paintings produced for wealthy clients. 13. Not surprisingly, the cover and frontispiece of Roper’s book consists of a sketch showing a train passing emerging from a tunnel in the Rocky Mountains. Prairie views are limited to the text. 14. Saxby, Wes-Nor’-West, 40. 15. For a discussion of the Qu’Appelle as a subject for landscape painters, see the exhibition catalogue, Qu’Appelle: Tales of Two Valleys (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 2002), with essays by Dan Ring, Trevor Herriott, and Robert Stacey. 16. Collection: Birmingham, Barber Institute of Fine Arts. 17. Collection: Calgary, John M. and Ethelene Gareau. 18. For a discussion of Kenderdine’s career, see Keith Bell, Augustus Kenderdine 1870–1947. Works from the Collection of May Beamish (Saskatoon: Diefenbaker Center, University of Saskatchewan, 1984), and Keith Bell, Augustus Kenderdine 1870–1947 (Saskatoon: Kenderdine Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, 1991). 19. Tangney, “But What Is there to See?” 35. 20. For instance, Kenderdine’s CPR commission.

Claiming Saskatchewan: Landscape Painting from 1905 to 1950

21. Collection: Saskatoon, University of Saskatchewan. 22. This is a particularly flat part of England! The official Salisbury web site claims the image of the cathedral across the open fields as “Britain’s favourite view.” 23. For example, Buffalo Hunt (Calgary: Glenbow Museum), Northern Lakes Through Trees, The Storm (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan), Rising Storm—Manitou Lake (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan). 24. Marjorie Harrison, Go West—Go Wise: A Canadian Revelation (London: Edward Arnold and Co., 1930), 115. 25. Ibid., x. 26. Collection: Calgary, Glenbow Museum. 27. Nicholas Green, The Spectacle of Nature: Landscape and Bourgeois Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990). 28. Ibid., 83. 29. Ibid., 80. 30. Ibid., 84. 31. See John Rennie Short, “Australian Landscape Painting,” in Imagined Country: Society, Culture and Environment (London: Routledge, 1991). 32. G. Kenderdine, “Message from G. Kenderdine,” scrapbook (n.p., 1938). Collection, University of Saskatchewan Library, Special Collections. Compiled by the students attending the Murray Point Art School Session, Summer, 1938. 33. Edith Butler, “Murray Point: Saskatchewan’s New Art School,” Saturday Night, 7 May 1936. 34. Reta Cowley, Murray Point Scrapbook (1949). Collection: University of Saskatchewan Archives. 35. Quoted in Albert H. Robson, Candian Landscape Painters (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1932), 194–95. 36. Quoted in ibid., 196. 37. Quoted in ibid., 196. 38. Robson, Landscape Painters, 212. 39. Ibid., 214. 40. Ibid., 216. 41. Ibid., 217. 42. Ibid., 189 43. Ibid., 189. 44. Author’s collection. 45. G. Kenderdine, Twelve Views of Saskatchewan (Winnipeg: Stovel Company, 1933). 46. Butler, “Murray Point: Saskatchewan’s New Art School.” 47. G. Kenderdine, “Message from G. Kenderdine,” 1938.

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Ab s t r a c t A r t o n t h e P r a i r i e s Eli Bornstein

Are culture and society affected by the character of the physical geography we inhabit? Is our art influenced by the land, the sea, the sky, the rivers that form the particular environment of our daily lives? Some art has been greatly affected; some has not. Does our human psyche, however civilized, remain latently persuaded by Nature or by the particular bioregion in which we live? Our psychology, our perception, our vision, and our imagination surely cannot be entirely detached from the physical spaces of earth and sky, the light and colour, the scale of the natural world, its other life forms, its forces and processes that are so much greater than ourselves and over which we have little ultimate control. Is it accidental that geography should engender geo-poetry in the form of abstract visual, spatial, chromatic art? Is it mere coincidence that the origins of abstract art should have emerged from Holland (De Stijl) or Russia (Suprematism, Constructivism)? Is it inconceivable that the overwhelming space, light, and colour of the Prairies could be a further stimulus for continued development in abstraction? The Prairies are often characterized, if not dismissed, by eastern Canada as agricultural, rural, and agrarian, and are depicted by the media as something of a cultural wasteland. The Prairies frequently are represented by folk or country

274 Perspectives of Saskatchewan

stereotypes and clichés. The popular image of Saskatchewan seldom includes its being a source of aesthetic and intellectual depth. Such misconceptions are not easily overcome and are constantly reinforced by the mass media. Despite these false perceptions, the vast stretches of unencumbered space of land and sky, as well as our geographical isolation or separateness, in reality can and do encourage broad perceptions, more panoramic vistas, and larger worldviews that can stand up against popular culture or fashion. Certainly these environmental qualities have often spawned a breeding ground for independent thinking and genuine innovation. There is a supreme minimalism about the prairie landscape that is not unlike that of the sea—the vast sky, the unbroken horizon, the elemental interface of horizontal/vertical within endless space. Some may recoil from this phenomenon and consider it too austere and empty—too forbidding, demanding, and remote. Others recognize its grandeur and embrace it as sublime. (Willa Cather, author of O Pioneers! [1913] felt that the praries’ genius loci was joy—a great free spirit that breathes across the plains.) An obvious parallel can be seen between the bald prairie landscape and some abstract artworks, in their seeming severity. The great sky and far-reaching land may be disturbing, even terrifying, to some big-city dwellers or to inhabitants of selfenclosed or protected environments. There are similar responses to Abstract Art on the part of those who look upon it as barren and without content. Abstract Art shares some affinities with the prairie environment that are worthy of serious consideration. My intention here is neither a comprehensive survey nor an objective allinclusive history of Abstract Art or artists on the Canadian Prairies. That has yet to be fully studied and is best left to future art historians who are deeply interested and knowledgeable in the entire subject. It is a subject by no means concluded and remains in process, with wide and continued aspects still unfolding, and in fact there is valid argument that insufficient time has elapsed for any such conclusive vision of the subject to be possible. What follows is one artist’s reflections and speculations on a subject in which he has been closely involved for over half a century. These considerations will of necessity be sketchy. They will be limited to only parts of the Canadian Prairies and they will focus upon only some few examples (among numerous others) of artists who have undertaken abstract public artworks or commissions for public spaces or buildings. Such work represents major, more permanent, and prominent confrontations with the larger

1. Sioux Parfleche, ca. 1900 (painted rawhide). From The American Indian Parfleche: A Tradition of Abstract Painting by Gaylord Torrence.

2. Eli Bornstein, Aluminum Construction (“Tree of Knowledge”), 1956, Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation Building, Saskatoon.

3. Robert Murray, Fountain, 1959, welded steel, Saskatoon City Hall.

4. William Perehudoff, Mural, painted canvas, detail, 1966, Frances Morrison Public Library, Saskatoon.

5. Don Foulds, Welded Steel Sculpture, 1978, Dental Clinic Building, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.

8. Randy Woolsey and Greg Hardy, Ceramic Mural, 1979, Sturdy Stone Building, Saskatoon.

6. Jack Sures, Ceramic Mural, 1979, Sturdy Stone Building, Saskatoon.

7. Eli Bornstein, Four-Part Structurist Construction, enamel on aluminum on welded steel frame, 1983, Wascana Centre Authority Administration Building, Regina.

9. Douglas Bentham, Head, welded steel, 2000. Presently on Saskatoon City Hall grounds.

10. Douglas Bentham, Unfurled, stainless steel, 2004, 25th Street Bridge, Saskatoon.

11. Eli Bornstein, Hexaplane Structurist Relief, acrylic enamel on aluminum, 2003, Synchrotron— Canadian Light Source Building, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.

12. Augustus Kenderdine, Dried Out, 1933, oil on canvas. Collection of Glenbow Museum.

13. Augustus Kenderdine, Beaver Creek Trail, 1929, oil on canvas. Collection of Glenbow Museum.

Abstract Art on the Prairies

population and with reference to public spaces, buildings, communities, and natural environments. In these projects the art is placed beyond the more narrow confines of museums, galleries, and private collections. My approach is meant not to minimize the importance of smaller works done for collectors or galleries, but rather (and necessarily) to reduce the scope and length of this essay. Given these limits, it may be useful to deal initially and briefly with the origins and meaning of “abstract,” a difficult term often misused or used loosely to include a variety of different approaches. I have included some views of Aboriginal art (that of the Plains Indians) and a brief overview of Abstract Art in the twentieth century in Europe, Russia, and North America. From these origins and sources, I will consider aspects of the history of Canadian landscape painting and the general emergence of Abstract Art. I will then examine some of the specific Saskatchewan influences. Finally, I will review some examples of abstract public work in Saskatchewan and conclude with speculations on the future of Abstract Art. Abstract Art

The origin of the word “abstract” can be traced back to the Greeks, to Plato and Aristotle. The word has a long history in philosophy. Socrates referred to abstraction as an act of isolation or separation; indeed, thinking is itself a form of abstracting from experience. Eric Havelock, in his fascinating book, Preface to Plato, reveals how philosophy (which Socrates referred to as “sublime music”) emerged in Greece as “a drive toward the abstract” and away from the epic narrative. Abstraction can be seen as the imagined or visualized as opposed to the actual or concrete; the conceptual as opposed to the perceptual. The term “abstract art,” after a century of usage still remains difficult to define or use. Whether one begins with some of its earliest pioneers, such as the Austrian Josef Hoffmann (his 1902 reliefs preceded and anticipated Suprematism and de Stijl by over a decade), or with the Russians Malevich, Tatlin, Lissitzky, and Kandinsky, or with the Dutch Van Doesburg and Mondrian (for whose works use of the terms “abstract” and “non-objective” art originated), problems remain concerning the inadequacy of the terms. If one tries to substitute “non-figurative” or “non-representational,” as is often done, such terminology barely helps and only serves to replace one confusion with another. We are stuck with the term “abstract” by its historical usage and, uncomfortable

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though it be, must continue to use this word as a necessary name or label in order to differentiate the work from other kinds of art. The term should not be taken literally. With all this early art that collectively became the foundation for subsequent abstract work, a common quality is its preoccupation with structure (some may refer to this as formalism) and a deliberate rejection of previous realistic or naturalistic representation. We see the abandonment of the world of appearances and a move toward the “immaterial,” the “ideal,” what Kandinsky called the “spiritual,” as well as toward the structural process level of Nature. In this ongoing struggle with the misleading term “abstract,” some artists referred to their work as “the new reality” or “the new realism.” Others such as Van Doesburg came to reject the term and instead chose “concrete” to better identify the tangible reality of its form, space, and colour. The term “pure abstract art” came to be used by Mondrian and others to try within the whole process of abstraction to distinguish their other varying degrees of abstraction such as Cubism, Futurism, and many partial or semi-abstract directions. Mondrian also used the term “neo-plasticism” to designate the new plastic art of pure abstraction. But introducing the word “pure” brought the problems of coping with absolute values. The difficulty here lies in the fact that the essence of reality with regard to Abstract Art continues to elude both the literal and the abstract, both mimesis and metaphor. For both remain vital as relative terms— of degree, of kind, and of level.1 In a 1978 article entitled “Mimesis and Metaphor: Art as Truth/Art as Celebration,”2 I attempted to trace the dual impulses of art: as imitation and as invention. There is descriptive or literal representation and there is indirect reference, suggestion, translation, transformation, or evocation. While aspects of mimesis and metaphor appear in all art, as extremes or polar opposites, photography became the apotheosis of mimesis while Abstract Art became the ultimate embodiment of free invention or visual metaphor. Photography, the epitome of mimetic representation and of realistic imagery, has become so much a part of our daily lives and our consciousness that we easily forget that it too is an abstraction and an illusion. The photographic image, particularly in cinema and television, has become the most pervasive folk art of our time. All art through the ages has been, and continues to be, engaged in varying degrees, kinds, and levels of abstraction and imitation. Abstract art is often mistakenly regarded as a specific style or fashion in art, while in actuality it is an intrinsic fundamental shift of focus away from the literal or mimetic toward the other

Abstract Art on the Prairies

ancient and enduring aspect of art, the metaphoric or the symbolic impulse within the dual anatomy of art. Abstraction is a process, a selective process of extraction, reduction, simplification. As a process it existed in primitive art and in varying degrees in all art, but the earliest abstractions of Mondrian and Kandinsky reduced visual art to its ultimate elements of line, space, colour, and form. With the invention of photography, realistic painting or representation was overtaken by the camera and eventually by all the film, video, and digital image making that has evolved into many kinds of photographic and computer-generated mimesis. Realism and literal description in painting was displaced and became a relatively obsolete craft or technique, highly regarded in its own long history but with little relevance to the future of art in the twenty-first century. The camera liberated art from its traditional storytelling narrative aspects toward greater abstraction or the most abstract of all the arts, music. It also returned painting and sculpture to their ancient associations with architecture, which Goethe referred to as “frozen music.” In most considerations of Abstract Art on the Prairies, the subject of Aboriginal or Plains Indian art is entirely neglected or omitted. Abstract Art generally refers to modern art of the twentieth century. Yet so-called “primitive” art of earlier cultures, going all the way back to Paleolithic times and the beginnings of art, reveals interest in abstract shapes and patterns. These ancient arts have often been confined to archaeology or anthropology, or considered as decorative arts. The divisions between Fine, Decorative, and Applied arts are somewhat arbitrary, and often have confused distinctions and differences rather than being clearly defined. The long history of the Plains Indians who inhabited the Prairies for thousands of years before the arrival of the white man also includes their keen interest in abstract shapes and patterns as seen in their varied arts and crafts such as weaving, pottery, beadwork, clothing, and notably their parfleches (painted rawhide bags) with their simple and direct use of pure shape, line, and colour (Illustration 1). Some early critics of Modern abstract painting and sculpture denigrated such art by labelling it “primitive,” “savage,” or “childish” because of its non-literal, non-mimetic, or non-descriptive character. The power and immediacy (as well as the inventiveness) of socalled “primitive” cultures are in their use of the primary elements of art often not adequately appreciated in the histories of Western civilization. These early forms of art reveal an influence of environment and a strong aesthetic response to the fundamental elements of visual art in media that were indigenous to the Plains Indians. This raises the question of why so much contemporary First

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Nations art shows little, if any, interest in Abstract Art. Rather, it seems mostly either preoccupied with repeating endlessly the same traditional iconography and/or symbols (although the life and culture that spawned those has largely disappeared) or influenced by the most conventional, literal, sentimental realism in painting and sculpture, again a style as far as imaginable removed from that of their ancient culture. Much contemporary First Nations art has largely become either a cliché, or a weak derivative repetition of its ancient self, or a form of commercial tourist kitsch. It is also interesting to note how some of the pioneers of Abstract Art and Modern architecture, from Picasso to Frank Lloyd Wright,3 were influenced by “primitive” or Aboriginal arts. They were influenced by the strength of conception and design, the simple yet powerful utilization of the elements of visual art unencumbered by the long academic traditions of Western art. With the liberation of art that the new art of photography provided, ancient inclinations toward the powers of line, colour, and form were revived. These earlier “non-Western” cultures, their creativity and inventiveness, were re-examined with deep interest and sympathy. In the larger view (which the best and most valued art history includes), prehistoric and Aboriginal or “primitive” art are not isolated activities, unrelated and unconnected to any considerations of Abstract Art. From Paleolithic painting and sculpture through many subsequent cultural and ethnic identities (such as Islamic), it seems that the latent powers of line, shape, and colour may be linked to a genetic human capacity for art making and abstraction. Archaeology and anthropology, no less than geography and geology, have important connections with the histories of emerging peoples and their cultures. To focus attention more closely on the present and more upon the Canadian Prairie and its emerging art, my earliest introduction to the Saskatchewan landscape and Canadian culture and my particular responses to them as an artist may be of interest. Prairie Landscape and Prairie Art

My introduction to the Saskatchewan prairies and to Canadian culture began in 1950 when I travelled by train across the Midwest from my original place of birth—Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Saskatoon—I arrived to teach art at the University of Saskatchewan. Coming to the unknown Canadian Prairies for the first time, I was overwhelmed by the space and the light. The space at first

Abstract Art on the Prairies

was almost unbelievable in its flatness and endlessness. The only comparable visual geography for me was that of Lake Michigan, the largest of the Great Lakes, but my experience of that inland sea had been mostly from the land and felt more like being on the edge of a great space and looking at a panorama rather than being almost lost within or consumed by it. The prairie light was almost equally overwhelming. Its brightness and unique character, the prominence of the sky, the far greater daily consciousness of the unobstructed sun and the moon and the dramatic changes through the season—these were to become one of my greatest attractions to the prairie that has continued to enthrall by its power and diversity. Sunrises, sunsets, rainbows, aurora borealis, and the prismatic haloes and shafts of light known as sun dogs and moon dogs, are a few of the ongoing daily and seasonal varieties of ever-changing visual displays unique to the Prairies. I discovered that light on the Prairies brings an increased awareness of the celestial movements and displays of the planets and the stars that are obscured by big-city dwelling. One is more constantly reminded of the wonder of the Earth that is our unique and cherished home place. From raking light, long shadows, brevity of days, and low position of the sun at winter solstice; to fall and spring equinoxes, and to the all-consuming lengthy illumination of summer; the prairie light offers magnificent visual presence within its great overarching space of sky. Like that of most Americans, my education in the United States had offered me almost no contact with Canadian culture. Although that education included considerable contact with European art, my exposure to Canadian art history was almost nil. Living and teaching in Saskatchewan gradually brought an increasing awareness of Canada’s history. I soon learned that Western Canada was not that far removed from the era of frontier days and the pioneering homesteaders. I discovered that the immensity of Canada’s geography consisted of more than the “two solitudes” of its French-speaking and English-speaking peoples. There also was great cultural division between the east and the west and, after three trips to the Arctic (1964, 1986, and 1987), I became keenly aware of the magnitude of isolation of the Far North from Canada’s south. Much of the art that I first saw on the prairie was done by the early settlers who had roots in Europe and England. The landscape painting I saw here seemed to show little direct response to the prairies’ overwhelming space, colour, and light. Most paintings I saw seemed to reflect something of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century traditions of English and Dutch landscape painting. While much of this art described prairie subject matter, it

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seemed untouched by the drama of the dynamic physical and visual geography of Saskatchewan or awareness of the revolutions in art that had occurred in Europe decades earlier. There was little, if any, of the dramatic luminosity, transparency, and reflection of the chromatic and spatial reality of prairie nature. There was no Boudin who painted such magnificent skies in his Normandy seascapes. Nor was there a Constable or Turner who responded to the sea and sky in their landscape studies before Impressionism. Impressionism had hardly yet arrived here, although it was the Group of Seven (of whom I had no prior knowledge) who eventually first brought something of the colour and vision of Impressionism to Canada and awakened its art to the unique light and colour of its tremendously varied landscape, particularly that of the Far North with its majestic wilderness. Liberated by the new vision of French Impressionism, the Group of Seven and other Canadian artists rediscovered their own landscape. The more monochromatic windows of English and Dutch traditional landscape painting with its dark browns and syrupy grayed ochres was being opened to fresh light and colour and the revolutions in art that had occurred and were occurring in Europe and were beginning to spread across North America. It was also through artists who were either part of or associated with the Group of Seven that Post-Impressionism and something of abstract art was introduced into Canada. Lawren Harris and Bertram Brooker, for example, were influenced by European abstraction, yet their involvement with abstraction was often only partial and (particularly with Harris) was assimilated into a more picturesque simplification or highly stylized representation of West Coast mountains or glaciers. These activities only gradually touched the Prairies. My own direction in art changed strongly toward Abstract Art after I moved to Saskatoon. Before arriving here, I had been involved in both painting and sculpture; those were my dual interests. In painting, my influences included Impressionism and Cezanne; in sculpture they included ancient civilizations such as archaic Greek and twentieth-century Brancusi. Both my painting and my sculpture continued to become increasingly abstract—influenced by Cubism in painting and Gabo and Constructivism in sculpture. The prairie environment appeared as an influence in some of my landscapes that involved the sky, the wintry sun, the winter world of city smoke, and sun dogs. My sculpture moved from volumetric carving to spatial constructions and was further stimulated by a commission to do a work for the new Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation Building by architect Tinos Kortes in 1956 (Illustration 2). This

Abstract Art on the Prairies

fifteen-foot welded aluminum construction was the first abstract public work in Saskatoon (and probably Saskatchewan). It became known as the “Tree of Knowledge” and initially caused considerable public controversy and even hostility. Eventually however, it was accepted, and I believe this helped open the way toward more tolerance of successive abstract works by other artists. In 1957, when I was on a sabbatical trip to Europe, my dual interests in painting and sculpture eventually found resolution and synthesis in the emerging abstract constructed relief medium, which embraced the space, form, and structure of sculpture and the colour and light of painting. In 1960 I founded The Structurist, initially as an annual publication then after 1972 and to the present as a biennial. (This interdisciplinary international journal is concerned with neglected aspects of art and architecture; their current histories, relationships, and developments—and notably the abstract constructed relief medium.) At the same time (1959), a selection of courses was initiated at the University of Saskatchewan entitled Structure and Colour in Space as part of the art department’s undergraduate and graduate programs. These courses continued until my retirement from the department in 1990. Meanwhile, there were numerous other emerging interests and activities in different directions of Abstract Art in Saskatchewan. Among the Regina College artists were those eventually called The Regina Five, which included Kenneth Lochhead, Ronald Bloore, Arthur McKay, Douglas Morton, and Ted Godwin. Others in Regina were Roy Kiyooka and John Nugent. In Saskatoon there were Otto Rogers (who taught at the university), William Perehudoff, and Robert Murray (among others) all of whom became increasingly interested in abstract painting and/or sculpture in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. The Murray Point Summer School of Art was initially established by the university at Emma Lake. Eventually, in 1955, this became the site of the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshop, directed by Kenneth Lochhead of the School of Art in Regina.4 The Emma Lake school became a growing influence not only in Saskatchewan but across Canada as a proponent of Abstract Art that featured various guest artists of the New York School as well as Clement Greenberg, the prominent New York art critic who championed the New York school of abstract art that became, for a period, a dominating international style. (It is interesting to note that this influence was far greater in Western Canada than it was in the more populous East. Quebec had stronger tradi-

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tional cultural ties with France and Europe than it did with the rest of Canada or the United States.) Much has been written about Emma Lake, Clement Greenberg, and their influence upon numerous Canadian and particularly Saskatchewan artists. The school has become legendary, if not mythical, yet it is not always fully or accurately appreciated for what it was. I did not participate in any of the Emma Lake workshops. My own differences with Greenberg were largely his failure to fully recognize the far earlier European and Russian antecedents to New York Abstract Art and his promotion of his New York abstract artists as far more original or creative than they actually in essence proved to be. He also tended to ignore the pioneering work of numerous American abstract artists, including the American Abstract Artists group founded in New York in 1936. Other important differences were his establishment of pseudo styles, such as “post-painterly abstraction,” and his absence of interest in, or concern with, relationships between his chosen kinds of Abstract Art and nature, science, technology, architecture, morality, and numerous other important aspects of what constitutes art in its deepest and most historical sense. Greenberg seemed entirely to dismiss nature and the important organic and biocentric ideas that were so influential in Europe and the Bauhaus and were at the roots of other important developments in Abstract Art. His focus on New York Abstract Art as the most fashionable style of art ignored other important considerations concerning global culture, and tended also to trivialize art as a popular commercial fashion, often symbolizing corporate business power and wealth. The far greater potential significance of abstraction as process rather than style seemed to be overlooked. While many see Greenberg’s influence on Saskatchewan art as being very positive, others do not. Certainly the contact he engendered between Canadian and American artists brought an opportunity for valuable communication between some well-known national and international artists and provided a stimulus for dialogue. His presence also drew many Saskatchewan artists together, and definitely brought a wider consciousness to the Prairies concerning Abstract Art. Greenberg became a kind of guru of Modern art whose approval was sought by artists and often was uncritically taken as an ultimate assessment of the value of what they were doing. Imitation rather than genuine growth and innovation often became the result, and attention was turned away from Saskatchewan horizons and toward those of New York.

Abstract Art on the Prairies

While Greenberg stimulated some broadening of perspectives, the focus was on one very popular but narrow viewpoint. Some art may be viewed as reflecting our own image, internal nature, aspects of our own human preoccupations, conflicts, and creativity. Other cultures and kinds of art have been more focused and interconnected to larger natural biological and cosmic processes of which humans are only a minute and transient part. The first view is anthropocentric, while the other is more ecocentric. The long history of portrait and figure painting can be seen as homocentric, while that of landscape painting from Giorgione and Poussin onward became increasingly biocentric, where images of human faces or figures appeared less and less and eventually disappeared entirely. It is not accidental that the origins of abstract art evolved in part through landscape painting from the seventeenth century through Impressionism, Cezanne, and Mondrian. The modern world of the twenty-first century is from its socioeconomical and political aspects dominantly anthropocentric. Much abstract art emerging from the New York School and the Greenberg influence was dominantly focused on itself—human-centred psychology, the act of creation, or “the artist as Nature”—rather than seeing the artist as a finite mini-part of the vast ecosphere and of infinite nature. As a result, much of that American Abstract Art showed little interest in environmental, ecological, or global issues or crises. It maintained little if any connection with science, technology, or social or ethical needs. It became largely solipsistic, centred on or measured by nothing greater than or beyond itself. Celebrating only itself and its commercial promotion, popularity, and success, such Abstract Art had few, if any, roots to support further growth and continuity or further promises to fulfill as genuine nascent seeds for future flowering and sustainability. Nevertheless, a variety of kinds of Abstract Art continued to be explored by artists in search of new possibilities. The impulse toward creating Abstract Art seemed to find particular opportunity and scope for large-scale development in the context of architecture and public spaces. Across the prairies, the growth of urban centres coincided with the spread of consciousness of Modern art, architecture, and design, and the construction of new buildings seemed to be waiting (indeed calling) for art—a call first heard and encouraged by some enlightened young architects and their patrons. Abstract commissioned large-scale artworks began to appear and even flourish outside of or beyond the more commercially oriented and driven private art galleries and public network of museums. The association

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with architecture gave abstract public art a more stable and permanent context and wider audience than did the ever-changing and fiercely competitive marketplace of art exhibitions and art collecting. Abstract public art in Saskatchewan, while having a relatively short history, and given the province’s relatively small population, has shown an impressive vitality. I have referred earlier to my so-called Tree of Knowledge (1956), which was followed by Robert Murray’s Fountain (Illustration 3) in 1959 and numerous other works including abstract sculptures by Otto Rogers, Brian Newman, Douglas Bentham, Don Foulds (Illustration 4), and Douglas Moen. William Perehudoff (Illustration 5) created an abstract mural for the Saskatoon Frances Morrison Public Library in 1966. Quite phenomenally, a burst of opportunity for a number of Canadian artists occurred around 1960. A remarkable Deputy Minister of Transport with the help of the then Director of the National Gallery in Ottawa, Alan Jarvis, initiated a visionary program of commissioning artworks for new airports being constructed on the Prairies in Winnipeg and Edmonton. In 1962 I was commissioned to create a work for the new Winnipeg International Airport designed by Green, Blankstein, and Russell ( and considered an important landmark in the history of Canadian architecture). My work was an abstract constructed relief in fifteen parts in enameled steel spanning the 100-foot south wall. This was part of an extensive number of other commissioned works by other artists. Many thought it was the beginning of a new renaissance for art and architecture, particularly on the Prairies. Unfortunately, the “renaissance” subsided almost as quickly as it began. Like many cultural ventures in Canada, there was little if any follow-up, support, or continuation of this exciting program, which included numerous abstract works. Typically, the program resulted in little response, without national pride, or enthusiasm from Canada’s art establishments. (Ironically, a new Winnipeg airport is being built and the fate of the old one with all the artworks in it remains undecided and without specific plans for appropriate conservation or preservation. Canadian institutions including Heritage Canada and the National Gallery seem oblivious to the possible loss of an important part of Canada’s cultural history.)5 In past ages, architecture was the mother and home of all the arts. Separation and alienation of painting and sculpture from architecture increasingly occurred after the Renaissance. There have been some signs of possible renewal of this ancient bond. In the 1960s a public works program was initiated that provided for a certain percentage of all budgets for new government buildings

Abstract Art on the Prairies

(including universities) to be set aside for commissioning appropriate artworks. This resulted in numerous purchases and commissions of some abstract works for a relatively brief period. Regrettably, the program was not always adhered to and often there were serious problems with the selection process. Frequently when building costs increased, the art commissions were the first to be eliminated. The idea was exemplary; its execution was not. This promising program awaits rejuvenation. Collaboration between architect and artist is not always easy. Some architects regard their buildings as works of art unto themselves and resent inclusion of other art. Some artists are unsympathetic or unable to relate to the scale or other demands of architecture. Yet the simplicity and openness of many contemporary buildings make them highly appropriate as places where works of Abstract Art could reside as complementary and heightened visual/ spatial/structural/chromatic expressions of beauty, giving much-needed aesthetic focus, identity, and pleasure to public spaces. Commissions for and placements of abstract public work in Regina have included artworks by John Nugent, Douglas Bentham and others. In 1983 I was commissioned to create a work for the Wascana Centre Authority for its new administration building in Regina, designed by John Holliday Scott. The work is a four-part structurist colour relief suspended in a four-storey space as a single construction (Illustration 6). The abstract work celebrates metaphorically Saskatchewan’s winter skies. In 1979, large exterior ceramic murals were created—one by Jack Sures (Illustration 7) and another by Randy Woolsey and Greg Hardy (Illustration 8)—for Saskatoon’s Sturdy-Stone Building designed by architect Philip Scott. More recently in Saskatoon, Douglas Bentham has created numerous large-scale abstract sculptures. Among them are one for Innovation Place at the University of Saskatchewan, a work that has appeared at several different sites in the city, and (most spectacularly) the work at the foot of the University Bridge (2004) (Illustrations 9 and 10). In 2003, I completed a large hexaplane structurist relief for the façade of the Synchrotron Canadian Light Source building at the University of Saskatchewan (Illustration 11). All these above works (among numerous others) would seem to denote a positive future for public Abstract Art on the Prairies. Yet that suggestion would be misleading, even without mentioning the frequent hostile rejection and negative responses (and often indifference) to these works that all these artists have experienced. The need and support for public Abstract Art is by no means

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popularly recognized or appreciated throughout Saskatchewan. Only more sensitive and informed cultural and educational programs can encourage more and better art. In general, neither our cultural nor our educational institutions have shown great leadership or courage, let alone sympathy, toward abstract art.6 However, it endures and sometimes even flourishes on the Prairies, particularly in Saskatoon. I do not know of any other community in North America the size of Saskatoon that has as much public Abstract Art on view. (In Israel, numerous sites in both larger and smaller cities have abstract public works. This is due in part to Moses’s second commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth between, or is in the water under the earth.”) Part of the impressive Saskatoon phenomenon is that its city council adopted a Temporary Sculpture Placement Program in 1994. This initiative has encouraged artists selected by a visual arts placement jury to rent their works for placement as landmarks on appropriate sites including school grounds and prominent public spaces that require visual identity. The program was directed by urban designer John Penner. The works are rented for a period of one year and may be renewed for longer. They may be moved to other and/or better sites, and eventually may be purchased or sponsors found for their purchase. Although the works selected are not limited to any specific style or medium, some have been abstract works by artists Douglas Bentham, Leslie Potter, among others. This unique and commendable program has greatly encouraged both the creation and appreciation of abstract public art. A Prairie Future for Abstract Art

Over the past six years, I have given some particular consideration to the future of Abstract Art in a three-part article entitled, “For a Dialogue on the Future of Abstract Art.”7 The content does not deal specifically with the Prairies (I had addressed that subject in greater detail in an earlier published lecture: “Pioneering Abstract Art on the Prairies.”)8 This recent “Dialogue” looks at how Abstract Art might relate to some of the crucial problems facing our emerging culture, including globalization, destruction of our natural environments and wildlife, and the need for a more earth-centred ethos in art and architecture as well as in education. Speculations about future needs and possibilities are included.

Abstract Art on the Prairies

Our prairie environment has persisted over millions of years through glacial and interglacial periods; it has been home for dinosaurs and vast herds of buffalo. It has been the home for thousands of years of Aboriginal cultures connected to other Native cultures spread across the continent. The period of modern industrial/technological intervention on the Prairies has been relatively short, but far from benign. Our current culture’s ongoing presence on the Prairies is popularly perceived as everlasting, its future supposedly protected by ever-increasing discovery and invention through science and technology for perpetual survival in overcoming all environmental, social, political, and economic problems. Yet history, archaeology, and anthropology teach us that great civilizations have come and gone—often rapidly—and that failure or collapse is far more predictable and inevitable than is continued success. The survival of art, however meaningful and vital it may be, remains at the mercy of all other dominant forces at work upon any society. It may survive the society as artefact, trace, or memory, but not necessarily be valued and continue as a vital living expression. Given our rapidly changing, electronic, global culture, it is very doubtful that Western art and architecture of the twenty-first century will have the singular, dominant, all-pervasive appearance that it did in past ages of ancient Egypt and Greece or from the Mediaeval through Renaissance periods, where styles persisted for hundreds or thousands of years. Our instant global communication media point toward closer and better world contact and exchange, yet it is difficult to imagine a single global economical/political/religious/ethnic/ cultural unification or assimilation. Undoubtedly, a pluralism of styles of rather shorter duration seems more likely to continue. Together with this continual rapid change at the popular level, it seems likely that at another level (not necessarily always visible), art will continue to evolve and respond to growing knowledge of ourselves and of the natural world through science and technology. If commercial domination of our consumer culture persists, instant sensational promotion and advertising will prevail in art and architecture as it does with all other consumer products. The purpose and responsibility of our educational and cultural institutions, our public schools, and museums, are to continue a vital critical appraisal and support of those moral, ethical, and ecological activities that encourage sustainable human survival. Art and architecture at their finest contribute toward such a purpose. Individual artists, architects, teachers, and writers of the highest

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stature must engage in working at this very serious task of genuine cultural growth and renewal. Abstract Art on the prairies is a generative process. If it can connect with a bio- and eco-centric ethos and thereby contribute toward more sane cultural development, it will survive as long as we do or as long as the vision and value of the prairie earth and sky are cherished, protected, and celebrated. Such a process will require careful attention in planning our approaches to all future change, and is something that our educational systems and cultural institutions have not always managed well or encouraged. It is conceivable that the natural prairie bioregions, where preserved with greatest concern, can also remain a source of endless creativity in diverse Abstract Art. It is possible that Abstract Art can become a unique Prairie expression identifying with our distinct heritage, our most creative endeavours, and our sense of place. (2004)

Notes 1. Eli Bornstein, “Abstract Art and a Sense of Place” (unpublished Lansdown Lecture, University of Victoria, BC, 1988). 2. Eli Bornstein, “Mimesis and Metaphor: Art as Truth / Art as Celebration,” The Structurist 19/20 (1979-1980): 56-64. 3. See Eli Bornstein, “Differences Between European and North American Constructivism,” The Structurist 29/30 (1989–1990): 85 n. 4. 4. See the exhibition catalogue, The Flat Side of the Landscape: The Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops, John Obrian, curator and ed. (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 1989). 5. Eli Bornstein, “Pioneering Abstract Art on the Prairies,” in Glen Carruthers and Gordana Lazarevich, eds., A Celebration of Canada’s Arts 1930-1970 (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1996), 147-52. 6. See the exhibition catalogue, The Crisis of Abstraction in Canada, The 1950s, Denise Leclerc, National Gallery of Canada, 1992. This exhibition was a noteworthy first attempt to consider Abstract Art in Canada. Unfortunately, it focused only on the 1950s and was neither fully representative nor as comprehensive as it could have been. The exhibit received little of the attention it deserved and very limited circulation across Canada. Regrettably, there has been no follow-up by the National Gallery of any exhibition coverage of Abstract Art after the 1950s. 7. Eli Bornstein, “For a Dialogue on the Future of Abstract Art,” Parts I, II, and III, The Structurist 39/40 (1999–2000): 62–64; 41/42 (2001–2002): 55–60; 43/44 (2003–2004): 70–73. 8. Bornstein, “Pioneering Abstract Art on the Prairies.”

W r i t i n g S a s k at c h e w a n : T h e F i r s t Hu n d r e d Y e a r s Neil Besner

“Writing Saskatchewan” is not simply a reversal of the conventional phrase, but a necessary inversion. Some argue that “Saskatchewan writing” has always been inseparable from its more widely acknowledged context, Prairie writing, both north and south of the forty-ninth parallel; and several important Canadian writers in different genres—Sinclair Ross and Eli Mandel, Dennis Cooley, Lorna Crozier, and Guy Vanderhaeghe, for example—long ago transcended a moniker such as “Saskatchewan writer” as a primary designation. At the same time, other Canadian writers—like poet, novelist, and critic Robert Kroetsch, for example, who is nominally an “Alberta writer,” but more often thought of as the Prairies’ and one of Canada’s most influential postmodernists—have had as much influence on Saskatchewan writing as anyone in the country. Still others—Sharon Butala, for one—are more closely identified with Saskatchewan writing because of their common themes and settings. Then again, more globally minded readers might misapprehend “Saskatchewan writing” as a homely or parochial phrase, describing a body of work mistakenly understood either to be inseparable, or only recently to have emerged, from its regional context. And from another perspective, Saskatchewan writing began before mid-century at once to define and to defy easy definitions or dismissals of its own ethos—including presumptuous national

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dismissals of regional work—with the 1941 publication of what remains one of Canada’s most important novels, Sinclair Ross’s As For Me and My House. Finally, although the conventional term might seem to identify writers with either a literary or legal affiliation to the place, many Saskatchewan writers—beginning with those named above, and with notable exceptions like Vanderhaeghe—lived or are living most of their writing lives elsewhere; while others, such as Swift Current native Fred Wah (b. 1939), have written importantly and urgently about Saskatchewan’s vital place in their imaginations, but are usually more closely associated with other venues and writing movements. “Writing Saskatchewan” might more generously allow for important writing like Wah’s, and for writing that in one of several ways resonates with Saskatchewan. “Writing Saskatchewan” applies nowhere more literally, and locally, for example, than to one work—his best-known book in Canada, certainly—of American writer Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), whose celebrated 1963 memoir, Wolf Willow, is a luminous account of the formative childhood years that he spent in Saskatchewan, growing up in East End. The phrase also applies, in 1986, to uk-born Mark Abley’s (b. 1955) beautiful memoir of rediscovery, Beyond Forget: Rediscovering the Prairies. Problems of definitions aside, it is also daunting to treat the subject in a brief chapter like this one; happily, there have been far too many writers active in Saskatchewan, and in languages other than English, to discuss them all. Nor can I pretend to address every genre or cohort: there are many writers in Saskatchewan, historically and on the contemporary scene, who have contributed valuable work who are not discussed here. Rather than attempting a broad and shallow survey, I have chosen to focus on the most representative writers in two genres—fiction and poetry—hoping that their work will help to articulate the whole. The rich world of drama in Saskatchewan—both published and performed drama, and the institution itself—is a wide subject deserving another chapter. For the reader wishing to survey the most important criticism on Saskatchewan writing (much of which, like Edward McCourt’s 1949 study, The Canadian West in Fiction; Laurence Ricou’s 1973 seminal book, Vertical Man, Horizontal World: Man and Landscape in Canadian Prairie Fiction; or, more recently, Deborah Keahey’s invigorating 1998 challenge to the assumptions of earlier criticism, Making it Home: Place in Canadian Prairie Literature, integrates Saskatchewan writing with its more familiar home on the Prairies, I have cited these works at the end of the chapter.

Writing Saskatchewan: The First Hundred Years

Before discussing the first two most important writers from Saskatchewan at (last) mid-century—Sinclair Ross and Eli Mandel—who in quite different contexts contributed a body of work that remains vital to Canadian writing, it is worth mentioning in passing that earlier than Mandel’s or Ross’s time, Saskatchewan became the adopted home of a writer who was later revealed to be one of Canada’s most celebrated—and successful—literary hoaxes, Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, or Grey Owl (1888–1938). Actually an Englishman, Belaney emigrated to Canada in 1916 and took on his adopted name from the Ojibwa, fabricating a homespun Native identity that appears to have been derived from reading Longfellow’s Hiawatha. Belaney claimed to be an ecologically minded Native, and he was widely believed; his literary career was abetted by an Iroquois partner, Gertrude Bernard (who took on the stage name Anahareo), with whom Grey Owl went on lecture tours, accompanied by a live beaver. The most popular of Belaney’s several books was Pilgrims of the Wild (1934); after his death, another prominent Saskatchewanian, John Diefenbaker, acted as the lawyer for Belaney’s Ojibwa wife, Angele Egwuna, who sued for part of Belaney’s estate, and won. And while on the subject of hoaxes, mention should also be made of the province’s other enduring, and more charmingly comical, chimera, the popular and parodic “sweet songstress of Saskatchewan,” Sarah Binks: she was the entirely fictional creation of University of Manitoba chemistry professor Paul Hiebert (1892– 1987), who immortalized Sarah Binks in the eponymous book in 1947 (reissued in 1995), skillfully sending up the literary pretensions of the era. But the first major literary career to emerge from Saskatchewan established its bona fides in 1941, three years after Grey Owl died in Prince Albert, when Sinclair Ross (1908–1996), then living in Winnipeg where he was working at the Royal Bank, published the novel (with a New York publisher) that remains to this day one of the fictions most studied and written about in Canada, As For Me and My House. It is not that other novels and short stories were not published in Saskatchewan before this; but the powerful influence of As For Me and My House on Saskatchewan writing, Prairie writing, and Canadian writing—and, in many ways, on writing Saskatchewan—remains unmatched. Margaret Laurence, arguably the most important fiction writer yet to have emerged on the Prairies, has commented that she could not have written her Manawaka novels without Ross’s example some twenty-five years before her first prairie novel, The Stone Angel (1964), launched her Manawaka series of five novels (published from 1964 to 1974). In 1996, Lorna Crozier,

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one of Saskatchewan’s, and Canada’s, most important poets, published in 1996 A Saving Grace: The Collected Poems of Mrs. Bentley. Over the last ten years and more, University of Manitoba professor, poet, and critic Dennis Cooley (born, like Eli Mandel, in Estevan) has published in various venues some thirty poems that play off or allude to Ross’s novel as their major source and influence. David Stouck, a professor at Simon Fraser University who wrote the first full biography of Ross (As For Sinclair Ross, 2005), edited a 1991 collection of essays, As For Me and My House: Five Decades of Criticism, in which many of Canada’s most important writers and critics from the 1940s onwards trace a variety of critical approaches to the book. The reasons for the continuing influence of As For Me and My House are several, and they are not straightforward. First, no other novel—indeed, perhaps no individual work in any other art form—has so powerfully and suggestively rendered several of Saskatchewan’s most enduring legacies, beginning with the hard struggles through the drought years, as the Saskatchewan version of Canadian conflicts with an unyielding landscape that is at best indifferent to human needs. Second, no other novel offers as unflinching a rendition of small-town Prairie puritanism or such a powerfully understated catalogue of its attendant effects. Then, first and last, there is Ross’s language, a stark but also poetic idiom unique in Canadian fiction; here is a representative and famous passage four pages from the opening: It’s an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses are helpless against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high, tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind. Close to the parsonage is the church, black even against the darkness, towering ominously up through the night and merging with it. There’s a soft steady swish of rain on the roof, and a gurgle of eavestroughs running over. Above, in the high cold night, the wind goes swinging past, indifferent, liplessly mournful.1

Nor has any other novel in Canada engendered as much debate about the functions of its central female character—probably Canadian fiction’s most enigmatic narrator—Mrs. Bentley. Narrated through Mrs. Bentley in the first person as a journal, with each entry dated, that records her trials during a year in the town of Horizon with her husband, the unwilling minister and failing artist, Philip, As For Me and My House never quite names Saskatchewan, never names its narrator, and shrouds its taut narration in an eloquent silence that

Writing Saskatchewan: The First Hundred Years

continues to beguile contemporary readers. There is something elementary— and contemporary—in the barely suppressed erotics of Mrs. Bentley’s fraught ambiguities, and, as well, in the novel’s haunting depiction of Saskatchewan “wind, sun, and dust,” as critic Donald Stephens describes it in a well-known 1965 article. And since “wind” is so relentlessly repetitive and powerful a presence in As For Me and My House, this is an apt point at which to mention one of the most memorable of Saskatchewan’s poems from the same period, Anne Marriott’s The Wind Our Enemy (1939), which, with its stark evocations of the drought years—Marriott, born in Victoria in 1913, wrote the poem after spending the summer of 1937 in Saskatchewan—can be read as a telling companion piece to Ross’s novel. Ross captured an essential Prairie voice and vision at mid-century, but ironically, he did so through a most strikingly enigmatic character. It is also intriguing that Saskatchewan—the Prairie province often thought of as the seedbed of straightforward Prairie realism—should be the progenitor of such a complex and enigmatic fiction, and that one of Saskatchewan’s most celebrated writers should be the expatriate Sinclair Ross, who lived a good part of his life abroad, and, when he returned late in life to Canada, moved to the west coast. Others of Ross’s works—particularly the collection The Lamp at Noon and Other Stories (1968), and his last, and well-received novel, Sawbones Memorial (1974)—complement the Prairie vision articulated in his finest novel; but As For Me and My House remains the central text in Ross’s and Saskatchewan’s mid-century fictional archive. If Ross is the most important writer of fiction that the province produced before mid-century, it is equally indisputable, if less widely recognized, that the well-travelled, Estevan-born poet and critic Eli Mandel (1922–1992) was the first, and most important, writer from Saskatchewan to articulate a modernist, international perspective and aesthetic in both his poetry and his criticism. Passionate both about his Saskatchewan origins and about Canadian literature and Canadian Studies generally, Mandel edited important critical collections that helped to establish a foundation for Canadian Studies, such as Contexts of Canadian Criticism (1971) and his last work (edited with David Taras), A Passion for Identity: Introduction to Canadian Studies (1987). His own important collections of criticism include Criticism: The Silent-Speaking Words (1967), Another Time (1977), and The Family Romance (1986). Mandel’s importance as an erudite and witty member of the first generation of critics of Canadian literature was matched by his influence as a teacher and mentor; he is equally well-known,

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and widely anthologized, as a poet, publishing ten acclaimed books of poetry between 1954 and 1986. (His 1967 collection, An Idiot Joy, shared the Governor General’s Award for poetry with a book by Maritime poet Alden Nowlan.) Like Ross, some of Mandel’s major work owes much to his birthplace (the 1977 long poem Out of Place, for example, reflects Mandel’s abiding connections with Saskatchewan); unlike the reclusive Ross, Mandel is finally a figure identified more closely with Canadian writing in a national and post-national context, and a wide-ranging reader, writer, and thinker for whom Canadian literature was urgently related to international contexts, and, particularly, to European traditions. If Sinclair Ross stands as the founding writer in the most serious tradition of Saskatchewan and Prairie fiction outlined above, then W.O. Mitchell (1914– 1998) is the chief progenitor of Saskatchewan fiction’s more widely popular and populist strain. Mitchell wrote hundreds of scripts for radio and television (including cbc Radio’s popular series, Jake and the Kid, which ran from 1950 to 1956), and was a celebrated reader and dramatizer of his work; but it is his 1947 novel, Who Has Seen the Wind, which opens with what has become a classic evocation of prairie landscape—“the least common denominator of nature, the skeleton requirements simply, of land and sky—Saskatchewan prairie”2—that stands as his finest book. The novel of initiation in Canada has its regional variants running east to west across the country; Mitchell’s, with his protagonist Brian O’Connal growing up in the microcosm of Crocus (a fictionalized recreation of Weyburn, Mitchell’s birthplace) is the best-known Prairie version. Another “Saskatchewan writer” who spent much of his career elsewhere in Canada, including stints teaching creative writing at the Banff School of Fine Arts (from 1975 to 1986), Mitchell is also the first whose work most clearly demonstrates the powers and possibilities of a comic sensibility, rarely a quality one would associate with Ross’s fiction. To conceive of Saskatchewan fiction in these terms—with Ross and W.O. Mitchell at its mid-century roots—leads naturally to its corollary, the energetic branching and flowering of talented fiction writers that began to take full force in the 1960s and 1970s, and that is continuing strongly into the new century. The very briefest list of notable novelists and short-story writers in (or with significant connections to) Saskatchewan since the 1960s would include Robert Currie (b. 1937), Ken Mitchell (b. 1940), Sharon Butala (b. 1940), David Carpenter (b. 1941), Dave Margoshes (b. 1941), Gail Bowen (b. 1942), Geoff Ursell (b. 1943), Barbara Sapergia (b. 1943), Guy Vanderhaeghe (b. 1951), Ven

Writing Saskatchewan: The First Hundred Years

Begamudré (b. 1956), and Warren Cariou (b. 1966). Several of these writers played (and continue to play) key roles in establishing the publishing houses, writing institutions, and communities that were born in Saskatchewan during this same period: the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild, for example, one of the strongest and most active of such organizations in the country, was established in 1969 and currently has over 500 members; its first president (and current past president) is Ken Mitchell, who was also connected with the founding of the literary magazine Grain in 1973 (along with Caroline Heath and Anne Szumigalski, he co-edited its first issue). Mitchell is also a good example of the many writers in Saskatchewan who are connected to universities—the University of Regina, in his case—and who have developed their careers at once in intimate connections with Saskatchewan, and also well beyond its borders. Mitchell, also an award-winning playwright and the creator of the popular 1976 rock opera Cruel Tears (loosely based on Othello), shows his abiding affinity for China, where he has often travelled, in his play Gone the Burning Sun (1985), a monodrama about Dr. Norman Bethune. Mitchell’s fiction—from comical and frenetic short stories like the much-anthologized “The Great Electrical Revolution,” wherein an Irish immigrant family in Moose Jaw (Mitchell’s birthplace) deftly dupes the local power corporation, through his first exuberantly picaresque novel, Wandering Rafferty (1972), to the serio-comic The Stones of the Dalai Lama (1993)—radiates a freewheeling energy that galvanizes the many audiences for which Mitchell (who was named to the Order of Canada in 1999 for his role as an ambassador for Canadian writing) delights in performing. A colleague of Mitchell’s in Regina is novelist Gail Bowen, mastermind of the widely popular Joanne Kilbourn detective novels, which began with Deadly Appearance (1990). Robert Currie, a high-school teacher in Moose Jaw (Mitchell’s hometown) for thirty years, also founded one of Saskatchewan’s several literary magazines, Salt, in 1969, edited numerous anthologies, published the 1983 collection of stories Night Games, and (with Geoff Ursell, Barbara Sapergia, and Gary Hyland) founded the highly active publishing house Coteau Books in 1975; Coteau, now based in Regina, continues to publish a diverse and growing literary list, as does another prominent Saskatchewan small press, Thistledown (founded in 1975 by poet Glen Sorestad) in Saskatoon. Sharon Butala is one of the writers in Saskatchewan most closely associated with a keen awareness of and interest in stewardship of the land and its resources. Both in her non-fiction (most notably, in The Perfection of the Morning,

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1994, and Coyote’s Morning Cry, 1995) and her novels and short stories, beginning with the collection Queen of the Headaches (1985) and, more recently, the monumental The Garden of Eden (1998), Butala has articulated an ethic of profound responsibility for, and kinship with, the land and its produce and animals. Although Butala has justly earned high praise for her nonfiction, The Garden of Eden is also a major work; I do not think that there is another writer in Canada with the vision to bring this kind of story so fully into being. Butala aims for no less than a history of “Women on the Great Plains” focused through Iris, the appropriately named widow who learns to find herself beyond her roles as daughter, wife, lover, and surrogate mother as the novel follows two journeys. One charts Iris’s evolving identity at home after her husband dies; the other traces Iris’s search for her adopted daughter Lannie, who, driven by the wounds of early abandonment among other griefs, has been gone for ten years from the Prairies and has in fact long been working as an aide in Ethiopia. Through this window Butala brings us a wider and more complex view of famine, nourishment, the uses of land, and the promises of biodiversity, all of this set in a cradle of history that educates Iris as she finds Lannie and brings her home. Most recently, Butala has put into practice both her fictional and non-fictional avocations through her involvement in a plan to repatriate a wild herd of wood bison to their native habitat on the Saskatchewan prairie; its success would be a hoped-for case of life imitating art. In David Carpenter’s work we can find the profits of another kind of attraction to the resources of the “land.” Like his fellow fisherman and novelist David Adams Richards in the Maritimes, Carpenter writes engagingly and informatively—and, on occasion, comically—about fishing, both in wellreceived guidebooks and in well-crafted stories—and he writes masterfully about the attractions of his homeground in books like Writing Home (1994) and about the comic entanglements of romance in a novel like the more recent Banjo Lessons (1997). Another Moose Javian, Geoff Ursell, who is also a poet, singer, and songwriter, has given Saskatchewan and the country a wry interrogation of the nation’s westward development in his novel Perdue (1984); Barbara Sapergia, who has been very active writing for television and radio, numbers among her books the story collection South Hill Girls (1992) and her best-known work of fiction, the novel Foreigners (1984). In writers like Dave Margoshes and Ven Begamudré, Saskatchewan’s oftrepeated pattern of out-migration is reversed, and writing Saskatchewan becomes, more simply, writing in Saskatchewan: New Brunswicker Margoshes,

Writing Saskatchewan: The First Hundred Years

after stints as a journalist in the us and elsewhere in Canada, settled in Regina; but his wide travels, and his fiction-writer’s memory, have given us novels like the admirably ambitious I’m Frankie Sterne (2000); Sterne, with his mix of ethnicities and idioms and origins (he’s part Jewish, part Puerto Rican, and wholly a musician of his era, the late 1950s and ’60s), becomes a map across which Margoshes traces the unfolding of North American culture, as the novel performs a kind of ventriloquism and we overhear, through Frankie, the various social, political, and pop cultural developments of the era. Margoshes has listened carefully to the ways the era talked and felt about itself, and Frankie’s reflections provide a fresh perspective on a time too often pronounced upon too loosely. Another Regina-based writer, Ven Begamudré was born in Bangalore, emigrating to Canada in 1962; his collections of stories—A Planet of Eccentrics (1990), Van de Graaf Days (1993), and Lanterna Magika (1997), for example—draw on his heritage and new home in deftly observed, often satirical commentary on social norms and mores. I’ve saved for last in this section the two writers—Guy Vanderhaeghe and Warren Cariou—who have written and will write the finest fiction on the contemporary scene. Since 1982, when his collection Man Descending won the first of his two Governor General’s Awards, Vanderhaeghe has been writing short stories and novels (he has also written plays, poems, and rock lyrics) that—particularly in his latest two novels, The Englishman’s Boy (1996) and The Last Crossing (2002)—redefine the possibilities of Canadian fiction (as well as those of Saskatchewan in a national context) by placing it in a larger international context—principally, that of North America and western Europe. As well, Vanderhaeghe’s fiction has enlarged the possibilities for understanding the terms “Saskatchewan” or “Prairie” by placing these locales in a wider and deeper historical context. In his recent fiction, generous and grievous histories resonate in their conflicts across palpable, interleaved layers of nineteenthcentury and twentieth-century experience, Aboriginal, European, and North American; and all these narrative frames are shadowed by European ideologies, mercantile, cultural, and class-bound. No other writer in western Canada has done as much to shift our vision from this culture’s tendency towards a monolithic and abiding obsession—politically, culturally, ideologically—with land, space, and place, by thickening and complicating these categories with his particular and powerful insistence on reckoning more closely with the forces of history, both locally and on the North American continent.

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Counterpointing Vanderhaeghe’s accomplishments, Warren Cariou, born in Meadow Lake, has more recently embarked on the most interesting and promising career among his contemporaries. On one hand, his award-winning memoir Lake of the Prairies: A Story of Belonging (2003) has been widely and justly praised for its revelations of the tensions within and among Meadow Lake’s Cree and Métis communities, and for engaging these legacies. On the other, the gloriously entitled The Exalted Company of Roadside Martyrs: Two Novellas (1999) is a remarkably sophisticated and accomplished set of fictions: these novellas (notoriously difficult fictional forms) attempt a lot and succeed brilliantly. It is fitting that the book is prefaced with an epigraph from Blake on what persuades an imagination in different eras to believe that a thing is what it is, because both novellas, “The Shrine of the Badger King” and “Lazarus,” are about the strength and the province of belief—profaned by politics, narrow ambition, and a grand capacity for self-delusion in the first case, and entangled in a hopeless love, false and true ministry, and the institutions of marriage and the church in the other. “The Shrine of the Badger King” brings the bleak reaches of northern Saskatchewan shimmeringly alive through the sad sheen of the “Minister’s” narration telling his own story, the tale of a politician who betrays the Badger—one Francis Cameron—and thus turns the small-town bad boy and drug dealer into a nemesis who haunts his whole career, topples his every rise, returning from the dead to destroy his vaunting ambition. Cariou’s first talent is with voice: his narrator is at once a sleaze, a proto-realist, an ordinarily sad man, a dupe, a dope, and a manipulative schemer, a divorced politician contemplating his wrecked career, an enraged and obsessed madman bent on settling the score with Badger; even as we recognize all these qualities, we are entranced with his story, because, as Kroetsch might put it, his voice makes it, and him, real. “Real,” though, in several registers: this is at once a morality play, a tall tale (and Cariou is very funny, at once wry and sly, alternating between absurdly hyperbolic event and finely managed deadpan dialogue), an allegory, and a parable—without any of the levels clashing. It is difficult to fathom how this could be Cariou’s first book, but as we await the novel he is currently finishing, it is a good note to close on for this section. Because the number of poets writing in Saskatchewan defies even naming most of them, what follows is, as in the section on fiction, only the briefest of lists, which would have to include, at its very barest, John Hicks (1907–1999), Anne Szumigalski (1922–1999), Glen Sorestad (b. 1937), Fred Wah (b. 1939), Andy Suknaski (b. 1942), Dennis Cooley (b. 1944), Lorna Crozier (b. 1948),

Writing Saskatchewan: The First Hundred Years

Tim Lilburn (b. 1950), and Bernice Louise Halfe (b. 1953). Of these writers, Hicks and Szumigalski came to Saskatchewan from the uk, and, while a number of the others have settled elsewhere in the country (Cooley in Winnipeg, Wah in Calgary, Crozier and Lilburn in Victoria, for example), all have made major contributions to the articulation of Saskatchewan’s imagination. The major theorist and critic of Prairie poetry in general and Saskatchewan poetry in particular is University of Manitoba professor Dennis Cooley, who, in collections of essays like The Vernacular Muse (1987), has set out a series of incisive and astute observations about the functions of “eye” and “ear” in Prairie writing, including fiction (one of the collection’s finest essays is on a widely anthologized Sinclair Ross short story, “The Painted Door”). Required reading for anyone interested in Saskatchewan poetry, in Prairie poetry, or in contemporary poetry generally, Cooley’s “Placing the Vernacular: The Eye and the Ear in Saskatchewan Poetry” and his long essay “The Vernacular Muse in Prairie Poetry” (originally a three-part essay published in the Winnipeg journal Prairie Fire) set out, with crafty grace and critical sophistication, a poetics of place, voice, eye, and ear—and technique—that provides an informed and generously ample context for engaging the form. To date he has edited two collections of Prairie poetry, Draft (1981) and Inscriptions (1992), and he has been an inspiring teacher and mentor to several generations of students at the University of Manitoba. It is misleading to understand Cooley’s many-voiced poetic practice, though, simply as an extension or enactment of his critical work; long a champion of Eli Mandel’s writing, a passionate reader of e.e. cummings, and a poet steeped and versed in the work of his long-time colleague Robert Kroetsch, Cooley delights in wordplay and in spatial and stylistic experiment; he is at once deeply committed to a poetics of the real—in Saskatchewan terms, to a poetry that inscribes, transcribes, and honours place, land, and its social and natural history; to a lyrical poetics; and to a poetics of wide formal experiment and creation. The range and diversity of his practice are reflected in his books, from early work like Leaving (1980) or Fielding (1983), the recently revised Bloody Jack (1984; rev. ed., 2002), to Irene (2000), a book of poems reflecting elegaically on his mother; the best selection of Cooley’s work is found in Sunfall: New and Selected Poems, 1980–1996 (1996). The misapprehension that Saskatchewan poets write only in a vernacular or conversational mode, and that their poetry cleaves to a proto-realist evocation of land and place, is quickly corrected—as is the case with fiction, as we saw—not only by the range of Cooley’s work, but also by the formidable myth-making and metaphorical powers of poets like

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Anne Szumigalski, who came to Saskatchewan in 1951 and, for her many and varied contributions to literature in the province, was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 1989. Her book Voice (1995) won the Governor General’s Award for poetry. As Saskatchewan poet Judith Krause confirms in her “An Octad of Gifts,” the opening poem in the Prairie Fire special issue on Szumigalski (1997), she had a profound effect on many poets—and on writers of every kind—who followed her: “Her first book, Woman Reading in Bath, one of the first poetry books I ever / owned. And read over and over, her language washing over, and through / and into me.” Most of the writers mentioned above, and many from Saskatchewan and beyond who aren’t, published tributes to Szumigalski in this Prairie Fire issue; her influence on the writing community was powerful and widespread. She often collaborated with fellow Saskatoon writer Terrence Heath, as in Wild Man’s Butte (1979) or Journey/ Journée; in The Voice, The Text: The Life of a Writer (1990), Szumigalski gives us what poet and critic Bert Almon calls “a kind of archive of her imagination and an ars poetica.” In Andrew Suknaski’s work, particularly his early Wood Mountain Poems (1973), we are given a moving evocation both of Suknaski’s deep affiliations with his homeground (Suknaski was born in Wood Mountain) and with western Canada; his collection The Land They Gave Away: New and Selected Poems appeared in 1982. Glen Sorestad, another very active member of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild and, like Robert Currie, a teacher and an editor of a number of anthologies of Saskatchewan writing, became, in 2000, the first poet laureate to be appointed in a Canadian province. His books of poetry— Sorestad writes in a widely accessible and engaging idiom—include Hold the Rain in Your Hands (1985), West into Night (1991), and Leaving Holds Me Here (2001). Bernice Louise Halfe, or Sky Dancer, came to Saskatchewan from Alberta, studied at the University of Regina, and now lives in Saskatoon; essential to her poetry is a powerful attempt to give Aboriginal women their histories and voices, as evident in a major work, Blue Marrow, first published in 1998 and very recently reissued in a revised and expanded edition (2004). Among the poets of her generation, Lorna Crozier is the writer who has produced the most striking and sustained body of work. A Swift Current native, Crozier has lived for many years in Victoria, where she teaches creative writing; but many of her poems draw directly on her intimate apprehension of Prairie landscape, culture, and history. Crozier was also one of the first strong feminist voices from the Prairies, and in mocking, charged poems like “On the Seventh

Writing Saskatchewan: The First Hundred Years

Day” (1992), she recreates the Edenic story on the Prairies, with God and his wife playing radically different parts from their biblical predecessors “on that thin spit of earth/under that huge prairie sky.” Her poetry also has a strong political edge that cuts beyond the Prairies, as in “Without Hands,” a piece about torture in Chile; other poems evince a warm and earthy humour, as in the famous erotic vegetable poems collected in The Garden Going on Without Us (1985). Her volume Inventing the Hawk (1992) won the Governor General’s Award. One time and place on which to rest this brief discussion of poetry in Saskatchewan is the contemporary, with Tim Lilburn’s book Kill-site (2003), another winner of the Governor General’s Award. Lilburn, born in Regina, currently teaches with Crozier at the University of Victoria; his poetry is marked by his training in philosophy, by a passionate eye for the details of landscape, and by an imagination alive to layers of time—and to historical figures uncertainly embedded in time as they haunt the present. Consider this passage near the opening of the title poem of Kill-site: When Henry Kelsey died or left Hudson Bay, there’s a rumour he continued walking under the ground in the highest part of his voice, down the west hip of the Porcupine Hills, a pythagorean veer in his eyes. And he thought Let the will sleep here 400 years. Let the will sleep here 400 years. Only some song would turn the lock. He was looking for the deeper Crees, the Poets, south people sleeping along the rock ledges behind their eyes, someone to put something in his mouth.3

“Writing Saskatchewan: The First Hundred Years” has an additional resonance to my mind that it’s now time to disclose. Chapters (and books) such as these, perhaps inevitably, look backwards, and measure historicized, human time—in this case, a century. But the poem I’d like to close with reminds us that time—particularly in a locus like Saskatchewan, a new province, barely 100 years old, in a new country—has other, at least equally native or natural dimensions, as part of what critic Warren Tallman, speaking broadly of Canadian fiction (and specifically, at points, of Ross’s As For Me and My House) called, memorably, “Old mother North America,” in a landmark essay nearly a halfcentury ago entitled “Wolf in the Snow”—a place far older than the measure

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of centuries will allow. Fred Wah, in his ancestry a kind of emblem of Canadian diasporic identity (Wah’s father was Chinese, his mother Swedish), is a poet more often associated with the Kootenay region of British Columbia and with the Black Mountain school of poetry; he is one of the true Canadian pioneers of writing that takes up the exploration of intersections among written and spoken texts. But “Waiting for Saskatchewan,” the title poem of his book that won the Governor General’s Award in 1985, brings home into language and to Saskatchewan the fragments both of its recent history and, at poem’s end, of its deeper, unspoken, primeval history that Wah is waiting for, and that look to its future as surely as to that prehistorical past. “Waiting” for Saskatchewan is writing Saskatchewan, in all its many voices and visions; Wah’s version is a fitting, momentary, pungently passionate place to close this discussion for the time being: Waiting for Saskatchewan and the origins grandparents countries places converged europe asia railroads carpenters nailed grain elevators Swift Current my grandmother in her house he built on the street and him his cafés namely the “Elite” on Centre looked straight ahead Saskatchewan points to it Erickson Wah Trimble houses train station tracks arrowed into downtown fine clay dirt prairies wind waiting for Saskatchewan to appear for me again over the edge horses led to the huge sky the weight and colour of it over the mountains as if the mass owed me such appearance against the hard edge of it sits on my forehead as the most political place I know these places these strips laid beyond horizon for eyesight the city so I won’t have to go near it as origin town flatness appears later in my stomach why why on earth would they land in such a place mass of pleistocene sediment plate wedge arrow sky beak horizon still waiting for that I want it back, wait in this snowblown winter night for that latitude of itself its own largeness my body to get complete it still owes me, it does

Writing Saskatchewan: The First Hundred Years

Notes 1. Sinclair Ross, As For Me and My House (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1941), 8. 2. W.O. Mitchell, Who Has Seen the Wind (Toronto: Macmillan, 1947), 3. 3. Tim Lilburn, Kill-site (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2003), 7.

Works Cited Abley, Mark. Beyond Forget: Rediscovering the Prairies. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1986. Almon, Bert. “‘A Pinch or Two of Salt’: Anne Szumigalski’s Rapture of the Deep.” Prairie Fire 18 (Spring 1997): 54–64. Begamudré, Ven. A Planet of Eccentrics. Lantzville, BC: Oolichan Books, 1990. ———. Van de Graaf Days. Lantzville, BC: Oolichan Books, 1993. ———. Lanterna Magika. Lantzville, BC: Oolichan Books, 1997. Belaney, Archibald Stansfeld. Pilgrims of the Wild. Toronto: Macmillan, 1934. Bowen, Gail. Deadly Appearance. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1990. Butala, Sharon. Queen of the Headaches. Regina: Coteau Books, 1985. ———. The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1994. ———. Coyote’s Morning Cry. New York: Harper, 1995. ———. The Garden of Eden. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1998. Carpenter, David. Writing Home. Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1994. ———. Banjo Lessons. Regina: Coteau, 1997. Cariou, Warren. The Exalted Company of Roadside Martyrs: Two Novellas. Regina: Coteau, 1999. ———. Lake of the Prairies: A Story of Belonging. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2003. Cooley, Dennis, ed. RePlacing. Downsview, ON: ECW Press, 1980. ———. Leaving. Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1980. ———. Fielding. Saskatoon: Thistledown, 1983. ———. Bloody Jack. Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1984; rev. ed. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2002. ———. Irene. Winnipeg: Turnstone, 2000. ———. The Vernacular Muse: The Eye and Ear in Contemporary Literature. Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1987. ———. Inscriptions: A Prairie Poetry Anthology. Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1992. ———. Sunfall: New and Selected Poems. Toronto: Anansi, 1996.

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Crozier, Lorna. A Saving Grace: The Collected Poems of Mrs. Bentley. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996. ———. Inventing the Hawk. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995. ———. Angels of Flesh, Angels of Silence: Poems. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992. ———. Humans and Other Beasts. Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1980. Currie, Robert. Night Games. Regina: Coteau, 1983. Halfe, Louise Bernice [Sky Dancer]. Blue Marrow. Regina: Coteau Books, 1998; rev. and expanded, 2004. Hiebert, Paul. Sarah Binks. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995. Keahey, Deborah. Making it Home: Place in Canadian Prairie Literature. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1988. Krause, Judith. What We Bring Home. Regina: Coteau Books, 1986. Kreisel, Henry. “The Prairies A State of Mind” in Eli Mandel, ed., Contexts of Canadian Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 254–66. Laurence, Margaret. The Stone Angel. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964. Lilburn, Tim. Kill-site. McClelland and Stewart, 2003. Mandel, Eli, ed. Contexts of Canadian Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. ———. Criticism: The Silent-Speaking Words. Toronto: CBC Publications, 1966. ———. An Idiot Joy. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1967. ———. Another Time. Erin, ON: Press Porcépic, 1977. ———. Out of Place. Erin, ON: Press Porcépic, 1977. ———. The Family Romance. Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1986. Margoshes, Dave. I’m Frankie Sterne. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2000. Marriott, Anne. The Wind Our Enemy in Daniel S. Lenoski, ed., a/long prairie lines: An Anthology of Long Prairie Poems. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1989. McCourt, Edward. The Canadian West in Fiction. Toronto: Ryerson, 1949. Mitchell, Ken. Wandering Rafferty. Toronto: Macmillan, 1972. ———. The Stones of the Dalai Lama. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1993. ———. Gone the Burning Sun. Toronto: Playwrights Canada, 1985. Mitchell, Ken (with Humphrey and the Dumptrucks). Cruel Tears. Regina: Pile of Bones, 1975. Mitchell, W.O. Who Has Seen the Wind. Toronto: Macmillan, 1947. ———. Jake and the Kid. Toronto: Macmillan, 1961. New, William, ed. Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Ross, Sinclair. As For Me and My House. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1941.

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———. Sawbones Memorial. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974. Ricou, Laurence. Vertical Man / Horizontal World: Man and Landscape in Canadian Prairie Fiction. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1973. ———. “Region, Regionalism” in William New, ed., Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 948–53. Riegel, Christian, and Herb Wyile, eds. A Sense of Place: Re-Evaluating Regionalism in Canadian and American Writing. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1998. Sapergia, Barbara. South Hill Girls. Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1992. ———. Foreigners. Regina: Coteau Books, 1984. Stephens, Donald. “Wind, Sun and Dust.” Canadian Literature 23 (1965): 17–24. Stouck, David. As For Me and My House: Five Decades of Criticism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. ———. As For Sinclair Ross. Toronto: McClelland and Steward, 2005. Szumigalski, Anne. On Glassy Wings: New and Selected Poems. Regina: Coteau Books, 1997. ———. Woman Reading in Bath. Toronto: Doubleday, 1974. ———. The Voice, The Text: The Life of a Writer. Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1990. ———. Voice. Regina: Coteau Books, 1995. Szumigalski, Anne, with Terrence Heath. Wild Man’s Butte. Regina: Coteau Books, 1979. ———. Journey/Journée. Red Deer: Red Deer College Press, 1988. Tallman, Warren. “Wolf in the Snow, Part One: Four Windows on to Landscapes.” Canadian Literature 5 (1960): 7–20. ———. “Wolf in the Snow, Part Two: The House Repossessed.” Canadian Literature 6 (1960): 41–48. Ursell, Geoff. Perdue: Or How the West Was Lost. Toronto: Macmillan, 1984. Vanderhaeghe, Guy. The Englishman’s Boy. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996. ———. The Last Crossing. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2002. Wah, Fred. Waiting for Saskatchewan. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1985.

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W o m e n ’ s L e g i s l at i v e a n d P o l i t i c a l P a r t i c i p at i o n i n S a s k at c h e w a n , 1905 to 2005 Cristine de Clercy

This essay examines the relationship between women and the public sphere in the course of Saskatchewan’s first century, focusing on when, why, and how women began participating in formal political institutions. It is interesting to survey the entry of women into formal politics because, as David Smith and Beth Bilson note elsewhere in this volume, Saskatchewan’s political culture is unique. Many citizens take pride in their province’s socially progressive history, liberalism, egalitarianism, and cooperative culture. The province’s experience with social democracy, the labour movement, populist agrarian politics, state hospitalization, and medicare have led some analysts to compare it with western European social democracies such as Sweden and Denmark. In these states the rates of female electoral participation historically have been very high among developed democracies, and it is often assumed that women politicians face less discrimination and enjoy more equality with men where social democratic parties hold power. Is this the case in Saskatchewan? Since the province’s creation, have women here moved from the private sphere into the public sphere quickly and easily, and has this movement been expedited by the post-war dominance of the Co-operative Commonwealth–New Democratic Party? What is the current state of affairs with respect to women’s representation in the legislature and within senior political offices? Have

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women achieved political parity with men? These are excellent questions that merit answers as the province begins its second century. The names of several women come to mind immediately when one thinks about Saskatchewan politics, such as Violet McNaughton, Marjorie Cooper, Sally Merchant, and Sylvia Fedoruk. Certainly these women and others have been at the forefront of female political activity. However, focusing on a few well-known leaders does not help to illustrate how women as a group have fared in provincial politics since 1905. Toward this task the chapter proceeds by analyzing when women began to participate in the public sphere and measuring the rate of female legislative representation across time. This survey is divided into three chronological periods. The first spans the years from 1905 to 1943, from the founding of the province to the end of the Liberal Party’s legislative hegemony. This section is titled “The Foundational State.” The second period, “The Modern State,” surveys significant developments in the years from 1944 to 1990. The party system changed dramatically in 1944 with the election of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (ccf) to office. As well, in this period women candidates began to participate regularly in political campaigns and began to receive appointments to cabinet posts and important government offices. This was the era of the modern welfare state, marked by the expansion of social policy, the social safety net, and government economic intervention. The third period begins in 1991 and anticipates some future milestones in the path toward Saskatchewan’s bicentennial celebration in 2105. This section on “The Future State” summarizes the current level of women’s legislative participation and reviews some of the many areas where today’s women remain excluded from full participation in public affairs. To complement the focus on female participation in formal political institutions, a final section briefly considers how change in provincial public policy has influenced Saskatchewan women. The chapter’s broad chronological approach is unique among analyses of women and politics in Saskatchewan, and the paper is distinctive in a second area. Two important appendices have been created expressly for this chapter, and it is worth mentioning their content at the outset. One is a brief summary of the handful of women who were the first to occupy particular offices or secure political positions, and these achievements are important because they signal the end of female exclusion in these areas. Appendix 1, “The First Women of Saskatchewan Politics,” is not exhaustive, but it is the most current account of such milestones in print. The second appendix, titled “Female

Women’s Legislative and Political Participation in Saskatchewan

Members of the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly, 1917 to 2005,” presents a thorough, up-to-date chronological summary of all the women who have been elected as members of Saskatchewan’s legislative assembly. This information indicates partisan affiliation and also records those periods where no women sat in the assembly. While some of this information is available in other places, this appendix includes the 2003 election results, and its format allows broad representational patterns to be easily discerned.1 The Foundational State: Women’s Electoral and Political Participation, 1905 to 1943

The initial set of electoral divisions created in Saskatchewan numbered twenty-five, and so the first election, held on 13 December 1905, sent twentyfive men to serve in the new legislature. At this point, only men were entitled to participate in the electoral process and stand for election. The Legislative Assembly Act stated in section 9 that “Any male subject by birth or naturalisation shall be eligible for nomination and election as a member of the Legislative Assembly unless otherwise disqualified under this act.”2 As Saskatchewan’s population grew rapidly in subsequent years, and immigration brought suffragism to the Prairies, pressure mounted for extending the franchise to women. In February 1912, the Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association (sgga) passed a resolution calling for women’s suffrage at its annual convention.3 That December, the members of the legislative assembly (mlas) debated a resolution to give women the vote. June Menzies observes that here “for perhaps the first time in Canada both sides in a legislature expressed approval in principle of woman suffrage, although it must be admitted that the debate itself showed that the Government had no serious intention of enfranchising women.”4 While the legislators agreed generally that women ought to be granted the franchise at some point in time, they did not act expeditiously. Rather, Premier Walter Scott’s government decided to grant female suffrage only when a considerable number of women had demonstrated to the assembly that they wanted it. So, women began to organize petitions demanding the vote. Initially, the Women’s Section of the sgga and members of the Homemaker Clubs took charge of the campaign, and later members of Saskatchewan’s Women’s Christian Temperance Unions (wtcu) lent their support.5 The premier received petitions with the names of 2500 women in 1913, but still refused to act despite

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pressure from lead organizers Frances Beynon and Violet McNaughton.6 Because most of the suffrage activists were located in rural areas, the organizers tried to entice women in the cities to participate through forming suffrage action associations such as the Prince Albert Equal Franchise League.7 Another petition containing the signatures of 11,000 women was presented in May 1915, but the Scott government dismissed it as insufficient evidence of women’s desire for the franchise.8 Finally, in the early spring of 1916, the premier advised that his government was prepared to extend the franchise, partly owing to the passage of similar legislation in neighbouring Manitoba. On 1 March 1916, Attorney General W.F. Turgeon introduced A Revision of the Saskatchewan Election Act. The bill passed the house within two weeks, and Saskatchewan became the second province in Canada to legislate electoral equality between men and women.9 The first exercise of women’s right to vote occurred later in 1916, when the Scott government held a plebiscite on liquor prohibition.10 No women were elected in the 1917 general election, but Saskatchewan’s first female mla gained office in a by-election in 1919. Born in Minnesota, Sarah Ramsland and her husband Magnus moved to Saskatchewan, settling first in Buchanan and then in 1913 in Kamsack. Magnus was elected as the mla for Pelly in 1917, but died suddenly one year later during a flu epidemic. Unsure about how to support her three small children, Sarah heeded the advice of a clairvoyant who told her that politics lay in her future. She accepted the Liberal Party’s invitation to run in her husband’s seat in the 1919 by-election. She was elected handily, was re-elected in 1921, but was defeated in the 1925 election.11 Sarah Ramsland was an effective representative, but did not hold a cabinet position or circulate among the party elite. Indeed, she was largely ignored by the Liberal Party brass and, once defeated, faded from the political scene.12 Her defeat marked the beginning of a long drought in terms of women’s representation in the Saskatchewan legislature: from 1925 to 1943, no women were elected to provincial office. This meant that women legislators were not available to be groomed in the practice of politics. There were no women in any party’s caucus, no women serving in the cabinet, or learning about parliamentary procedure through the experience of sitting in the legislature. Democratic politics necessarily draws neophytes into political practice, and then educates them about the art of legislation. In this way, from every class of parliamentary rookies the next generation of future leaders and cabinet ministers is recruited and trained. The absence of women representatives

Women’s Legislative and Political Participation in Saskatchewan

from Saskatchewan’s legislature for almost twenty years meant that the entry of women in key legislative leadership positions was delayed for many more decades. So, in the first part of the new province’s history, women began to enter the public sphere. They fought for, and won, the right to vote and run for office in provincial elections. The first woman was elected in 1919 and then re-elected in 1921. However, she was “elected to the legislature not as a feminist reformer, not even as a candidate in her own right, but as her husband’s widow.”13 The actual conditions surrounding the election of Saskatchewan’s first female mla contradicted the suffragist position that women ought to enter political life as equal, independent citizens. Despite the advances secured in establishing women’s legal right to participate in government, in reality they remained excluded from the corridors of power. The Modern State: Women’s Electoral and Political Participation, 1944 to 1990

As mentioned above, from 1925 to 1943, no other women were elected to the provincial legislature after Sarah Ramsland left office. The year 1944 marked the beginning of several fundamental changes in Saskatchewan politics. In the general election the ccf party under the leadership of T.C. (Tommy) Douglas won forty-seven of fifty-two seats, inaugurating the start of a twenty-year monopoly on power. As well, this election marked the ascendancy of a “new” political party in Saskatchewan, one that embraced the ideals of social democracy. The ccf’s goals and ideals dramatically influenced Saskatchewan’s development during the post-war period. As well, the 1944 election marked the return of women to the floor of the legislature, when ccf candidate Beatrice Janet Trew was elected in the Maple Creek constituency.14 As Appendix 2 below suggests, Trew’s victory marked the beginning of a new period featuring the regular election of women in provincial constituencies. In three elections—1948, 1967, and 1971—no women were returned to the assembly. However, in every remaining election in the period from 1944 to 1990, at least one woman was sent to Regina to represent citizens. Twenty-one women in total were elected in the twelve general elections occurring from 1944 to 1990, or 1.75 women on average per election.15 After Trew’s 1944 victory, another milestone was achieved in 1956 when, for the first time, two women won seats at the same time. Marjorie Cooper, who had already served

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one term for the ccf, representing Regina from 1952 to 1956, now had company with the arrival of Liberal mla Mary Jane Batten. As suggested in Appendix 2, the subsequent election in 1960 marked the first time that three women sat in the same legislative session: both Cooper and Batten were reelected and were joined by rookie ccf member Gladys Strum. However, in 1964 Batten and Strum did not run for re-election, so only Cooper returned to the legislature, where she was joined by Liberal newcomer Sally Merchant.16 It is worth noting that Marjorie Cooper’s four back-to-back election wins spanning the years 1952 to 1967 distinguish her as the most electorally successful female politician from 1917 to 1990. Considering women’s representation among the three main parties during this period reveals some interesting patterns. First, from 1917 to 1978, women were elected or re-elected thirteen times. On seven of these occasions, the women elected ran as Liberal candidates, while the remaining six women represented the ccf. Second, in the same period, none of the elected women belonged to the Progressive Conservative (pc) Party, and this fact mainly reflects this party’s poor electoral performance. For most of the province’s first century, the pcs were a rump party that remained on the sidelines. Only in 1982 did the Conservatives win a majority government. The first female pc mla, Joan Duncan, won the Maple Creek constituency in 1978. Four years later, five female pc candidates were elected to the legislature when Grant Devine’s party displaced the ndp under Allan Blakeney.17 The 1982 election results established a new high point in women’s legislative representation. A fourth pattern demands comment. After the ccf party became the New Democratic Party (ndp) in the later 1960s, it failed to elect any women for almost twenty years. From the 1967 election to the issuance of writs for the 1986 contest, there were no women among the ranks of the Saskatchewan ndp caucus. This gap is difficult to explain because the ndp was in power for eleven of these nineteen years (from 1971 to 1982) and so poor party performance is not a significant explanatory factor. Moreover, the late 1960s and 1970s witnessed the “second wave” of feminist activism in Canada, and so we expect to find more women entering formal politics in this period. In terms of participating in legislative politics, women made great gains in this period. Women returned to the floor of the house in 1944 after a long absence, and their numbers increased steadily, reaching a high point of five women among sixty-four mlas (or 7.8 percent of all provincial legislators) after the 1986 campaign. Toward the end of this period, the first woman to

Women’s Legislative and Political Participation in Saskatchewan

hold a cabinet position was appointed: Joan Duncan served as Minister of Government Services from 8 May 1982 to 26 May 1983. She went on to hold several other cabinet portfolios in the Progressive Conservative government.18 As well, in 1989 the Saskatchewan Liberal Association elected Dr. Lynda Maureen Haverstock as its leader, the first female party leader in provincial history. She led her party in the 1991 and 1995 elections and won her seat handily on both occasions.19 In other areas, however, women remained excluded or were severely underrepresented. For example, appointments to Canada’s Senate are prestigious rewards normally given to the loyal supporters of a party in power. Owing to the office’s prestige and economic value, there is much competition among partisans for this prize, and it is fair to state that Senate appointments rank among the most coveted of patronage benefits. One way to consider these appointments is to survey the number of women who have secured them as an indicator of women’s representation in political party hierarchy, because such awards normally are given to loyal party members who enjoy senior insider status. In the case of Saskatchewan, the province was granted four Senators in 1905. In 1914, this number was increased to six, which has remained a constant quota. No women were appointed to represent Saskatchewan in the first eighty-five years of the province’s history, although in the same period twentysix men represented Saskatchewan’s interests in Canada’s upper house.20 So, Saskatchewan women were entirely excluded from holding senatorial office for most of the province’s history. Moreover, if we accept that senatorial appointment can be treated as an indicator of women’s representation within the elite ranks of political parties, female partisans historically have not been well represented within the parties’ elite cohort. Similarly, across most of the history of the province, the office of lieutenant-governor remained the preserve of male politicians. It was only in September 1988 that the first woman lieutenant-governor of Saskatchewan, the Honourable Sylvia Fedoruk, was sworn into office. She served in this capacity until 31 May 1994.21 The only other woman to serve as the Queen’s representative, Lynda Haverstock, assumed office in 2000.22 Finally, it is worth noting that in 1960 the federal government amended legislation that extended the franchise to treaty Indians. As a result, many First Nations women became entitled to vote in elections. This was a key event in the province’s history because members of treaty nations were among the last groups of citizens to secure the vote. Important especially in view of

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314 Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan’s significant Aboriginal population, the extension of the franchise meant that First Nations women now had opportunity to participate as full citizens in the formal political process. The Future State: Women’s Electoral and Political Participation, 1991 to 2005

Similar to the watershed election of 1944, the 1991 election marked a large change in the direction of Saskatchewan’s government as Roy Romanow’s New Democrats replaced the Devine Conservatives. Devine’s defeat was not particularly surprising, owing to the Conservatives’ unpopularity. However, the depth of the province’s fiscal crisis caught the new ndp government off guard.23 Romanow led the ndp to power again in 1995, but in the 1999 election the New Democrats won only a minority government. They governed with Liberal support for the next four years, but the ndp leader resigned and was replaced by Lorne Calvert. In the fall 2003 election Calvert’s party hung on to power only by a narrow margin. As mentioned in the preceding section, in each of the 1982 and 1986 provincial elections, five women were returned to the legislature. However, in the 1990s a marked increase in women’s legislative participation reaches well beyond the gains realized in the 1980s. For the 1991 election, the size of the legislature was expanded by two seats, from sixty-four to sixty-six seats. The results of that vote returned twelve women to the Saskatchewan assembly. As indicated in Appendix 2, eleven ndp women and one Liberal woman won seats. To compare the change in women’s representation across time, in 1986 7.8 per cent of mlas were women, but 18 per cent of the legislative members were women in 1991. Moreover, a 1994 by-election in Regina North West sent another woman, Liberal Anita Bergman, to the floor of the assembly. These thirteen women in office from 1994 to dissolution in 1995 constituted about 20 percent of the legislature’s membership. These gains were maintained in the 1995 election, when thirteen women were elected or reelected. Interestingly, the size of the assembly was reduced in 1995 to fiftyeight seats. So, although the actual number of women elected did not exceed the new maximum established in 1994, now they accounted for 24.4 percent of the legislature. So, in the span of thirteen years, women’s legislative representation more than tripled, moving from 7.8 percent to 24.4 percent.

Women’s Legislative and Political Participation in Saskatchewan

In the next two elections, however, this new level of representation was not repeated. The 1999 election, which produced a coalition government between the ndp and the Liberals, saw only ten women secure their seats. As Appendix 2 suggests, in 1999 for the first time the new Saskatchewan Party fielded candidates and it elected three female representatives. This election marked the first time since 1986 that a female candidate from a conservative party won her seat. In the election held in the fall of 2003, the results were similar to the 1999 returns: eleven women won seats, and, of these, four represented the Saskatchewan Party while seven were ndp mlas. To help illustrate the historical trend of female political participation in Saskatchewan, the percentage of women sitting as members of the legislature was calculated from 1919, when the first woman was elected, to 2004. These results were plotted across five-year intervals, and the results are depicted in an area graph, “Figure 1: Percentage of Women in the Saskatchewan Legislature, 1919 to 2004.” This illustration demonstrates the slow gains that women have made in legislative participation: only since the 1990s has women’s participation regularly constituted 10 percent or more of each legislature’s membership. Moreover, the percentage of women holding legislative seats in the last decade, from 1994 to 2004, has remained just below the 20 percent mark, and so it seems that the trend in increasing representation has levelled off in the most recent provincial election returns. Figure 1: Percentage of Women in Saskatchewan Legislature, 1919 to 2004 ����

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Source: Author’s calculations based on data in Appendix 2.

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315

316 Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Finally, note that the values on the “y” axis represent the percentage of that are women, and the maximum value is set at 50 percent. This maximum value was chosen because it roughly corresponds with the number of women in the Saskatchewan population. Therefore, one method of interpreting the historical trend in women’s legislative participation is to compare the increasing percentage of the assembly’s female representation with the number of women in the Saskatchewan population. This comparison demonstrates that the province’s female population remains grossly under-represented by female legislators in the assembly despite the gains of the 1990s. In the last fifteen years or so, additional gains were made in other areas of female political participation. For example, in 1989 Saskatchewan Liberal Association members chose an educator and practising psychologist, Dr. Lynda Maureen Haverstock, as their leader. Haverstock thus became the first female party leader in the province.24 Another high-profile position in parliamentary government is the finance portfolio. It is a senior cabinet position that demands much mettle and political skill. Dr. Janice MacKinnon, a historian by profession and Saskatchewan’s first female Minister of Finance, was appointed early in 1993. MacKinnon recounts how her legislative nickname, “Combat Barbie,” indicated a personal toughness that was necessary to succeed in the rough and tumble world of politics.25 Also, in 1993, the first woman to represent Saskatchewan in Canada’s Senate, Raynell Andreychuk, was appointed on 11 March representing the Conservatives.26 The only other Saskatchewan woman to be called to the Senate, Panna Merchant, was appointed nine years later on 12 December 2002 to represent the Liberals.27 A year later, in the aftermath of the 2003 election, another milestone was reached when the first Aboriginal woman, Joan Beatty, was elected under the ndp banner in the northern riding of Cumberland.28

mlas

Women and Public Policy

The analysis above focuses mainly on reviewing women’s historical participation within Saskatchewan’s legislature and some key political institutions. While these are central measures of women’s activity in the public sphere, they do not inform us about the development of provincial public policy with respect to women. Indeed, it is worth emphasizing that relatively few people as a proportion of all citizens are elected or appointed to public office. So, most citizen-state interaction occurs where a broad public policy and its

Women’s Legislative and Political Participation in Saskatchewan

associate programs and processes affects the interests of voters. Analysing how the relationship between government policy and Saskatchewan women has developed over the last century is well worth more extensive treatment than current space permits. However, a few general observations on the development of provincial public policy helps to illustrate how policy change has influenced the lives and experiences of Saskatchewan women. In the early part of the foundational period, from 1905 to about 1915, provincial public policy generally reinforced the differential treatment of men and women. As noted above, for example, women legally could not vote until the Scott government bowed to pressure for female suffrage and changed the law in 1916. Similarly, in the area of property law, women were treated unequally as compared to men. As Peter Li discusses in Chapter 1, the promise of free homestead land attracted hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the province. At the time the homestead policy provided that all adult males were eligible to receive such lands. However, this was not the case for women, because most females were not eligible to secure such lands. Single women could not homestead; they had to purchase land for farming, often at inflated prices. Only mothers who were the sole supporters of children were eligible to receive free homestead land.29 As well, women’s dower rights in newly formed Saskatchewan were inadequate: they did not protect women’s interest in real property as it was protected in other provinces and some western European countries. A woman’s husband could sell the family farm or will it to others without any consideration for his wife’s material interest. The issue of changing the property law to protect women began to be debated in 1912 particularly in the pages of the Grain Growers’ Guide (a publication whose women’s section was edited by suffragist activist Frances Marion Beynon).30 Ultimately the government changed its policy position and moved to protect the property interests of wives with the passage of the Saskatchewan Homestead Act in 1915. By the late 1920s, many such policies that treated women unequally and restricted their political and economic activities had been amended or eradicated. The period from 1944 to 1990 marks the rise of the modern state and a concomitant cascade of new policy initiatives as the social safety net expanded. Saskatchewan women were influenced by the policy change in many areas such as labour law. Policies regulating women’s labour force participation date to the province’s early history and have not always worked to the advantage of women. For example, and as Beth Bilson notes elsewhere in this volume, the

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318 Perspectives of Saskatchewan

government’s response to the onset of the Depression was to dismiss proposals for further enhancements of labour standards and reduce the minimum wage for women in 1931. However, the arrival of the ccf into office and the passage of the Trade Union Act of 1944 marked a sea change in labour policy and its implications for women. The provisions of the Trade Union Act helped many women, particularly those in areas where women constituted a majority of the workforce, such as teaching and nursing, through enshrining their rights to bargain collectively and also in supplying an organizational structure for collective political action. In this period, several sectoral unions as well as the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (an umbrella group for unions, which held its first convention in 1964) became powerful interest groups within the province’s political environment.31 As more and more women entered the workforce in the 1960s and 1970s, the Department of Labour established a Women’s Bureau in 1964. Its mandate was to represent working women within governmental policy-making circles, and also educate women’s organizations and the public about women’s particular problems and challenges in the workplace. In 1971, the bureau employed a single person and the lack of resources was heavily criticized, but by 1982 the demand for more resources had expanded the bureau considerably.32 Along with expanded resources came enlarged responsibility: the Women’s Bureau was made responsible for investigating violations of a new section of The Labour Standards Act addressing pay equity that was passed in 1973. Twenty years earlier the provincial government had created The Equal Pay Act, which provided for “equal pay for work of comparable character to that performed by men in the same establishment.”33 The 1973 Labour Standards amendment sought to strengthen the concept of equal pay in the workplace partly through changing the language. The new amendment provided for “equal pay for similar work,” towards addressing the persistent wage gap between men and women. By the early 1980s many women were demanding full, unmitigated wage equality through seeking “equal pay for work of equal value.”34 The shape and content of public policy in Saskatchewan changed dramatically as the modern welfare state matured in the post-war era. In many policy areas, the presence and activities of the provincial government addressed the needs of women by facilitating their economic participation and supporting individual and family welfare via enlarged and enhanced social policy initiatives. Whereas provincial public policy in the foundational period had maintained social and economic inequalities between men

Women’s Legislative and Political Participation in Saskatchewan

and women, the orientation of the modern state was to ensure women secured more equality with men. This sea change in provincial public policy underscores the importance of the state in the everyday lives and experiences of Saskatchewan women. In the third period of provincial development, which I have termed “The Future State,” the province’s public policy orientation has again been altered, largely owing to economic exigencies of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Provincial finances were in dire straits as years of accumulated annual deficits produced a large debt. Pledging to balance the books and reverse Saskatchewan’s deficit financing trend, the Romanow government adopted a broad mix of tax increases and spending reductions. Although budgetary balance was achieved fairly quickly, this was accomplished partly through reductions in key social services and programs.35 As sources of government funding were reduced and social programs were eliminated, many women—particularly those who were single parents—bore an increased economic burden. Lone-parent families have continued to increase in Saskatchewan since the 1970s: from 1996 to 2001, the number rose by 20 percent. Women are the parent in 80 percent of such families.36 These statistics are significant because women-led households are more likely to suffer from poverty, poor-quality housing, and poor health. Women as a group have been disproportionately affected by fiscal restraint policies because they are more likely to be represented within the low-income brackets and so are more vulnerable to the program cutbacks and spending reductions necessitated by fiscal restraint policies. In the 2000s the provincial government has not pursued budgetary balance as relentlessly, although its decision making remains constrained by a lacklustre financial outlook, unpredictable oil and gas revenues, and labour force problems that are fuelled by continuing youth out-migration. In some areas, small policy changes have expanded or enriched social programs for women. For example, in 2001 the provincial government followed the federal government’s initiative in expanding insured maternity, adoption, and parental leave periods. Birth mothers and primary caregivers of adopted children now enjoy job protection and increased employment insurance benefits of up to fifty-two weeks.37 In October 2003, the Calvert government released a plan containing an ambitious list of areas requiring governmental action. Titled the Action Plan for Saskatchewan Women: Moving Forward, the document succinctly reviews some persistent areas of inequality between men and women. For example, it notes that whereas women accounted for 37 percent of people with paid

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320 Perspectives of Saskatchewan

employment in 1980, by 2000, this figure had climbed to 46 percent of employed persons, or almost half of the provincial workforce.38 Yet, “in all areas of the work force wage gaps between men and women still exist. On average, women who worked full-time in Saskatchewan in 2000 earned 73 cents for every dollar earned by a man—$28,691 compared to $39,495 [in annual wages].”39 Moreover, women with disabilities and Aboriginal women remain under-represented in the workforce. This is especially true for Aboriginal women with small children. For this group, more than one in three women is looking for a job but remains unemployed.40 A large portion of the government’s plan for action centres on strategies to increase women’s economic participation. In view of sobering statistics such as the trenchant wage gap and the high unemployment rate among Aboriginal mothers, this agenda for change is necessary and meritorious. At the same time, the province’s pressing fiscal problems clearly limit the government’s ambitions. Judging from the plan’s lists of future action items, most policy goals are to be achieved through using existing programs and services in a more strategic, efficient, and targeted fashion. Few new funds are committed to securing future goals set out in the action plan and, therefore, in the near future at least, the government seems committed to incremental policy change designed to secure moderate, achievable, and carefully targeted policy objectives. Conclusion

Since 1991, women’s representation in the legislature reached new levels. As well, women began to enter other areas of political participation for the first time, such as serving in the Senate, as party leader, and as the Queen’s representative. The growing cohort of female legislative leaders began to become more diversified, and so more closely represents the ethnic composition of the province, particularly its significant number of First Nations and Aboriginal citizens. Despite these gains, one century after the founding of the province, women remain a minority group in the legislature, accounting for merely 19 percent of its members. Moreover, with the exception of Lynda Haverstock, no other female has led a provincial party in Saskatchewan. Every premier since 1905 has been male. The bulk of Saskatchewan’s Senate appointments are men, most legislators are men, and almost all the most powerful positions within parties and the legislature remain the preserve of males.

Women’s Legislative and Political Participation in Saskatchewan

To address the questions posed at the beginning of this chapter, Saskatchewan women today remain excluded from many areas of political activity and office despite being able to participate in elections since 1916. Moreover, it does not seem that Saskatchewan’s unique political culture, liberalism, and social democratic tradition have produced unusually high female representation rates in the legislature. The political experience of Saskatchewan women in the last century has been very similar to that of women in the other provinces. While the rates of female legislative representation have increased over time, these gains have been secured slowly and now seem to have stalled. Similarly, the orientation of provincial public policy has changed dramatically over the last century. Whereas many sorts of inequalities between men and women were produced or reinforced via government policy in the early foundational period, this changed as the Depression eased and the modern welfare state expanded. Social support programs aimed at individuals as well as families benefited Saskatchewan women directly, as did policies facilitating women’s entry into the labour market and promoting equality with male workers. However, the close of Saskatchewan’s first century has been marked by a reduction in provincial benefits and support as the necessity for fiscal restraint dominated the government’s policy agenda. Looking forward to what sorts of gains women may make over the next 100 years, we can see many new milestones that challenge women to secure them. When will a woman lead her party to power in a general election; who will be Saskatchewan’s first female premier? When will women leaders representing Saskatchewan’s Métis, Chinese, Filipino, Guatemalan, and Thai communities win seats? At what point will women be represented in the legislature in proportion to their share of the province’s population? When will Cabinet comprise a majority of female ministers? When will the wage gap between male and female workers disappear? Importantly, when will women cease to be an under-represented group in this province’s politics? These are the new challenges facing the next generations of Saskatchewan’s citizens and legislators. As we begin the province’s second century, it is helpful to acknowledge progress in women’s political participation and representation since 1905. At the same time, we may well require another century to pass before we can say with certainty that women here participate equally in politics alongside their male counterparts.

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Appendix 1: The First Women of Saskatchewan Politics

The first woman mla: in 1919 Sarah Katherine Ramsland was elected in the riding of Pelly under the Liberal Party’s banner; she was re-elected in 1921 but was defeated in the 1925 election. The first woman member of parliament from Saskatchewan, Dorise Winnifred Nielsen, was elected in 1940 in North Battleford. The first woman cabinet minister was Joan Heather Duncan, Minister of Government Services from 8 May 1982 to 26 May 1983. She held several subsequent portfolios in the Progressive Conservative government. The first woman lieutenant-governor, Hon. Sylvia Olga Fedoruk, was appointed 7 September 1988 and held office until 31 May 1994. The first woman party leader, Dr. Lynda Maureen Haverstock, was elected in 1989 to lead the Liberals. The first woman senator from Saskatchewan, Raynell Andreychuk, was appointed 11 March 1993 as a member of the Progressive Conservative Party. The first woman opposition leader, Dr. Lynda Maureen Haverstock, led the Liberals in the House in 1995.

The first woman Minister of Finance, ndp mla Dr. Janice MacKinnon, held this portfolio from 8 January 1993 to 27 June 1997. The first Aboriginal woman mla, ndp candidate Joanne Beatty, was elected to represent the riding of Cumberland in 2003.

Women’s Legislative and Political Participation in Saskatchewan

Appendix 2: Female Members of the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly, 1917 to 2005 Election Name Constituency Party Year

1919* 1921 1925 1929 1934 1938 1944 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1967 1971 1975 1978 1982 1986 1991

Sarah Katherine Ramsland Sarah Katherine Ramsland - - - - Beatrice Janet Trew - Marjorie Cooper Mary John Batten Marjorie Cooper Mary John Batten Marjorie Cooper Gladys Strum Marjorie Cooper Sally Merchant - - Linda Clifford Evelyn Edwards Joan Duncan Evelyn Bacon Gay Caswell Joan Duncan Patricia Smith Jo-Ann Zazelenchuk Pat Atkinson Joan Duncan Rose Marie Louise Simard Anne Smart Patricia Smith Pat Atkinson Judy Bradley Lynda Haverstock Carol Carson Joanne Crofford Doreen Hamilton

Number of Number of women in the seats in the Legislature Legislature

Pelly

Liberal

1

59

Pelly

Liberal

1

63

- - - - Maple Creek

- - - -

0 0 0 0 1

63 63 55 52 52

0 1 2

52 53 53

3

55

ccf

2

58

Liberal - - Liberal Liberal

0 0 2

59 60 61

1 5

61 64

- Regina City Humboldt Regina City Humboldt Regina City Saskatoon City Regina West Saskatoon City - - Wilkie Saskatoon Sutherland Maple Creek Saskatoon Nutana Saskatoon Westmount Maple Creek Swift Current Saskatoon Riversdale Saskatoon Nutana Maple Creek Regina Lakeview Saskatoon Centre Swift Current Saskatoon Broadway Bengough-Milestone Saskatoon Greystone Melfort Regina Lake Centre Regina Wascana Plains

ccf

- ccf

Liberal ccf

Liberal ccf ccf

pc pc pc

pc pc



pc

ndp

5

64

12

66

pc ndp

ndp pc ndp

ndp Liberal ndp ndp ndp





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324 Perspectives of Saskatchewan

Election Name Constituency Party Year 1994* (to 1995) 1995 1998* 1999

Pat Lorje Janice MacKinnon Suzanne Murray Rose Marie Louise Simard Violet Stanger Carol Teichrob Anita Bergman

Saskatoon Wildwood Saskatoon Westmount Qu’Appelle Lumsden Regina Hillsdale

ndp

Cut Knife- Lloydminster Saskatoon River Heights Regina North West

ndp

Pat Atkinson Judy Bradley Joanne Crofford June Draude Doreen Hamilton Lynda Haverstock Arlene Julé Pat Lorje Janice MacKinnon Suzanne Murray Sharon Murrell Violet Stanger Carol Teichrob Judy Junor Patricia Atkinson Brenda Bakken Joanne Crofford June Draude Doreen Eagles Doreen Hamilton Deb Higgins Carolyn Jones Pat Lorje Janice MacKinnon

Saskatoon Nutana Weyburn-Big Muddy Regina Centre Kelvington-Wadena Regina Wascana Plains Saskatoon Greystone Humboldt Saskatoon Southeast Saskatoon Idylwyld Regina Qu’Apelle Valley Battleford-Cut Knife Lloydminster Saskatoon Meewasin Saskatoon Eastview Saskatoon Nutana Weyburn-Big Muddy Regina Centre Kelvington-Wadena Estevan Regina Wascana Plains Moose Jaw Wakamow Saskatoon Meewasin Saskatoon Southeast Saskatoon Idylwyld

Number of Number of women in the seats in the Legislature Legislature

ndp ndp ndp

ndp

Liberal

13

66

ndp

13

58





14 10

58 58

ndp ndp Liberal (95-97) Sask Pty (97-99) ndp Independent

Liberal (95-97); Sask Pty (98-99) ndp ndp ndp ndp ndp ndp ndp ndp

Sask Pty ndp Sask Pty Sask Pty ndp ndp ndp

ndp ndp

Women’s Legislative and Political Participation in Saskatchewan

Election Name Constituency Party Year 2003

Pat Atkinson Brenda Bakken Joan Beatty Joanne Crofford June Draude Doreen Eagles Doreen Hamilton Donna Harpauer Deb Higgins Judy Junor Sandra Morin

Saskatoon Nutana Weyburn-Big Muddy Cumberland Regina Rosemont Kelvington-Wadena Estevan Regina Wascana Plains Humboldt Moose Jaw Wakamow Saskatoon Eastview Regina Walsh Acres

ndp Sask Pty ndp ndp Sask Pty Sask Pty ndp Sask Pty ndp

Number of Number of women in the seats in the Legislature Legislature 11

58

ndp ndp

* indicates a by-election Sources: The Saskatchewan Archives Board, Directory of Saskatchewan Ministries, Members of the Legislative Assembly and Elections (Regina and Saskatoon: The Saskatchewan Archives Board, 1954); Government of Saskatchewan, Legislative Assembly, Members of the Legislative Assembly (Web directory accessed 14 July 2004 at ); Government of Saskatchewan, Legislative Library, Saskatchewan Women in Politics (Web listing accessed 14 July 2004 at ); Howard Leeson, ed., Saskatchewan Politics Into the Twenty-First Century (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 2001), Appendix A: Electoral Results, Saskatchewan, 1905–1999, 407–410.

Notes 1. A central source of information about women legislators is the Legislative Library’s Web site, Saskatchewan Women in Politics, located at . 2.

David E. Smith, ed., Building a Province: A History of Saskatchewan in Documents (Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1992), 100.

3.

June Menzies, “Votes for Saskatchewan Women,” in Norman Ward and Duff Spafford, eds., Politics in Saskatchewan (Don Mills, ON: Longmans Canada Ltd., 1968), 81.

4. Ibid. 5. Nancy M. Sheehan, “The WCTU on the Prairies, 1886–1930: An AlbertaSaskatchewan Comparison,” Prairie Forum 6 (1981): 22. 6.

Menzies, “Votes,” 84.

7. Ibid., 88. 8. Christine MacDonald, “How Saskatchewan Women Got the Vote,” Saskatchewan History 1 (1948): 6.

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326 Perspectives of Saskatchewan

9.

Menzies, “Votes,” 92.

10. Ibid. 11. Candace Savage, Foremothers: Personalities and Issues from the History of Women in Saskatchewan (Saskatoon: n.p., 1975), 42. 12. Ibid. 13. Elizabeth Kalmakoff, “Naturally Divided: Women in Saskatchewan Politics, 1916–1919,” Saskatchewan History 46 (1994): 5–6 and 15. 14. See Appendix 2. 15. See Appendix 2. 16. Chief Electoral Office Government of Saskatchewan, Provincial Elections in Saskatchewan, 1905–1983, 2nd ed. (Regina: Chief Electoral Office, Province of Saskatchewan, 1983), 104–107. 17. Susan Dusel, “Politics Still a Man’s World,” Network of Saskatchewan Women 4 (1986): 14. 18. Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatchewan Executive and Legislative Directory (Saskatchewan Archives Board, [cited 8 June 2004]); available from . 19. Lynda Haverstock, “The Saskatchewan Liberal Party,” in Howard Leeson, ed., Saskatchewan Politics: Into the Twenty-First Century (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 2001), 222–28 passim. 20. Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatchewan Executive and Legislative Directory. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Cristine de Clercy, “Leadership and Uncertainty in Fiscal Restructuring: Ralph Klein and Roy Romanow,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 38 (2005): 175–202. 24. Haverstock, “The Saskatchewan Liberal Party,” 222. 25. Janice MacKinnon, Minding the Public Purse: The Fiscal Crisis, Political Trade-Offs and Canada’s Future (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 110–11. 26. Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatchewan Executive and Legislative Directory. 27. Library of Parliament, Women in the Senate: Current Members (2004); available from . 28. CBC Saskatchewan, Calvert Names Van Mulligen to Finance, 21 November 2003, available from . 29. Margaret E. McCallum, “Prairie Women and the Struggle for a Dower Law, 1905–1920,” Prairie Forum 18 (1993): 19.

Women’s Legislative and Political Participation in Saskatchewan

30. Ibid., 22. 31. Gordon T. Snyder, “Social Justice for Workers,” in Eleanor D. Glor, ed., Policy Innovation in the Saskatchewan Public Sector, 1971–1982 (North York, ON: Captus Press, 1997), 140. 32. Ibid., 14. 33. Government of Saskatchewan, Status of Women Office, History of Saskatchewan Policy and Legislation Affecting Women and Children, online document available at . 34. Snyder, “Social Justice,” 147–48. 35. de Clercy, “Leadership and Uncertainty,” 177–80. 36. Government of Saskatchewan, Minister Responsible for the Status of Women, Action Plan for Saskatchewan Women (Regina, SK: Status of Women Office, 2003), 7. 37. Government of Saskatchewan, Department of Labour, “News Release: Parental Leave Increased,” 14 June 2001, available at . 38. Action Plan for Saskatchewan Women, 38. 39. Ibid., 7. 40. Ibid.

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A n Amb i gu o u s I n h e r i ta n c e : C h u r c h i n S a s k at c h e w a n Lynn Caldwell and Christopher Lind

“The church in Saskatchewan” no doubt conjures very different moments, memories, and commemorative possibilities for any who would write or read, remember or imagine what the phrase represents. Perhaps an image similar to the glossy page of a calendar comes to mind—a white-painted wooden spire marking its angles against the backdrop of a bright blue prairie sky or another glossy calendar page with the rounded shapes of silver-coloured domes against that same bright blue. Possibly, it is family photos, or memories, of church picnics from a time past when the grounds around a rural community church were filled with children chasing each other through tall grass while parents and grandparents gathered at tables of food to swap stories of births and harvests, travel, and other community news; or it might be an image of the same community church now empty, surrounded by grasses moving in the dry wind and the vacant echoes of a community now scattered and gone. Perhaps, for some, the church in Saskatchewan is marching down a city street with signs and slogans protesting, in the name of faith, the opening of a new uranium mine in the north. And the church is an imposing brick schoolhouse holding pain, memories, and silences of a residential school. It’s a basement meeting place to debate current social issues and ancient stories and wisdom, and a sanctuary to share rites of passage, community grief, and

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family celebrations. It is not predictable which images evoke which response— the white wooden spire or the church picnic may be affirmation and home for some, and, at the same time, exclusion, loss, or indifference for others. The different images are of a piece. They are an ambiguous inheritance of church in Saskatchewan. This chapter is a reflection on the very possibility of considering together these two intertwined evocations of history, of place, traditions, community, conflict, celebration, violence, labour, and much else that might come to mind and heart as “church” and “Saskatchewan” are brought to page and from the page to thought and remembrance. This is not the story of churches in Saskatchewan, but it is a recognition that there are stories to tell—to celebrate, and to grieve—in this centennial moment. As a contribution to such telling, we offer some thoughts on the opportunity this moment represents for telling stories about church to commemorate 100 years of Saskatchewan. Churches and Colonial Visions of Prairie Space

Lo, here is a dominion stretching “from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth”; with the garnered experience of the centuries behind it; with no fetters of past abuses to cramp its energies or hinder its development; with no outside jealousies ready to take advantage of its weakness or avaricious neighbour covetous of its wealth. Starting thus in the career of empire with unfettered limbs, and a hearty “God speed” from the great sisterhood of nations, surely nothing short of persistent folly or deliberate wickedness can mar the future of its hopes.1

The church in Saskatchewan has origins in “the career of empire” and this is an aspect of its life that runs both quietly and at times loudly through its many stories and sites across the geographies and histories of the province. The 2005 centennial, being a commemoration of Saskatchewan’s entry into Confederation as a province, is a moment to consider such origins. The words of Alexander Sutherland, the late nineteenth-century Methodist church leader quoted above, explicitly and unapologetically name the imperial colonizing project on which the churches’ moves onto the Canadian Prairies relied. Sutherland penned those words in the summer of 1880 as a description of his journey through lands then predominantly spoken of as “the Canadian North West.” He wrote of his travels in a series of letters to a national church

An Ambiguous Inheritance: Church in Saskatchewan

newspaper and later published them in book form. He was among many travellers from further east in “Canada’s Dominion” who ventured across the Prairies to view its landscapes and possibilities with an eye to an impending influx of settler families and farmers.2 This was a gaze whose bearers could somehow claim of the peopled prairie landscape that, “far as the eye could reach there was no sign of human habitation, and no sound of human activities broke the stillness….”3 The career of empire in the Canadian Prairies, including the region now marked as Saskatchewan, involved the establishment of Christian churches. There were many travellers and writers such as Sutherland who claimed their visions of, and for, the land in the name of Christian mission. That a church leader from Toronto engaging in such a mission could imagine he saw uninhabited land and project upon it the imperial desires of the time reveals how entwined the visions of church and of empire were in events that made possible European settlement of the long-inhabited prairie land. This Canadian colonial project involved violence toward Aboriginal peoples and relations of control over the region and its resources. Acts of aggression toward Aboriginal peoples were legislated through the Indian Act of 1876, and the establishment of the reserve system as an obvious instrument of control. The intention to utilize local soil, labour, and growth for dominion and imperial wealth was explicitly stated in documentation of the time.4 While the language of the churches may not have been so concerned with material wealth nor been as explicit about violence, church desire to participate in the westward expansion was thinkable really only in relation to the acquisitive intentions of the newly consolidating nation of Canada. While they were often downplayed in stories of Canada’s colonial settlement process in contrast to the contexts of the United States, acquisition and violence were integral to national consolidation in Canada.5 The roots of churches in Saskatchewan’s first century extend back to early times of nation building in Canada. From the latter years of Hudson’s Bay Company dominance in the region, European churches were a presence in the lands of what is now widely known as Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta.6 From those early days on, “the church” was not a homogeneous entity but took the form of different denominational interests and practices as well as of different persons, each with their own passions, visions, and characters. However, Catholic and Protestant denominations were united in their respective concerns to ensure that their own traditions and structures had a secure

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place in emerging communities.7 Some churches were more insistent than others about asserting a relationship between Christianity and Canadian nationalism, and more specifically Protestant Christianity and an Anglo-Saxon Canada.8 In an early decade of the twentieth century, as several Protestant denominations began a move toward formally uniting, A.S. Morton wrote of the project of Protestant unity, and identified it with “that enormous national task of permeating the whole Canadian democracy with Christian feelings and a Christian public conscience.”9 He likened this to an “instinctive natural process,”10 which is how he characterized European imperialism as well as nation building and the need for a unity of purpose among Christian churches. That vision of unity—among churches and with a national project of expansion—was a unifying vision that resonated with other discourse of the time. In 1893, American historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that America was created by the long interaction of European peoples with the “western frontier.”11 This image of the frontier played a powerful role in American historiography and in time came to influence Canadian historiography as well.12 Christian theologians also drew upon this motif in articulating their visions of life in the prairie lands. One such person in Saskatchewan’s early days as a province was social gospel theologian Edmund Oliver.13 As a social gospel theologian, he rejected the exclusive emphasis on personal piety and individual salvation that became popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was concerned with the building and shaping of modern society, including its social, institutional, and spiritual character. Oliver used Turner’s concept of the western frontier to explain Canadian religious development. Like Turner, Oliver considered the frontier to be a moving geographical space. The frontier was not only geographical, however. It was also “economic, moral and spiritual.”14 Indeed the frontier was a space of freedom—freedom from the constraints of the Old World, freedom from old habits and freedom for social improvement. When he described how Roman Catholics in Canada won the right to argue cases in civil courts and to serve on juries (rights they did not enjoy in Great Britain), Oliver concluded that the frontier was a place where people were freed from old religious prejudices.15 In the same spirit, he described the period between 1791 and 1867 as a time when the churches of Canada became “self-governing, self-supporting and equal in civil rights.”16 As he grappled with continuing prejudice against Roman Catholics in the question of religious schools in Manitoba, he claimed “the capacity of the frontier to raise or reopen vexed major issues for the whole

An Ambiguous Inheritance: Church in Saskatchewan

Dominion.”17 For Oliver, the frontier was a place where it was possible to find new solutions to old (European) problems. Oliver was self-conscious about wanting to push the concept of frontier. This meant one could find a frontier as easily in an urban slum as on a western homestead. For Oliver, the frontier was first and foremost the home of need— need for spiritual nurture, need for moral education, need for reforming the human community. He saw the western Canadian frontier as a promised land of milk and honey, a land where the slavery of Egypt would be replaced with the righteousness of divine law.18 Interestingly, he also saw the frontier as a place the churches needed in order to grow and stay vital. He wrote, “The Frontier is the hope of the Church. Religion exists to minister to Need. The Frontier is the Home of Need. The Church that grows must ever be sensitive to the Challenge of the Frontier.”19 Oliver, as a Christian theologian, saw the frontier as an opportunity for, and an instrument of, social and moral progress. Today we ask, progress for whom? The notion of “frontier” may have represented an opportunity for some people of European ancestry. However, if it systematically excludes whole sections of the population, can it really represent moral and spiritual progress? The church in Saskatchewan from 1905 to 2005 does bear the marks of its implication in the career of empire in this place. This is not to dismiss the church as contributing solely to the acquisitive violence of colonial projects in Canada, but neither is it to locate colonialism as an era of the past now replaced by a completely renovated post-colonial present, in church or in society.20 To name the colonial project explicitly is also not to assert that the church in Saskatchewan has been or is solely the terrain of white, or European, Christians. Rather, to locate the church in Saskatchewan within the colonial contours of the province is to recognize that any commemoration of church among the many institutions and traditions that shape and sustain life and community here means reckoning with the conditions that make such a presence possible, and with the relations of power that circulate through that presence. Part of this reckoning means knowing that the buildings, congregations, wisdom, and practices of faith did not spring up out of the soil like prairie grass. Some Contours of Church in Saskatchewan

The spires and domes of Saskatchewan skylines are tangible signs that church is a constructed presence in the province. To some people, they may seem as

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natural and as evocative of a Saskatchewan essence as grain elevators, weathered grey barns, or billowing fields of wheat. In a sense, they are. That is, these contours of church have a long presence and are as tangled in the notion of Saskatchewan as a province as are other structures and fields of activity. They are as evocative of Saskatchewan. They are as strong, and they are also as unstable. Testaments to this strength include the very continued presence of church buildings on the landscape, the presence of church voices in the public arena, and the Christian religious identities and practices of some people in the province. The instability resides in the same terrain. Instability does mean a fragility of presence; there is no inexorable “givenness” to the church buildings, voices, and people in Saskatchewan. The land has a long story, and Aboriginal peoples have a long presence, that attests to this. Churches are indeed entwined in colonialism’s simultaneous strength and instability.21 Yet, for churches the characteristic of instability also refers, more positively, to vibrancy and continual change. Churches here, as everywhere, are in ongoing transformation, and have traditions of critique, renewal, and vision in their own histories and theologies. Church carries the instability of vibrant and continual change in the diverse ways that particular churches live out their concerns, visions, and vocations for redemptive hope and possibility in the complicated and animate place that is Saskatchewan. Emphasizing that the contours of church are varied and complex is in part a way to resist, in this twenty-first century reflection, repeating the totalizing imperial gaze that characterized Christian accounts and intentions of a century past. Writing as people of Christian faith and with particular passions for, and connections with, Protestant Christianity in its present-day incarnation, we face a task as fraught with the potential for possessive claims as was that of the nineteenth-century traveller Sutherland. In his writing he attempted to describe a geography and its future from his imagined vantage point of seeing all the prairie land before him.22 That vantage point is not ours, and to name the partiality of our vision is not only to clarify our task in this text, it is also to speak back to voices such as Sutherland’s and his contemporaries’, and to Oliver, and Morton, to say we make a different claim. To state partiality is also to name that there are risks in any claims to know even when we resist an imperial view.23 The processes of building and sustaining church in Saskatchewan are multiple and contradictory, and involve diverse persons, communities, and traditions. We are partial to describing the church in Saskatchewan

An Ambiguous Inheritance: Church in Saskatchewan

with a view to accountability for colonial practices, but also with a view of the church as among the resources for new possibility. To explore the themes of strength and instability, we turn to three focal points: nation, race, and community. We recognize that these three categories of analysis connect and overlap with each other and with other ways of organizing meaning.24 The fruitfulness of exploring these particular categories is that they have some prominence in Saskatchewan church experience, they relate to aspects of the church that presently call for critical account, and they also provide opportunities to identify the vibrancy and transformative practices and potential of church in this place. This thematic approach bears some similarity to describing the architectural outline of church buildings foregrounding a prairie sky as a way to consider the shape of the church in Saskatchewan. Rather than, but much like, pointing to the curves or corners of differently styled rooftops, we trace some of the ways that these ideas of nation, race, and community shape church identity and practice in Saskatchewan, in strong and unstable ways. Nation

We described some connections between churches and nation building above in reference to early equations of Christianity with Canadian nationalism and the notion of an Anglo-Saxon Canada in particular. Canada is not a natural phenomenon; as a nation, it is both embodied in its material practices and in its circulation as an idea—as a social product in ongoing formation.25 A nation is a symbolic and a material phenomenon. The materials of nation include political and legislative institutions, infrastructures of finance and of steel (like a railway, for example), communication systems, schools, policing practices, and other tangible means of state formation. A nation also has a symbolic presence in the circulation of images, myths, and stories.26 Moves to identify Christianity with Canadianizing at the turn of the twentieth century had, and have, both symbolic and material intent and effect for churches. In Saskatchewan, this has been manifest, for example, in Protestant and Catholic rivalries. Competition over the establishment of churches in emergent settler communities was enacted in terms of the Canadian nation-building project. “English Protestant ‘Canadianizers’”27 assumed a deliberate identification between church mission, their own presence in settler communities and the expansion of Canada, while the Catholic Church, “reacting with an equal

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cultural defensiveness,” aligned more with a defence of multiculturalism.28 At stake in both the vision of a homogenous Anglo Canada and French Catholic resistance to the same was security for their respective denominational practices and influence in the developing nation. In their conflicts the nation— Canada—was a contested notion. Public institutional space, such as schooling, was a focal point for these struggles, a terrain where the consequences of identification with the nation could translate into social influence and resources. For a time prior to the formal establishment of Saskatchewan as a province, the Board of Education was divided into two sections, Roman Catholic and Protestant, each with supervisory discretion over teachers, textbooks, and schools.29 In the autonomy debates leading up to 1905, separate schools and legislation about language were at stake. This was an area of dispute that involved Catholic and Protestant differences of opinion and struggles for supremacy, and for survival, in the emerging nation and in its formation into the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. More recent contestations over religion and public schooling are also a site where nation and church coincide in Saskatchewan. Carol Schick’s analysis of a debate over prayer in public schools points to ways that conflicts over the space and place for Christian religious practice are bound up with understandings of nation.30 She looks at a dispute involving the use of the Lord’s Prayer, a Christian practice, in Saskatoon public schools, and describes responses to a 1999 Saskatchewan Human Rights Board of Inquiry in which “a complaint was brought against the Saskatoon School Division, alleging that the practice of reciting the Lord’s Prayer during school functions discriminated against the religious freedom of the complainant’s children.”31 The board found in favour of the complainant. In an examination of letters to a newspaper, and submissions to the Board of Education, Schick argues that prayer advocates were “positioning themselves as central to national (Canadian) identity.”32 She identifies that, in letters to the editor of the Star Phoenix, “connections between citizen identity and Christianity are made regularly.”33 Claims, early and recent, to associate Christianity with Canadian nationhood are not secure. Those early travellers and missionaries who “saw” Canada and “saw” Christian civilization as inevitable, saw through acts of imagination. These visionaries did not “see” Aboriginal presence and resistance, or nondominant Christian groups, or other religious practices that were there. To the extent that this imagination of a naturalized claim to identity with the nation is invoked to define church in Saskatchewan, that definition is unstable. It is

An Ambiguous Inheritance: Church in Saskatchewan

based on the colonial imagination, and, further, not all churches, nor all Christian people, bear the same privilege of reliance on this gaze. For example, the trajectory for churches becoming established in Saskatchewan was not all through links with established churches in central Canada who could draw upon “founding nations” discourse in asserting claims to space, identity, and resources. The settlement of western Canadian communities involved immigration patterns that included religious groups arriving and settling together. There was provision for this in a clause abridged to the Dominion Lands Act of 1872. The identification of Anglo churches with the nation of Canada relied significantly on excluding other groups from making a similar claim. In A.S. Morton’s text on church union (a national movement rooted in western Protestant congregations) is a vivid explication of the racial boundaries invoked: “through all this generation we have been welding the heterogeneous populations that have come to our shores into a real union. This we are doing by the common institutions under which we live, which knock off national peculiarities within three generations, on the average, and chisel out the normal Canadian.”34 The “national peculiarities” Morton imagines refer to Canadians whose presence challenges the security of identifying the nation with a particular Christian identity. To denaturalize associations of Christianity with Canadianness, and point out the instability of identifying with the nation, does suggest that contemporary Christianity in Saskatchewan cannot rely on ideas of national identity for a secure presence. Race

Ideas and practices of nations and nation building are, in Canada as elsewhere, racialized. Recent scholarship identifying national mythologies of Canada as a white settler society35 points to ways that “Canadianness” is often identified with whiteness. Sherene Razack argues that “the story of the land as shared and as developed by enterprising settlers is manifestly a racial story.”36 This is evident even in ways that multiculturalism is invoked as integral to Canada. For example, Eva Mackey provides an account of how “the subjectivities of people who conceive of themselves as ‘mainstream’ or simply ‘Canadian Canadians’”37 are formed through practices integral to Canadian national understandings, and policies, that claim a multicultural identity rooted in origins as a settler nation.38 Identifications of Christianity with Canadianness, as in the

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examples from early Anglo Saxon church leaders and in the contemporary example of debates over prayer in public schools, are caught up in the national mythologies of whiteness in Canada. The strength of churches in Saskatchewan is in some cases derived through race privilege. One way that the privileging and linking of whiteness with Christianity has had a particularly deleterious effect in Saskatchewan is in the churches’ prominent role in residential schools for Aboriginal children. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples’ (rcap) report lists fourteen residential schools located in Saskatchewan at the high point of their national presence in 1931.39 Until 1969 when administration of the schools was transferred to the Canadian government, the schools were run by Roman Catholic, United Church (and prior to church union, Presbyterian and Methodist), and Anglican churches. These schools were established in accordance with the policy of assimilation inscribed in the Constitution Act of 1867. The rcap report identifies that this “was a policy designed to move communities, and eventually all Aboriginal peoples, from their helpless ‘savage’ state to one of self-reliant ‘civilization’ and thus to make in Canada but one community—a non-Aboriginal, Christian one.”40 The assimilation policy that supported the development of residential schools was reinforced by racialized visions of Christian mission entwined with national imaginings of Canada. For example, in Edmund Oliver’s reconstruction of Canadian history alluded to above, he acknowledges Aboriginal presence and knowledge; however, when he surveys populations, he, like the earlier traveller, Sutherland, counts only the Europeans. Oliver imagines “the western frontier was unpeopled save for fur traders and the aboriginal nomadic population.”41 Like Canadian law for most of the twentieth century, he did not recognize Aboriginal people as being fully persons. The consequences of asserting the supremacy of white Christian civilization that translated into removing Aboriginal children from their homes to live and work in the residential schools of Canada are and continue to be documented.42 While some former students name positive experiences in these institutions, such stories are overshadowed by the violence of separating young children from their families, by disclosures of physical and sexual abuse, and by the criminal convictions of perpetrators who worked in the schools—the tragic legacy of the residential school system is among the costs of Christian practices of racism. Assertions of white Christian civilization bolster both white and Christian claims to dominance, but they obscure the reality that Christian churches are

An Ambiguous Inheritance: Church in Saskatchewan

not exclusively, nor inherently, white. Churches have been sites for raceprivileged populations to secure that privilege and for racist colonial projects to be supported; however, they have also been sites of resistance to colonialism and for the formation of Christian religious practices and communities that subvert the dominance of whiteness. Aboriginal Christian churches have a long history of leadership in the province, and the congregations and members of Christian denominations are not all European nor white. Assertions of Christianity as white are made against the reality of a much more diverse and heterogeneous population and history. Community

The shape that interpretations of “community” have given and give to Saskatchewan churches suggests a different resonance than that of nation or race. Community is perhaps more evocative of harmony and of equity in relations. Community suggests cooperative values and networks of support and, in that, suggests something particularly definitive of the Saskatchewan celebrated in this centennial. Among the long traditions and diverse theological images and values of Christian churches are those that counter individualism and nurture networks and cooperation. And this would indeed seem to be a shared focus with other Saskatchewan traditions embodied in forms such as credit unions or grain cooperatives. The ways that “community” shapes churches in Saskatchewan bears the particular marks of prairie cooperation, simultaneous with Christian attention to relationship, ethics, and social experience. This does not retrieve the church, or any other institution structured by cooperation, from its part in colonial relations, but neither do colonialism and racialized national mythologies imply the absence of community or of desires for support and connection. From the earliest days of European settlement, the motivations and relations involved in the creation of communities based on faith traditions and identities, and on desires for connection and support, were complex. Struggles for supremacy and for identity within the emerging nation of Canada were integral to ways that churches worked out their vocations in the settler projects of the Canadian Prairies. However, the establishment of churches in the newly settled communities that became the towns and villages and cities of Saskatchewan occurred not just through the investments and acts of church leaders based in the more easterly regions of Canada, or in the colonial

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metropoles across the Atlantic. Settlers themselves formed and found their ways into community churches as part of the daily and immediate process of creating ways to sustain themselves in their new environments. Some settlers arrived as communities, including in the form of religious colonies; others arrived as families or alone, and found their way to churches as part of sustaining themselves and working cooperatively in their new homes. These everyday encounters and personal or family stories of faith are as integral to the establishment of churches in Saskatchewan as the nation-building or imperial visions of travelling church leaders. The provision of material support, affirmations of identity, and sites to build and nurture social networks also tell the tale of church in Saskatchewan. Accounts are numerous.43 Other, more contemporary, examples of how community marks and strengthens the contours of church are in the ways that churches have mobilized to engage in crises such as the farm income crisis. Wendee Kubik describes some of the actions that churches have taken, ecumenically, to provide support and advocacy for farming families and communities in recent decades. Churches have played a significant role in response to severe consequences of decreasing farm incomes resulting from changes in the global capitalist economy and increased corporatization of agriculture. Church action has included lobbying provincial and federal governments, raising public awareness, providing pastoral support and counsel, and creating organizational structures for farming people and urban advocates to meet and strategize together.44 Various denominations have offered organizational resources and support, and have together created educational and action networks such as the Christian Farm Action Crisis Committee.45 Community can also be exclusionary. Sometimes, in the context of Christian theologies, it is associated with notions of “the elect”46 and is also often lived out in structures that sustain—and ritualize—hierarchical power relations. This has particular implications for persons who are excluded from or marginalized in some church communities, based on issues of gender, race or sexual orientation. However, while some practices of community exclude and silence participation, churches themselves are also, inconsistently, sites and resources for gender, queer, and anti-racist activism. In Saskatchewan, several denominations have educational and advocacy groups that call church and society to account for exclusionary practices based on racism, sexism, and homophobia. For example, the Saskatchewan Christian Feminist Network and denominationally based groups such as the Roman Catholic group, Dignity, the Anglican

An Ambiguous Inheritance: Church in Saskatchewan

Integrity, Lutherans Concerned, and the United Church’s Affirm United all draw on Christian theological visions of justice and equity to advocate for inclusive practices of community—particularly in terms of addressing gender injustices and homophobia. Churches have also served as a site and resource for addressing the racial inequities to which they have contributed; some churches currently engage in attempts to create space for confrontation and dialogue to address their involvement in residential schools. Among Aboriginal Christians, the organizational structure of the churches has sometimes been viewed as an impediment to community. The response has been to try to reform church structure. Aboriginal leadership has moved the United Church of Canada down this road with the creation of the All Native Circle Conference in 1986. It is the only conference in the United Church whose boundaries overlap with the boundaries of other conferences. All Native Circle Conference has presbyteries with pastoral charges in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.47 In Saskatchewan, many Aboriginal Christian congregations are part of Plains Presbytery of All Native Circle Conference. The Anglican Church of Canada is contemplating a similar reorganization. To date, it has formed the Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples. The territory of the council overlaps with the geographical boundaries of the four ecclesiastical provinces and thirty dioceses that make up the Anglican Church of Canada. The purpose of both the All Native Circle Conference of the United Church and the Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples of the Anglican Church is to represent Aboriginal voices within the structures of the church and to promote self-determination within First Nation Christian communities. This is also to subvert the claims of white, or European, Christians as definitive of the story or future of the church in Canada. In both cases, Aboriginal Christians have had to challenge inherited structures in order to accomplish their goals. In both cases, the religious community has been a base from which to challenge oppressive structures. As the Anglican Council of Indigenous People’s declares on its Web site, “We have had the residential schools, which tore us from home and suppressed our traditions, our languages, our relationship with the land and the Creator—our very identities. Yet there have been times, too, when the churches have been our best support in the Canadian society—against those who coveted our land, who would see the death of our language and culture.”48

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The story of Anglican churches in Saskatchewan includes long legacies of Aboriginal leaders in ministry. One of the earliest colleges for theological education in western Canada was Emmanuel College in Prince Albert, which was established in 1879 and operated until 1908 with an emphasis on the training of Cree candidates for ministry.49 Later, the James Settee College for Ministry was established and dedicated to the training of Aboriginal Anglican clergy. Aboriginal Christian identities, communities, and leadership in Saskatchewan are interconnected with the histories of colonialism in the churches and province, but also counter any claims that white or European leadership, institutions, and values can prevail as the definitive story. The contours of Christian community in Saskatchewan include many practices beyond the establishment of particular denominations or their congregations. The Canadian Centre for Ecumenism lists dozens of churchrelated agencies and projects in Saskatchewan, including camps, bible schools, theological colleges, retreat centres, community ministries, and campus ministries.50 There are also long histories of interchurch and interfaith agencies and projects in the region with people and communities of different faiths working together to learn about each other’s traditions and to cooperate on shared concerns and commitments. For example, Multifaith Saskatoon hosts festivals of faith and world environment day events, and provides speakers and resources relating to interfaith understanding and cooperation. The centennial has been a time for Christian churches to participate in recognitions of religious diversity in the province. The contours of community that provide some of the shape to Saskatchewan churches affirm that the “career of empire” and other exclusionary practices in Christianity are also countered again and again—by religious impulses that move more toward cooperation and by the resilience and faith of those who resist the violence of imperial colonizing projects. An Ambiguous Inheritance

Churches in Saskatchewan have been a means for oppressive relations— racism, essentialized nationalism, exclusionary community. We have tried not to shy away from that. We also stated earlier that to reckon with colonialism is not to dismiss the church as contributing solely to acquisitive violence. Churches have also been, and continue as, means for positive transformation and sites for active movements toward addressing the very conditions that add to their own privilege.

An Ambiguous Inheritance: Church in Saskatchewan

The categories of nation, race, and community mobilized in church theologies and practice—through debates over schools as public institutional space, through violence toward Aboriginal peoples, through marginalization based on ethnicity, as well as through exclusionary (and faithful, emancipatory) practices of community—help us to think through the ambiguity and contradictions in the church’s vocation. We have suggested that these categories are part of the structure and that they function in the ongoing practices of church in Saskatchewan. For those who continue to claim a Saskatchewan, and Christian, identity (as both authors do), we recognize that our inheritance is ambiguous. The provincial centennial is an opportunity to take a critical stance toward the past and present as we envision an undetermined future. Because we are partial to addressing relations of power, unsettling our cherished notions about identity, tradition, and place at this moment serves the end of “opening space for newer, more emancipatory imaginings.”51 Christian religious impulses in Saskatchewan, though intertwined with the career of empire, race privilege, and exclusionary community, are also comprised of transformative legacies and visions, and with potential for contributing to an equitable and sustainable future in this place. These impulses are also found in the lives, stories, and deep faith of many diverse individuals in the province. There is nothing inevitable in Saskatchewan. This is a time for hope and renewal. The centennial is a moment when past and future have great potency as motifs for imagining common life. It is certainly no more an unfettered moment than was the context in which Saskatchewan was imagined as a province—with colonial understandings of Christian mission integral to that vision. To unsettle some of the ways that church is understood is to turn to its visions of community and hope, and to reimagine ways for churches to find strength and vibrancy in a heterogeneous space.

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Notes 1. Alexander Sutherland, A Summer in Prairie Land: Notes of a Tour through the Northwest Territory (Toronto: The Methodist Book and Publishing House, 1882), 196–97. 2. Sutherland’s travels were in the midst of a massive publicity campaign, supported by the Dominion government and the press at the time, to attract settlers to the region. As Lewis Thomas reports in Lewis G. Thomas, ed., The Prairie West to 1905: A Canadian Sourcebook (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1975), “No one was too inconspicuous to be ignored as a potential witness to the western future” (p. 50). Church missionaries and leaders such as Sutherland were among such witnesses contributing to, in Sutherland’s words, “the general stock of information in regard to the North West” (Sutherland, A Summer in Prairie Land, iv.) Sutherland was, at the time, General Secretary for the missionary society of the Methodist Church in Canada. 3. Sutherland, A Summer in Prairie Land, 196. 4. There are many accounts of this; for example, Doug Owram, Promise of Eden: The Canadian Expansionist Movement and the Idea of the West 1856–1900 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980, 1992). See also Thomas, ed., The Prairie West to 1905, 5. 5. An example of the downplaying of this violence is an article by Pierre Burton on the Canadian railway, in which Berton asserts, “We have no blood in our history—no searing civil war, no surgical revolution. We are the only nation in the world created, non-violently, by the building of a railway.” Pierre Berton, “Our Loved One Is Dead and We Mourn. . . ,” Toronto Star, 13 January 1990. For analyses of such moves to sustain a story of benign development, see Sherene Razack, ed., Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002); for example, in Bonita Lawrence’s article, “the notion that the colonizing project was benign,” p. 26. See also Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 2. 6. For example the Church of St. Boniface was established by Father JosephNorbert Provencher in 1818; the first Anglican missionary was John West in 1820; and the Hudson’s Bay Company invited four Methodist missionaries to Red River in 1839. These dates are noted in various texts. 7. In an earlier account of church development in the Prairies, Raymond Huel observed that “prairie Protestantism and prairie Catholicism were in turn the cultural offshoots of Ontario and Quebec, and had for some time been engaged in a spiritual battle for the soul of the West.” Raymond J.A. Huel, “FrenchSpeaking Bishops and the Cultural Mosaic in Western Canada,” in Richard Allen, ed., Religion and Society in the Prairie West, Canadian Plains Studies 3 (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1974), 53.

An Ambiguous Inheritance: Church in Saskatchewan

8. Writing specifically of Presbyterian missions, but in terms also applicable to other predominantly English-speaking national denominations, Catherine Macdonald notes, These two missions—the national and the spiritual—seemed inextricably bound together in the minds of mid-Victorian Canadian churchmen and churchwomen. In the struggle to establish churches on the plains after 1870, Canadian Presbyterians felt that they could not evangelize without Canadianizing, nor could they Canadianize without evangelizing. They took for granted the fact that Canada was a unitary English-speaking state based on British parliamentary and judicial traditions which looked to Britain for a sense of identity and kinship. Their need to reinforce this vision of Canada came to influence decision making about church extension as much as did the desire to spread the gospel message and to provide western communities with the spiritual and social services of the church. See Catherine Macdonald, “James Robertson and Presbyterian Church Extension in Manitoba and the North West, 1866–1902,” in Dennis L. Butcher et al., eds., Prairie Spirit: Perspectives on the Heritage of the United Church of Canada in the West (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1985), 85. For an analysis of the quite different visions of society held by Protestant and Catholic groups in the post-Confederation era, see Brian Clarke, “English-Speaking Canada from 1840,” in Terrance Murphy and Roberto Perin, eds., A Concise History of Christianity in Canada (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1996), 269–71. 9. A.S. Morton, The Way to Union (Toronto: William Briggs, 1912), 245. 10. Ibid., 246. 11. See Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in Frederick Jackson Turner, ed., Frontier in American History (New York: 1893; reprint, 1920). As J.M.S. Careless put it, “the conditions of frontier society had determined the character of western institutions, and these in turn had reacted on the East. Out of the ‘frontier’ had come American individualism, democracy, inventiveness, coarseness, and idealism.” See J.M.S. Careless, “Frontierism, Metropolitanism, and Canadian History,” in W.A. Mackintosh et al., eds., Approaches to Canadian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967). 12. Though the frontier school of thought as criticized by Canadian historians, and succeeded by other analyses such as the role of the environment (see the work of A.S. Morton) and the dynamic between metropolis and hinterland (see the work of H.A. Innis), it played an important role in the imagination of those who were simultaneously building up the institutional infrastructure of the province and creating a narrative to bind their work into a common project.

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13. A transplant from Ontario, E.H. Oliver was a graduate of the University of Toronto, a historian, and the first professor hired by the University of Saskatchewan in 1905. He was also a Presbyterian minister and theologian who, in 1912, became the first principal of the Presbyterian Theological College in Saskatoon (with the creation of the United Church of Canada in 1925, the Presbyterian Theological College was renamed St. Andrew’s College). Oliver was a prolific author. His most well-known book was a religious history of Canada entitled The Winning of the Frontier. 14. Edmund H. Oliver, The Winning of the Frontier (Toronto: United Church Publishing House, 1930), 262. 15. Ibid., 81. 16. Ibid.,165. 17. Ibid., 228. 18. For other work on religious idealism in prairie settlement, see Benjamin G. Smillie, ed., Visions of the New Jerusalem: Religious Settlement on the Prairies (Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1983). 19. Oliver, The Winning of the Frontier, 269. 20. Scholars of colonial and post-colonial studies stress that the “post” in postcolonialism is problematic; colonial relations of power have not come to an end. For example, Jane M. Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 24. Also Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), 9–17. 21. For the notion of colonial formations as both formidable and fragile, see Adele Perry, On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849–1871 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2001), 195. Colonialism, the route for non-Aboriginal presence in Canada, is a fragile enterprise even in its formidability. European colonial presence is not a given; to assume so is a fragile claim, but in the assertions of that assumption, that presence has indeed been formidable. 22. Such an attempt is illustrative of Mary Louise Pratt’s interpretation of European travellers writing as though they were “the-monarch-of-all-I-survey.” Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 201. 23. We recognize that “voice is never unfettered; it is always filtered through contexts, and through personal and social agendas.” David De Brou and Aileen Moffatt, eds., “Other” Voices: Historical Essays on Saskatchewan Women (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1995), 6. 24. Such interconnections of analytical categories are often noted in anti-oppressive scholarship that seeks to name and intervene in relations of power organized in terms of such categories as gender, race, and class.

An Ambiguous Inheritance: Church in Saskatchewan

25. This concept is related to Benedict Anderson’s identification of nations as “imagined communities.” His work points to ways that nation is experienced as natural, and given; he describes nations as imagined “because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” They are imagined as communities because “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.” Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised ed. (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 6. 26. For further elaboration of these considerations of nation in relation to Canada, see; and Mackey, The House of Difference. 27. See Huel, “French-Speaking Bishops,” 53. Huel helpfully complicates any tendency to dichotomize the relations between Protestantism and the nation, and Catholicism and the nation, in his account of distinctions between Irish Catholic interests and French Catholic interests in the Canadian west. 28. Huel, “French-Speaking Bishops.” 29. See J. William Brennan, “The ‘Autonomy Question’ and the Creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan, 1905,” in R. Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer, eds., The Prairie West: Historical Readings (Edmonton: Pica Pica Press, 1992), 386. 30. Carol Schick, “Slippery and Unstable: School and Human Rights,” in Carol Schick, JoAnn Jaffe, and Ailsa Watkinson, eds., Contesting Fundamentalisms, (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2004). 31. Ibid., 155. 32. Ibid., 156. 33. Ibid., 158. 34. Morton, The Way to Union, 238. Emphases added. He identifies, among the “common institutions,” schools, Sunday schools, and churches. 35. See two sources drawn upon elsewhere in this text: Razack, ed., Race, Space, and the Law. See also Mackey, The House of Difference. Razack identifies a white settler society as “one established by Europeans on non-European soil. Its origins lie in the dispossession and near extermination of Indigenous populations by the conquering Europeans” (p. 1). 36. Razack, ed., Race, Space, and the Law, 2. She further notes, “racialized populations seldom appear on the landscape as other than this racial shadow” (p. 3). 37. Mackey, The House of Difference, 3. Mackey identifies this mainstream, “ordinary,” subject population as those who, rather than being known as “hyphenated peoples” such as “German-Canadian, Ukrainian-Canadian, Chinese-Canadian, Greek-Canadian, Afro-Canadian, French-Canadian, Native-Canadian, ItalianCanadian, and so on, have the privilege of being just “Canadian.” Mackey, The House of Difference, 20.

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38. Mackey cites examples of how cultural policies and celebrations of nationhood mark a Canadian “core” culture and population as ordinary and mainstream in contrast to the bearers of “difference” who provide the multiculturalism, and to representatives of a pre-Canadian, Aboriginal “past.” She identifies ways that the contours of the Canadian Canadian subject position—that define who can know themselves and be known within it—conform with tracing or assuming one’s ties with the European, and particularly English-speaking, settler culture. This is the normative position that functions as the core from which multiculturalism diverges. 39. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1996 [cited 21 August 2004]); available from . 40. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. 41. Oliver, The Winning of the Frontier, 170. See also p. 51, “In 1663 there were scarcely more than 100 farms and only between 2500 and 3000 white inhabitants in all Canada.” 42. In Saskatchewan, for example, see Constance Deiter, From Our Mothers’ Arms: The Intergenerational Impact of Residential Schools in Saskatchewan (Toronto: United Church Publishing House, 1999). A bibliography of resources is available through the Web site of the Native Law program at the University of Saskatchewan, (accessed 21 August 2004). Various church denominations also provide some detail about their particular histories, and bibliographic information on their Web sites. 43. See for example the numerous local stories collected for the seventy-fifth anniversary of Saskatchewan and preserved in community heritage books published across the province at that time. Also, chapters in De Brou and Moffatt, eds., “Other Voices.” See also Smillie, ed., Visions of the New Jerusalem: Religious Settlement on the Prairies. 44. Wendee Kubik, “Resistance to the Farm Crisis: Churches, Farm Groups and the Farm Stress Line,” in Harry P. Diaz, JoAnn Jaffe, and Robert Stirling, eds., Farm Communites at the Crossroads: Challenge and Resistance (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2003). See also Gail Allan and Christopher Lind, Study Guide for Something’s Wrong Somewhere: Globalization, Community and the Moral Economy of the Farm Crisis (Halifax: Fernwood Books, 1996). 45. Kubik, “Resistance to the Farm Crisis,” 110.

An Ambiguous Inheritance: Church in Saskatchewan

46. See for example Benjamin G. Smillie and Norman Threinen, “Protestants— Prairie Visions of the New Jerusalem: The United and Lutheran Churches in Western Canada,” in Benjamin G. Smillie, ed., Visions of the New Jerusalem: Religious Settlement on the Prairies (Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1983), 79. They note, “The doctrine gave great tenacity to the missionary endeavours of the first pioneers. Unfortunately, it too often became perverted into an Anglophone elitism with racist overtones.” 47. By contrast, the Saskatchewan Conference is a geographical structure within the United Church of Canada, whose boundaries do not overlap with any other conference except for ANCC. It is made up of Presbyteries—geographical administrative units comprised of pastoral charges that are themselves made up of one or more congregations. There are thirteen conferences in the United Church of Canada. 48. See (accessed 15 November 2004). 49. For a history, see the Web site for Saskatchewan Diocese, . 50. See . 51. Ian McKay describes this opening of space in reference to a critique of cherished notions of identity and place in his study, The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), 295.

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S a s k at c h e w a n ’ s D i a s p o r a Mark Abley

“I may not know who I am,” Wallace Stegner wrote in his classic book Wolf Willow, “but I know where I am from.”1 In his own case, that meant the little town of Eastend—“Whitemud,” as he called it in that original and remarkable blend of fiction and memoir—sheltered by the Cypress Hills in the southwestern corner of Saskatchewan. Stegner spent most of his long life in the United States. He became a respected teacher, a Pulitzer-winning novelist, and a professor of English at Stanford University. But where was the man from? The place, he insisted, where he had spent six years as a child: a fragment of Saskatchewan. There are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of us who live in the state of mind that Wallace Stegner described. We inhabit other provinces, states, or nations. Sometimes we manage to bring ourselves to say that our current place of residence is home. At other times, “home” seems a much more elusive, troubled concept, one that cannot easily be disentangled from a sense of belonging in Saskatchewan’s land, under Saskatchewan’s sky. This state of mind can easily be dismissed as nothing more than romantic nostalgia. I think that would be a mistake, a serious underestimation, and in this essay I will try to show why.

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Readers who are looking for a historical or sociological analysis of the phenomenon of out-migration should be warned: they won’t find it here. I am a writer, not a scholar. Lacking the rigorous methodological tools of a social scientist, I intend to make use of the writerly devices of memory and quotation, image and anecdote. If this essay were to have a motto, it would be a line from a poem by Terrence Heath: “The only precious thing is a place to leave.”2 Heath grew up in Regina and worked for many years as a history professor, a writer, and a museum director in Saskatoon. A few years after writing the poem in question, he left the province, first for Winnipeg, then for Toronto. His three children were all raised in Saskatchewan; none of them resides in the province today. Their lives have imitated his art. I grew up in Saskatoon in the late 1960s and early ’70s. It never occurred to me to do my undergraduate studies anywhere other than the University of Saskatchewan, and I’m proud of the education I received there. I still love the river city. Yet for the past twenty-five years I have lived and worked in Montreal. Not all the friends I made at university have left the province, but it’s fair to say that the majority of them return to Saskatchewan only for occasional visits. I think, for example, of J.K.F. from Luseland, who became a marine biologist and now lives on Vancouver Island; of T.M. from Harris, who trained as an architect and now restores historic buildings in the Toronto area; of W.B. from Wilkie, who studied commerce, then turned her attention to law, and now serves as a judge in Vancouver; and also of G.W., a gifted actor and history student from Saskatoon who became an administrator and foreign-affairs consultant in Ottawa before aids robbed him of life. Given such stories, and they are legion, is it appropriate to think of Saskatchewan as a province that is incapable of holding onto its children—a province that squanders its considerable skills of fostering and nurturing on those who will become émigrés? Does it make sense to speak of a Saskatchewan “diaspora”? The word is both rich and polemical. Originally it referred to the Jews held in captivity in Babylon, their temple and capital city destroyed, or to the Jews a few centuries later, who had scattered through much of the ancient world, settling in Europe, North Africa, and what we now call the Middle East. They proclaimed a heartfelt longing for Zion, the absent, longed-for, never-forgotten home. Theirs was the original “next-year country”—with next year supposed to arrive in Jerusalem. Only as the twentieth century unfolded did it become common to speak of a diaspora of non-Jewish peoples: Armenians, for example,

Saskatchewan’s Diaspora

who have also suffered genocide, dispersion, and the violent loss of their homeland. Even so, some Jews resent the ease with which “their” word has lately been appropriated to embrace other peoples’ histories. Today, by most definitions, a diasporic group is one whose members agree to maintain core elements of a shared identity far beyond their place of origin; it is a group that has survived in exile. With the massive social change that the past century has brought to most parts of the world, the once rare experiences of exile, displacement, and emigration have become almost commonplace. Consequently, the concept of diaspora has grown in range and breadth. The term has spread to encompass such disparate peoples as Mennonites and Haitians, Sikhs and Basques, Irish and Greeks, black Africans and Chinese everywhere. There’s even a Web site, the work of a Princeton professor, devoted to “the Neolithic diaspora in Europe.” In September 2004, a Google search for the word “diaspora” produced no fewer than 9,960,000 hits. Only one Canadian province has commonly been linked with the experience of diaspora: Newfoundland. Like Saskatchewan, it does not contain a metropolis; like Saskatchewan, the majority of its population has traditionally been rural; like Saskatchewan, it has flourished or struggled economically by virtue of an often frustrating dependency on raw materials; like Saskatchewan, it has been bleeding young people for decades. (The “capital” of the Newfoundland diaspora is Toronto, just as the “capital” of the Saskatchewan diaspora, if the term may be accepted, would probably be Vancouver.) Furthermore, the citizens of both Newfoundland and Saskatchewan have often felt cut off from centres of political and economic power. Despite the absence of salt water between Uranium City and the Big Muddy, the two provinces have much in common. But their struggles are far from unique. Rural areas in many other countries are also striving, and failing, to maintain their population. If I think back on my own experience, I have heard echoes of the Saskatchewan predicament in parts of Wales, Ireland, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, especially in the economically downtrodden Gaspésie. In the late 1990s I had occasion to give writing workshops in a high school in the small town of Gaspé, and I asked the students in three classes how many of them expected to stay in the region after graduation. Not a single hand went up. It wasn’t just a matter of their aspiring to leave; in such an environment, to aspire is to leave. In Gaspé, as in Corner Brook, as in Tisdale or Estevan, children have long become aware from an early age that they may never be able to find a well-paid

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or fulfilling job at home. Career training, even guidance counselling, thereby turns into a preparation for departure. “Goin’ down the road,” the title of a well-known Maritime movie from the 1970s, is also a catchphrase that sums up a social movement. These are places where the idea of leaving seems normal, perhaps even inevitable, in a way that has never been the case for people growing up in Toronto or New York. There, the flight of the young can still surprise the old. Yet if an accumulation of departures is to turn into what we might call a genuine diaspora, something else needs to be at work: a common identity that is strongly enough felt that it can bind together many or most of the migrants. Only a sense of shared identity can give people the conviction that, even if they were to spend decades living under umbrellas in the Fraser Valley, they would always be “from” Saskatchewan. When it comes to self-definition, to a personal vision of identity, that deceptively simple preposition is key. How many times have we all heard someone utter a sentence like this: “Well, I live in Victoria now, but I’m from Saskatchewan”? As in Newfoundland and rural Quebec, depopulation has become one of Saskatchewan’s heartfelt political issues. A week before the provincial election of 2003, The Globe and Mail ran a feature article on the tight race between the ndp and the Saskatchewan Party.3 The reporter, Graeme Smith, followed a candidate door-to-door through a suburb of Saskatoon. On one doorstep, when the candidate posed a question about a voter’s favourite issues, he got an earful: “Well, the economy. I’ve been looking for decent work for a couple of years. I spent $20,000 on computer training and all my classmates are leaving the province. The jobs just aren’t here.” The need to answer such complaints—the need, that is, to come up with some sort of plan to minimize the demographic erosion—forms and informs the platforms of both major parties. Prominent on the Saskatchewan Party’s election Web site was a fervent if ungrammatical promise to “grow Saskatchewan by 100,000 People in Ten Years”; the party boasted that a new government would give young people a reason to stay in the province. Not to be outdone, the ruling ndp declared that “we know how important it is to encourage Saskatchewan students to develop their careers right here at home,” and promised an incentive plan to “help young people develop their careers in Saskatchewan.” Fine words on both sides. But, as my mother used to say, “fine words butter no parsnips.”

Saskatchewan’s Diaspora

2

If it’s any comfort, it’s nothing new. Because of Saskatchewan’s harsh and unpredictable climate, its sometimes difficult terrain, and its remoteness from both Parliament Hill and corporate head offices, the idea of leaving has been there in the provincial psyche since the early decades of European settlement. Wheat and barley have roots; but many Prairie farmers did not. Some communities died soon after their birth, becoming ghost towns at high speed. The Great Depression, needless to say, accelerated the trend—in 1936, a federal census indicated that a total of 11,222 farms in the province had been abandoned. But the Depression and its dustbowl weather had not initiated the process. Ten years earlier, when optimism about King Wheat still reigned, a census showed that 4907 farms in Saskatchewan, covering more than a million acres, had already been abandoned.4 Contrary to the breadbasket imagery of the boom years, this was never an easy place to wrest a good living from the land. Perhaps this helps to explain why maps and histories of Saskatchewan so often appear haunted by a ghostly mathematical abstraction: the Palliser Triangle.5 Statistics give the outlines of the story, but statistics are never enough. Across the province, those heavy, indispensable, occasionally indigestible volumes of local history are what flesh out the mere numbers, allowing us to imagine the past in rich detail. I own a few of these books. One of them, Between and Beyond the Benches, describes life on the ranches, farms, and small towns of the Ravenscrag area in southwest Saskatchewan, only a few miles west of Stegner’s Eastend. The book was published in 1982. An entry that often catches my eye is the one written by an elderly lady, Emma Agar, who had grown up in the cathedral town of Gravelbourg.6 She and her husband farmed on three quarter-sections of land near Farwell Creek from the 1920s to the 1950s (after that, they moved into town and ran the local post office and telephone exchange). Between 1922 and 1939, Mrs. Agar gave birth to eleven children. At the time she wrote her entry in Between and Beyond the Benches, she was a widow but all her children were still alive. Three of them lived in greater Vancouver, where Mrs. Agar too had moved in her retirement. Three had taken up residence on Vancouver Island. Three others lived elsewhere in British Columbia, and one had relocated to Oregon. Only one of Mrs. Agar’s eleven children remained in Saskatchewan, working, like his father, as a farmer. But no longer did he live at Farwell Creek: “the old home place he seeded to grass and uses for summer pasture.”

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There is, I realize, nothing extraordinary about this story. It may well be downright typical. Still, it touches me. Mrs. Agar was able to tell her family’s story without resorting to sentimentality. A reader is left wondering how much hunger and poverty lurk in the background behind sentences like, “I spent many happy years on the farm with my family, but it was tough going at times. We always had a large vegetable garden.” Unlike so many families, the Agars outlived the Depression. Yet it was the Depression that provided a kind of imaginative template for departure—not just in a single district, but across the whole province and region. The Depression made the painful individual task of migration into something collective, something commonplace, something irrefutable (as a boy, the first Canadian film I saw was The Drylanders; it had a major impact on me). The 1930s are receding ever further into history, yet as the years go by, most of the farmland and ranchland of Saskatchewan—and, indeed, the entire western interior of North America—is able to support fewer and fewer residents. The perceived reasons and the supposed culprits may vary from decade to decade, but the trend does not alter. Children in the province are familiar with the process from an early age—perhaps ever since they first sat in the back seat of a car heading down a country road and noticed the empty, windowless houses leaning against the wind. In his poem “Last Straw,” the British Columbia writer and editor Gary Geddes imagined how it was for his father, once a farmer in the Yorkton area: Hailstones pelted the horses, bounced onto the dirt road. It was brief and efficient, the work of months destroyed in minutes, another farmer driving taxi in Vancouver. Never saw the last straw he’d waited for; simply packed, shook the dust from his shoes and moved out, leaving equipment and a hundred jars of saskatoons.7

But departure was not just a rural phenomenon—a rural “tradition,” it could almost be said. We tend to expect our cities to keep on growing, barring war, plague, or other catastrophe, anything apart from growth seems somehow unnatural. Yet between 1931 and 1936, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, and Battleford

Saskatchewan’s Diaspora

all lost population.8 The economy and, indirectly, the weather wreaked havoc on urban as well as rural life. In 1931, after decades of rapid growth, Saskatchewan had the third-highest population of any Canadian province; now, despite the present-day oil boom, it ranks a distant sixth. Think back a century on the amazing faith and confidence of Saskatchewan’s early builders. The poignancy in the appearance of many towns and small cities today arises, I think, largely from the gap between the grandiose aspirations with which they were constructed and the later battle merely to hang on, to endure, to survive. Downtown Moose Jaw still looks as though it were raised up to be the heart of a metropolis that would never, will never, exist.9 In its early years, we might say, Moose Jaw was successfully infused by other people’s diasporas. But then it became a donor. As Canadians we live with an unspoken mythology of arrival. In recent years Grosse-Île, downstream from Quebec City, and Pier 21 in Halifax have been designated as national historic sites. Our federal department of citizenship doubles as a department of immigration. Yet in Saskatchewan, citizenship and immigration no longer have a close connection. In each of the three years from 2000 to 2002, Saskatchewan accepted less than 1 percent of all Canada’s immigrants; at the current rate, it would take about seven decades for the entire province to match the number of immigrants who arrive in Toronto each year.10 Throughout North America, large cities have taken over the role that the Prairies used to hold dear: a land of welcome, a place of opportunity. The Prairies, with their patchwork of ethnic settlement and their religious diversity, were once the heartland of Canadian multiculturalism (before such a term had even been invented): the place where cultural stresses were tested and resolved. Today that role, too, is performed by the major cities. Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, Gaspésie, Saskatchewan: the history of all these places suggests that Canada requires a mythology of departure. Except perhaps for Australia, is there a people in the world for whom the state of highways and the fate of airlines play such a significant role in daily life? Between 1986 and 2001, according to Statistics Canada, more than 100,000 residents of Saskatchewan left the province. Many of them, no doubt, had merely passed through; for some, Saskatchewan was just a station on their way. Yet there was also a good number of people who, as their plane rose high above the Regina tarmac or as a rat-free highway pulled them ever closer to Calgary, felt in their bones that they were heading into exile.

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3

While most of the province’s towns and small cities struggle to maintain their current levels of population, Regina and Saskatoon face a different set of challenges. Thanks to universities and their spin-off research facilities, thanks to the work of government, industry, and the arts, and thanks also to the ever more important presence of urban Aboriginal people, the two major cities in the province have experienced substantial growth (not, however, at the tumour-like rate of Calgary). Oil wealth, indeed, may now be in the process of transforming Saskatoon. The vast majority of newcomers to Saskatchewan settle either there or in Regina. In his book New Moon at Batoche: Reflections on the Urban Prairie,11 the critic and editor George Melnyk suggested that the true though rarely acknowledged pattern of human life in the Prairie provinces is a constellation of five city-states; it is, he rightly pointed out, an old and false stereotype to see Prairie society as essentially rural. If we use Melnyk’s image, we must look on Saskatchewan as boasting two of the five stars in the constellation. They are, by a good distance, the two smallest, yet they go on twinkling. Even so, it remains difficult for people living anywhere in the province to sidestep the issue of departure. The reason is that for smart, ambitious young people growing up in Saskatoon or Regina, no less than for their peers growing up in Lloydminster or Rosetown, potential migration continues to loom large. I think back to my own days as a student, and to the friends I knew then. The ones who wanted to be a lawyer or an architect could have stayed in Saskatchewan, or have come back there with degrees in hand; but for those who aspired to be a marine biologist or a professional actor—and, to be honest, for myself as an aspiring writer and journalist12—it seemed as though the only choice was to leave. To remain in the province would have been, in our own eyes, to accept failure—or, at the very least, to reconcile ourselves to a permanently secondclass status. Our elders and mentors did not discourage us in this. Nobody ever said to me, “Mark, you ought to stay in Saskatoon!” The place just didn’t seem big enough. Beyond question I and a few of my friends exaggerated our own importance, but that may be a forgivable prerogative of youth. How large does a twenty-firstcentury city need to be before its citizens stop anticipating the constant flight of their young? I don’t know. But I suspect the lack of a metropolis, far more than racism or climate shock, is the main reason why in the 1980s and ’90s Saskatchewan retained a lower proportion of its international immigrants than almost

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every other province or region in Canada. In the era when the province was created, large numbers of immigrants entered Saskatchewan with the desire and the know-how to take up farming. Not so today. For people of my generation, origin and social class, mobility came easy. But for those who can’t afford to move, or who have never wanted to move, issues of diaspora do not arise. Despite a century of powerlessness and penury, First Nations people in Saskatchewan have been much less likely to move elsewhere than people of European ancestry. (By “elsewhere” I mean out of the province; the present-day Aboriginal migration into Saskatoon, Regina, and other Prairie cities is of a different order.) The Saskatchewan diaspora exists only because the children or grandchildren or, by now, great-grandchildren of immigrants have been able and willing to move on—thereby replicating the history of migration in their own family. “Saskatoon is a beautiful city,” writes a friend of mine, a Victoria journalist named Earl Fowler, “and I would be delighted to live there again some day, winter be damned. But not yet. There’s too much to learn about and experience elsewhere.” His great-grandfather worked on the Dominion Survey crew that mapped the Canada-us border; operated a dog team for the Hudson’s Bay Company during the Riel Rebellion of 1885; worked as a rock foreman on the cpr crew that put the first line through the Crowsnest Pass; prospected in the Klondike Gold Rush; and dug marble in a quarry outside Vancouver. After all of which, he became “a homesteader on an unforgiving pile of rocks” in the Assiniboia district. Speaking of his own life, Earl Fowler says: “I flatter myself that in me and others in the so-called Saskatchewan Diaspora, who were not traumatized by the Depression the way our parents and grandparents were, the spirit that brought settlers to Saskatchewan in the first place has rebounded from the drubbing it took in the 1930s.”13 Wanderlust, it seems, is in our blood. And since the end of the Depression, I suspect, those who leave Saskatchewan usually do so without any great emotion of bitterness. Immigrants to Canada from the United Kingdom and the United States often speak about their previous homeland with sarcasm or anger; it’s as though they sense a need to justify their emigration. Emigrants from Saskatchewan don’t feel any such need: they are free to look back in tenderness. Even so, departure comes at a cost. Part of the price to be paid is a relinquishment of belonging. “These days I am more concerned than ever about belonging,” wrote Warren Cariou in his 2002 book Lake of the Prairies, “because I know how

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fragile it is. There is a crisis of belonging in the world. We are all restless; we are on the move. It is the age of migration and diaspora, the age of commuting, and many of us feel the strain of the contemporary mania for being everywhere at once.”14 Cariou’s book is a graceful, subtle evocation of growing up in Meadow Lake during the 1970s, and of the discoveries he eventually made about his family and his personal heritage. It is subtitled “a story of belonging,” and it embodies a rootedness that I can only envy. But don’t suppose for a moment that Cariou still lives in Meadow Lake. As an academic and a professional writer, he moved to Toronto and Vancouver, and he now lives in Winnipeg. His book can be read as a tender farewell. Cariou is, by his own account, a man for whom Saskatchewan will always form a key part of his identity. By my own account, I am another. My years in Saskatchewan remain central to my identity, my self-image.15 One result is that I live with a constant underlying sense of displacement. My friends and neighbours in Montreal, even my own family, may see me in a different light. In contrast to, say, diasporic Sikhs or Chinese, those who leave Saskatchewan but who continue to hold the place in their hearts do not form a visible or audible minority. Only once in all my years in Montreal did I ever attend a Saskatchewan dinner party—I unearthed a recipe for jellied salad, in case you were wondering, and brought one along. Diaspora, for us, is an inward condition of the soul, not something to be commemorated in organized clubs (an obvious, but only partial, exception to the rule can be found in the alumni branches that the universities of Regina and Saskatchewan maintain in faraway cities). I take comfort, again, from Wallace Stegner. Living for so long in the United States, he was regarded by most of his students, peers, and readers simply as an American writer. His image and his self-image were constantly at odds. I suspect that the urge to explain this disparity, this spiritual dislocation, was a central motive in the writing of Wolf Willow. 4

If necessity is the mother of invention, it sometimes seems as though Saskatchewan is the mother of eminence. I could devote the remainder of this essay to a mere inventory of the great and the good who were born and raised in the province, and who left as young adults. If any reader feels tempted to create such an inventory, I recommend that he or she start off

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with the field of medicine. Across North America, many distinguished neurologists, radiologists, oncologists, and cardiac surgeons took their first degrees at the University of Saskatchewan, and then moved on.16 It is a question, again, of opportunity and resources. To generalize, the province has long had enough facilities and good minds to nurture young medical talent— but it has not had enough money or population to hold onto it. Yet there’s something almost pathetic in the eagerness with which minority groups often rummage for well-known names they can then brandish as a way of bolstering their collective self-esteem. “Great Estonian Chefs.” “Famous Basketball Players of Portuguese Origin.” I don’t want to fall any further into that trap when it comes to Saskatchewan. You are welcome to read the pages of Canadian Who’s Who for yourself. Earlier in this essay I suggested that Saskatchewan and certain other parts of Canada stand in need of a mythology of departure. Perhaps the work of some of the province’s major authors can be read as an attempt to answer that need. I’m intrigued by the lingering power that Saskatchewan still tends to exert upon those of its citizens who have left. Let’s glance at that power as it is manifest in the written word. A case in point is Sinclair Ross’s classic novel As For Me and My House.17 It tells the story of a sterile, unfulfilling marriage in a dust-plagued, false-fronted little town named Horizon at the worst of the Depression. Mrs. Bentley, who narrates the book, is the wife of a minister who, by temperament and desire, should have been an artist. Eventually she discovers that her cold, frustrated husband has been having an affair with a choir member. To avert scandal, what do the Bentleys do? Emulate their creator, of course: leave. Start afresh, somewhere else. Ross himself quit Saskatchewan at the age of twenty-five; he spent most of the remaining sixty-three years of his life in Winnipeg, Montreal, Greece, Spain, and British Columbia. But wherever he lived, the Prairies always served as the wellspring of his creativity (and he chose to be buried in his old home of Indian Head). His work gave an early demonstration that the gossip, misdeeds, sufferings, and longings of people in rural Saskatchewan could become the basis for good literature. Ross’s example has served to inspire other Saskatchewan writers, notably the poet Lorna Crozier. Her first collection bore the title Inside Is the Sky. As that phrase suggests, the dramatic physical landscape of the Prairies (in her instance, the Swift Current area) is also an emotional or spiritual landscape, one that inescapably affects the consciousness of its inhabitants. The

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experience of physical space in Saskatchewan is so overwhelming, the sky so huge and unscraped, that even in the heart of Saskatoon and Regina, the urgency of landscape can make itself felt in a way that is not so evident for residents of large cities elsewhere. One of Lorna Crozier’s later books, an extended riff on Sinclair Ross, is called A Saving Grace: The Collected Poems of Mrs. Bentley. It was written after Crozier too had left the province. Since 1991 she has taught creative writing at the University of Victoria. Yet she continues to be identified—and to identify herself—with Saskatchewan. One of the finest poets to emerge from Saskatchewan, John Newlove, was born in Regina in 1938 and grew up mainly in rural areas of the province. He left in the early 1960s to spend the remaining four decades of his life in Ontario and British Columbia. The first four lines of his short poem “Kamsack” evoke one of the small towns where he grew up, but the last line turns the poem into something different, both highly personal and universal in its spirit: Plump eastern saskatchewan river town, where even in depression it’s said the wheat went thirty bushels and was full-bodied, the river laying good black dirt each year: but I found it arid, as young men will.18

In a much longer poem, “Ride Off Any Horizon,” Newlove piles image on prairie image—piles of buffalo bones, boys swimming in a narrow river, fields yellow with wheat and mustard, “the frames of lost houses” abandoned in the Depression, the ghosts of the 1885 rebellion—until, exhausted, he runs out of memories and images and is forced to face “the concrete horizon, definite, / tall against the mountains, / stopping vision visibly.” And then there is nothing more to say. A writer of the following generation, David Waltner-Toews, spent several years in Saskatoon as a young man. (A veterinarian and poet of Mennonite origin, he’s originally from Winnipeg and has lived for some years in southern Ontario.) One of the poems in his 1995 collection The Impossible Uprooting is called “Saskatoon Revisited.” It’s not only about leaving the province. But the presence of the following lines, in the middle of the poem, suggests that for Waltner-Toews, even a brief return to the city is inextricably tied up with anxiety about departure: The wind is preaching again. Failed crops! it cries. No rain.

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The dust wags a stern finger across the fields. Let this be a lesson: organize conserve buy insurance. Move to Toronto.19

One of the most celebrated artists in any discipline to emerge from Saskatchewan is the singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell, who grew up in Saskatoon. The landscape of her youth makes intermittent appearances in her songs (on the album Blue, for instance, recorded years after she had moved to California, there are the lines “I wish I had a river / I could skate away on”) but in her paintings, the influence is more explicit. Her oil painting 40 Below 0 shows a trackless road in a winter landscape with the sun about to vanish over the horizon. In an interview, Joni Mitchell once described the inspiration for the work: “We were driving on what might be considered the bleakest stretch of road, on the bleakest time of year. When I got out, crystals formed all over the inside of the windshield. There were the prairies, the stretch of the wind, the movement of the clouds, the skies, all lilac-y and yellow. The windbreak was burgundy, the snow was pink with the sun going down. It was such a rush of color. To be so cold it could kill you in fifteen minutes, and yet to look so warm. I felt like a salmon smelling its native stream.”20 Of course, many writers spend all their lives in Saskatchewan, and certain others who have grown up elsewhere form a deep, even salmon-like attachment to the place. Anne Szumigalski, for example, was nearly thirty years old when she and her husband immigrated from England, and she always retained a strong British accent—but she adored the Prairies and insisted on being considered a Prairie writer. Yet even those writers who stay in Saskatchewan may still be haunted by the imaginative possibility of emigration. In the mid-’70s Ken Mitchell, who ranks among Regina’s best-known novelists, poets, and dramatists, wrote a play about one of the province’s emblematic figures, Tom Sukanen; the play went through a series of revisions, productions, and adaptations before finally being published in 1990. The Shipbuilder21 is based on the true story of a bullheaded Finnish immigrant who homesteaded on the plains near Outlook. In the Depression, as he approached old age, he astonished his neighbours by trying to construct a small ship out of whatever materials he could beg, borrow, or buy. He intended to haul the ship by horse team across the prairie to the

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South Saskatchewan River, set the craft afloat, and then sail through Hudson Bay, across the North Atlantic, and up the Baltic Sea to his long-lost home. Sukanen and his homemade ship never made it as far as his native stream, or any other body of water. They broke down after a few miles. Carted off to the provincial asylum at North Battleford, he died there without glimpsing Finland again. Decades later the remnants of his ship were gathered up, refurbished, and moved to a resting place just south of Moose Jaw, where they now stand amid grasshoppers and dust as the centrepiece of a pioneer museum. To Ken Mitchell and many others, Tom Sukanen’s doomed attempt to leave seems a quintessential Saskatchewan story. 5

A final question needs to be raised. It is, however, much easier to ask than to answer. The question is this: How did the experience of living in Saskatchewan affect the beliefs and attitudes of those who now reside elsewhere? Obviously there can be no simple, one-dimensional response. Father James McConica—an eminent historian at, among other institutions, All Souls College, Oxford, and the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto— and the influential Vancouver businessman James Pattison are near contemporaries, both of them born in the little Saskatchewan town of Luseland. It seems unlikely the province shaped their convictions in a similar manner, although perhaps their boyhoods during the Depression gave each of them a certain grit and steel. Since 1944, of course, the central movement in provincial politics has been the ccf and its successor, the ndp. Together, the two parties have governed for nearly three-quarters of that time, resulting in a moderate-left dominance without parallel elsewhere in North America. Almost everyone growing up in Saskatchewan since the 1940s has been imbued by a first-hand experience of social democracy in power (a different and generally more subdued affair than the authors of the Regina Manifesto imagined in 1933). I would suggest that many of those who have left the province have nevertheless taken with them a belief in the importance of community, a moral and intellectual seriousness, a skepticism about unrestrained capitalism, and a keen awareness of the common good. This may well sound too idealistic, too radical, or both. I would add that if I’m describing a modest dissent from the North American mainstream,

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people from Saskatchewan have often brought a practical, down-to-earth quality to that dissent. I will give three examples of what I mean. John Richards, a young backbencher in Allan Blakeney’s ndp government in the early 1970s, is a longtime faculty member at Simon Fraser University in suburban Vancouver and has written extensively on social policy for the C.D. Howe Institute. “I still identify myself as part of the Saskatchewan diaspora,” he wrote in February 2004, “nearly thirty years after having left the province.” Richards admits that he may be guilty of overestimating the importance of politics—but adds that “undeniably Saskatchewan contributed a great deal over the previous half century to the building of a decent welfare state in Canada. The crucial beginning was that the ccf won only in Saskatchewan. This allowed Tommy Douglas to bring professional civil servants in the 1940s to Regina, who had expected to fry fish in a bigger pond elsewhere. The administrative competence of Douglas’s civil service enabled the realization of an impressive array of social programs, culminating in medicare.” Richards, who once adhered to the militant Waffle tendency within the ndp, has since moved far to the right. But not, perhaps, quite as far as some of his critics think. “I came,” he writes, “in time, to appreciate the importance of [Allan Blakeney’s] insistence on competent public administration. We have remained friends.”22 And in the 1990s he returned regularly to Saskatchewan, analyzing policy issues with key figures in the Romanow administration. In his contribution to a volume edited by Ed Broadbent,23 Richards identified himself among “those who seek to advance the heritage of the left,” and he suggested that across the Western world, their prime task is “to reinvigorate the welfare state in a time of fiscal restraint.” His vision goes far beyond Saskatchewan— but its roots are there. By way of contrast, let’s briefly consider the career of the great operatic tenor Jon Vickers, who was born in Prince Albert in 1926 and who remained in the province through his teenage years and into young adulthood. Vickers’s father was both a teacher and a preacher. Over the years, the hallmark of the singer’s work was often said to be its moral intensity—he intended his performances to be uplifting, not merely entertaining. In the 1970s he drew heavy criticism after pulling out of the title role in a London production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser because he felt the role to be an immoral one. In his early life Vickers was taught to do everything for the glory of God, a precept he retained throughout his career. He stayed in touch with his past in other ways, too.

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Even during his years of glory on the opera stages of Europe and the United States, he maintained a Canadian farm. As he told the newsletter of the Wagner Society of America, “I consider myself a very humble, simple boy from a small town who loves the soil, who loves the farm, and I happen to be a singer.”24 A final, contemporary example of the ongoing influence that Saskatchewan exerts on its émigrés is the work of Jennifer Welsh, who grew up in Lumsden Beach and is now a professor of international relations at Oxford. In her 2004 book At Home in the World: Canada’s Global Vision for the 21st Century,25 she outlines a vision of an independent policy that would be based on a concept of model global citizenship. Rather than acquiesce to American demands, Welsh asks Canada to work not only beside the United States but with other nations, too, helping to reform the un and to build the governing capacity of weak and failed states. She has also defended26 the foreign policy of contemporary Europe against criticisms by right-wing commentators in the us, saying “it is folly to claim that, by embracing its alternative vision, Europeans are condemning themselves to irrelevance.” And how does Welsh, tugged between countries and continents, manage to ground herself? “Whether it’s standing on a flat road in Saskatchewan, looking at the biggest sky you’ll ever see . . . land is very important to me. The feeling of standing in certain places in Canada roots me very firmly. That is not a rational thing.”27 Lots of things are precious in this world. Perhaps Terrence Heath was wrong to suggest that “the only precious thing is a place to leave.” Poets do exaggerate. But can we settle on “the most precious thing is a place to leave”? Notes 1.

Wolf Willow (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, Laurentian Library, 1977), 23. The first edition was published in 1955. The book is a key text for many people who once lived on the prairies.

2. Terrence Heath, “On the Train North,” in Anne Szumigalski and Terrence Heath, eds., Journey / Journée (Red Deer: Red Deer College Press, 1988), 14. 3.

“Poll Puts Sask. Election at Dead Heat,” The Globe and Mail, 27 Oct. 2003, p. A6 (national edition).

4. The statistics in this paragraph are taken from David C. Jones, Empire of Dust: Settling and Abandoning the Prairie Dry Belt (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1987), 257.

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5. In New and Naked Land (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1988), Ronald Rees included a striking CPR photograph taken in 1918. It shows a family of five preparing to leave Scotland. The father, wearing a fedora, is holding a baby. There is a mother, a little boy, and a small girl holding up a sign with the words: “WE’RE SAILING WEST, WE’RE SAILING WEST, / TO PRAIRIE LANDS SUNKISSED AND BLEST— / THE CROFTERS’ TRAIL TO HAPPINESS.” I have often wondered what became of that family. 6. The book was published by the Ravenscrag History Book Committee. The Agar family entry appears on pp. 258–60. 7.

Snakeroot: Prairie Poems (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1973). This poem, “last straw,” is the final one in the book, whose pages are unnumbered.

8.

Don Kerr and Stan Hanson, Saskatoon: The First Half-Century (Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1982), 316. Figures on the following page show that between 1929 and 1934, the value of building permits issued in Saskatoon fell from an annual total of $5,902,123 to $79,725.

9. On streets that are wide enough for Roman chariots, the heritage plaques tell a melancholy story. Justice used to be dispensed from a splendid stone courthouse on a site now taken up by a Safeway store’s parking lot. 10. See the very helpful information provided on-line by Statistics Canada. 11. George Melnyk, New Moon at Batoche: Reflections on the Urban Prairie (Banff: Banff Centre Press, 2000). See especially the chapter “The Five City-States of the West: A Prairie Fantasy.” 12. The quality of the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and the Regina Leader-Post remains depressingly low. In June 2003 the Star-Phoenix ran an article by its “creative features editor” (a job description, not a value judgement) that began in abject fashion: “Saskatoon is very aptly named Science City. It is a Science City.” 13. Personal communication. For many years Fowler was one of the most respected copy editors at the Montreal Gazette. 14. Warren Cariou, Lake of the Prairies (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2002), 11. 15. In the summer of 2003 I revisited the fading petroglyphs near St. Victor, in a remote part of southern Saskatchewan. It’s a silent, profoundly evocative place. The park contains no modern toilets, just a couple of outhouses. And in the men’s outhouse, to my astonishment, I read the following piece of graffiti: “We use the illusion of time to frighten off the illusion of death—Wittgenstein.” What an incredible province this is!

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16. My friend Dr. Stuart Houston kindly provided me with a long list. To mention but a few: Peter Dyck, a nerve expert at the Mayo Clinic; Richard Ehman, director of radiology research at the Mayo Clinic; Phil Gordon, professor of surgery and oncology at McGill University; Karen Gelmon, a noted oncologist at the University of British Columbia; Robert Haslam, physician-in-chief at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto; David Mulder, chief surgeon at the Montreal General Hospital; Calvin Stiller, an immunologist and transplant researcher at the University Hospital of Western Ontario; and John Griffith, dean of medicine at Georgetown University. 17. There are various editions. The first was published in New York in 1941 by Reynal and Hitchcock. 18. Apology for Absence: Selected Poems 1962–1992 (Erin, ON: The Porcupine’s Quill, 1993), 54. “Ride Off Any Horizon” appears on pp. 61–63. 19. David Waltner-Toews, The Impossible Uprooting (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995), 117. 20. James Brooke, “For Joni Mitchell, Artist, Singing Was Not Enough,” New York Times, 22 August 2000. I found the article at (the initials stand for “Joni Mitchell Discussion List”). 21. Ken Mitchell, The Shipbuilder (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1990). 22. Personal communication, February 2004. 23. Democratic Equality: What Went Wrong? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). Broadbent and Richards disagree in that volume about Tony Blair’s “Third Way.” 24. This paragraph relies mainly on the information in two Web sites, and . 25. Jennifer Welsh, At Home in the World: Canada’s Global Vision for the 21st Century (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2004). 26. See the major article co-written with Anand Menon and Kalypso Nicolaidis, “In Defence of Europe: A Response to Kagan,” Journal of European Affairs (August 2004), also available at . 27. See the interview with Welsh by Stephen Hay, published in Hartbeat (the newsletter of Hart House, University of Toronto), Spring 2004.

N o t e s o n C o n t r i bu t o r s

Mark Abley is a poet, journalist, travel writer, and editor. He was born in England and grew up mostly in Saskatchewan. His many books include Beyond Forget: Rediscovering the Prairies (1986), Blue Sand, Blue Moon (poetry, 1988), Glasburyon (poetry, 1994), Ghost Cat (children’s fiction, 2001), and Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages (2003), which was short-listed for both the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal and the Pearson Writers’ Trust NonFiction Prize. Abley is a Rhodes Scholar, he won the National Newspaper Award in 1996, and he was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow in 2005. He now lives in Montreal. Cheryl Avery has been an archivist since 1983, working in Ottawa on the Diefenbaker Project at the National Archives of Canada and as supervisor of that project when it moved west to the Diefenbaker Canada Centre. She joined the staff of the University of Saskatchewan Archives in 1991 and was named University Archivist in 1994. She has held numerous elected executive and committee positions on provincial and national archival associations, including the Canadian Council of Archives, the Association of Canadian Archivists, and the Saskatchewan Council of Archives and Archivists, and has been a member of the National Archival Appraisal Board since 1995. She has authored over eighty articles and reports.

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Keith Bell was educated at the universities of Hull and Cambridge and has taught art history at the University of Saskatchewan since 1974. As a specialist on the English painter Stanley Spencer, he has curated and participated in a number of exhibitions of the artist’s work, including the 1980 Royal Academy of Art, London, Stanley Spencer exhibition for which he chose the paintings and drawings and wrote the catalogue entries. He has published the definitive book on the artist, Stanley Spencer: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (1992), and an abridged paper cover edition (1999). In addition he is a specialist in promotional photographs of the Canadian West and representations of the western landscape. He has published and curated exhibitions on these subjects since 1975. Neil Besner was educated at McGill University, University of Saskatchewan, and University of British Columbia. He is proud to have received his Master’s degree from John Diefenbaker at the newly constituted University of Regina in 1974. He has worked at colleges and universities in all four western provinces, and since 1987, he has taught Canadian literature at the University of Winnipeg, where he has been dean of humanities since 2002. He has written, edited, or translated books on Mavis Gallant (1988), Alice Munro (1991), Carol Shields (1995, 2003), and Elizabeth Bishop (2002), and co-edited collections of short stories (1991) and poetry (1997) with Oxford University Press. Currently, he is the general editor of a new series of volumes of contemporary Canadian poetry with Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Beth Bilson has degrees in law and history from the University of Saskatchewan, and a doctoral degree in law from the University of London. She has been a member of the faculty of the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan since 1979, teaching and writing in the areas of torts, labour and administrative law, and legal history; she was dean of the college from 1999 until 2002. She was admitted to the Bar in Saskatchewan in 1984. She served as senior grievance officer of the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Association from 1982 to 1985, and as assistant vice-president (administration) for the university from 1986 to 1988, with special responsibility for faculty collective bargaining. From 1992 to 1997 she chaired the Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board. In addition to acting as a labour arbitrator in Saskatchewan, she is a part-time member of the Public Service Staff Relations Board, and of the Yukon Public Service Staff Relations Board. She serves as a deputy chair of the discipline committee of the College of Physicians and

Notes on Contributors

Surgeons of Saskatchewan. She was appointed in 2000 as chair of a federal task force on pay equity. She was awarded the designation of Queen’s Counsel for Saskatchewan in January of 2000. Dr. Robert Bone worked in the Department of Geography of the University of Saskatchewan. As a northern specialist, he undertook numerous field studies in northern Canada, including the socio-economic impact study of the Norman Wells Oil Project. From 1972 to 1982, Dr. Bone was the director of the Institute for Northern Studies. He has written two textbooks (The Geography of the Canadian North: Challenges and Issues and The Regional Geography of Canada) as well as over seventy papers and reports. Even though he retired in 2000, Dr. Bone continues to undertake research projects, to publish papers and reports, and to play an active role in the department by teaching summer school classes and by serving on advisory committees for graduate students. Eli Bornstein was professor and head of the Department of Art at the University of Saskatchewan and is presently professor emeritus. He is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Structurist. Since 1958 he has published numerous articles in periodicals and catalogues including Chicago Midwest Review, Arbos, Art International, and Canadian Art Today. His artistic work has been exhibited throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe. He received an honourary degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1990. Lynn Caldwell was born in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, and is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan and of St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon. She has worked in various contexts as an educator for social change, including as a program coordinator with Alberta Youth Animation Project on Southern Africa, and as a program staff for Saskatchewan Conference of the United Church of Canada. Currently, she is engaged in doctoral work in sociology and equity studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto. Her doctoral research explores nostalgia, race, and antiracist methodology through the contexts of Saskatchewan centennial commemorations. Cristine de Clercy holds degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and a PhD from the University of Western Ontario. An assistant professor in political studies at the University of Saskatchewan since 1998, she is also a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives. Her scholarly interests concern Canadian government, public policy, comparative politics, leadership, and methodology. Recent studies focus on topics such

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as modern parliamentary leadership, problems in opinion poll design and information dissemination, and the effects of globalization on social cohesion. Currently she is a co-investigator on “Co-operative Membership and Globalization: Creating Social Cohesion Through Market Relations,” a multi-year study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and an associate professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Brett Fairbairn is professor and head of the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan. Since 1986 he has been a fellow of the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, where he teaches, does research, and is involved in outreach on the history of cooperatives, community development, social movements, and democratic participation. Currently Brett is principal investigator for the largest research project so far undertaken on cooperatives in Canada, “Co-operative Membership and Globalization: Creating Social Cohesion Through Market Relations.” Brett has more than eighty publications. His most recent two books, both in 2004, were Co-operative Membership and Globalization: New Directions in Research and Practice (co-edited with Nora Russell) and Living the Dream: Membership and Marketing in the Co-operative Retailing System. Harley D. Dickinson is professor and head, Department of Sociology, University of Saskatchewan. His research focuses on the relationships between knowledge creation, translation, and application in the context of health-care planning and service delivery. His books include The Two Psychiatries (1989), Health and Health Care in Canada (with B. Singh Bolaria, 1988), Health, Illness and Health Care in Canada, second and third editions (with B. Singh Bolaria, W.B. Saunders, 1994, 2002), The Politics of Work in the West (co-edited with B. Russell, 1988). He has also published in numerous articles in journals such as Social Science and Medicine, Studies in Political Economy, and The International Journal of Contemporary Sociology. Michael Hayden, professor emeritus of history, University of Saskatchewan, taught history at the University of Detroit (1961 to 1966) and the University of Saskatchewan (1966 to 2001). He is the author of thirty scholarly articles and eight books, including a history of the University of Saskatchewan.

Notes on Contributors

Steven Lewis is a health policy consultant based in Saskatoon and Adjunct Professor of Health Policy at the University of Calgary. A political science graduate of the University of Saskatchewan, he has worked in health research and policy for thirty years. He has served on numerous boards, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Health Council of Canada, and the Health Quality Council of Saskatchewan. Peter S. Li is a professor of sociology at the University of Saskatchewan. His research areas are race and ethnicity, Chinese overseas, immigration, and multiculturalism. He has published eleven books and over sixty academic papers. Among his books are The Chinese in Canada (1998), The Making of PostWar Canada (1996), and Destination Canada: Immigration Debates and Issues (2003). He has served as a consultant and an advisor to several Canadian federal departments regarding policies of immigration, multiculturalism, race relations, and social statistics. In 2001, he was given the “Living in Harmony” Recognition Award by the City of Saskatoon, Race Relations Committee, in recognition of a distinguished record of research, publication, and policyrelated work on race and ethnic relations, immigration studies, and racism in Canada. In 2002, he received the Outstanding Contribution Award from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association. He has served as the president (2004–05) of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, as well as vice-president (2004) of the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas. Christopher J.C. Lind was professor and president of St. Andrew’s College from 1985 to 1998, director of the Toronto School of Theology, and is now Senior Resident and Senior Fellow at Massey College, Toronto. His books include “Something’s Wrong Somewhere!” Globalization, Community and the Moral Economy of the Farm Crisis (1995); edited with J. Mihevc, Coalitions for Justice: Canadian Churches and Social Change (1994); and edited with T. Brown, Justice as Mission: An Agenda for the Church (1985). He has given many lectures and papers throughout Canada, Europe, and the United States. He has published articles in the University of Toronto Quarterly, Africa Focus, Philosophy and Theology, Compass, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory and elsewhere.

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John G. McConnell, in memoriam. John was born in 1934, raised in Toronto, and received his Master’s degree in geography from the University of Toronto. He joined the geography department at the University of Saskatchewan that same year. John quickly adapted to the dry continental climate and to a provincial economy whose well-being and that of the university depended upon the price of wheat. He saw with a geographer’s eyes not a harsh environment far from the places of power but a richly diverse and challenging prairie landscape that encouraged cooperative efforts. Not surprisingly, he became actively involved in community and provincial organizations whose goal was social justice. His love of the land, of hunting, and of fishing made him supremely knowledgeable about the province. He successfully guided hundreds of students as well as faculty to a deeper understanding of this Prairie province. He received the Master Teacher award in 1999 and died peacefully at his home on 5 September 1999. Gwenna Moss enjoyed a diverse career at the University of Saskatchewan before retiring as professor emeritus in 2004. Beginning and ending her career in the university’s Extension Division, she also held administrative appointments as dean of home economics, associate vice-president (academic), and acting vice-president (academic). The Gwenna Moss Teaching and Learning Centre recognizes her work as coordinator of the university’s instructional development program. Her research and scholarly work includes evaluation, needs assessment, women academics, distance education, extension practice, and women in developing countries. Gwenna is a native of Saskatoon who now resides in Winnipeg. She has degrees from the University of Saskatchewan (BScHEc) and the University of Wisconsin (ms, PhD) M. Rose Olfert joined the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Saskatchewan in 1988, following some time as a private sector consultant and short-term employment in the Department of Economics. Her publications on the rural economy include rural restructuring, off-farm employment, rural-urban interdependencies, and the evolution of the system of rural communities. She has co-authored, with Jack Stabler, four monographs on rural communities, the most recent being Saskatchewan’s Communities in the 21st Century: From Places to Regions. She teaches rural development and economic principles and continues to conduct research in the rural economy and the determinants of employment and population change.

Notes on Contributors

James M. Pitsula is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Regina. He is author of An Act of Faith: The Early Years of Regina College, Helping Families Through Life: A History of Family Service Regina and (with Ken Rasmussen) Privatizing a Province: The New Right in Saskatchewan. He has also written numerous book chapters and scholarly articles on First Nations history, higher education, the history of sport, the relief of poverty, and the political and economic development of Saskatchewan. His current research interests include post-secondary education and the history of social assistance in urban Saskatchewan from 1905 to 1939. Jene M. Porter is professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan. He has written several articles in this area and edited several books, including Martin Luther: Selected Political Writings (1974), Sophia and Praxis: The Boundaries of Politics (1984), Unity, Plurality and Politics: Essays in Honour of F.M. Barnard, with Richard Vernon (1989), and an introductory text in political philosophy, Classics in Political Philosophy (1989). He wrote with John Hallowell a history of political philosophy, Political Philosophy: The Search for Humanity and Order (1995), and, with Peter Phillips, co-editor of Public Science and Literary Democracy (2007). He was ceo of the Canadian Institute for Society and Humanity from its inception. David E. Smith is professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan. He earned his ba at the University of Western Ontario, ma and PhD at Duke University and a DLitt at the University of Saskatchewan. Since coming to the province in 1964, he has written extensively on Saskatchewan politics and political history. Of particular interest to this book’s readers is his edited work Building a Province: A History of Saskatchewan in Documents (1992). His current research subject is the Canadian Parliament. The most recent of his many books, The Canadian Senate in Bicameral Perspective, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2003. Jack C. Stabler was professor and head, Department of Agricultural Economics, at the University of Saskatchewan and is now professor emeritus. After joining the agricultural economics faculty in 1989, he published four books and twenty-six articles in refereed journals, made seventeen invited conference presentations, and wrote twenty-eight technical reports. He has been a consultant to twenty-five federal, provincial, and us governmental departments and agencies as well as to major provincial, national,

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and international corporations. His work has involved rural, urban, and regional economic developmental studies, and he has written extensively on the transitions in Canadian and American rural communities. Renée Torgerson, PhD, is a researcher at Canadian Policy Research Networks. She is a former post-doctoral fellow at the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit at the University of Saskatchewan and worked as a consultant with Saskatchewan Health. She has co-authored numerous papers and articles on various health-related topics. She currently resides in Regina with her two young sons. The Honourable Judge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond is a provincial court judge in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She was appointed to the Saskatchewan bench in March 1998. Judge Lafond was a practising lawyer in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan and a tenured professor of law at Dalhousie University Faculty of Law. She taught law at the University of Toronto, the University of Notre Dame, and other universities. Her law practice involved appearing at all level of courts, largely on behalf of First Nations and Aboriginal clients from all regions of Canada. She has published in the areas of constitutional, criminal, and international law. In November 2006 she took a five-year leave of absence from the Provincial Court to serve as British Columbia’s first Representative for Children and Youth. A specialist in western and northern Canadian history, Bill Waiser joined the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan in 1984 and served as department head from 1995 to 1998. Bill is the author, co-author, or coeditor of nine books, including Loyal till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion (with Blair Stonechild), which was a finalist for the 1997 Governor General’s literary award for non-fiction. He was named the university’s Distinguished Researcher at the spring 2004 convocation. His most recent book is a history of Saskatchewan for the 2005 provincial centennial.

Notes on Contributors

Bob Woods graduated from the University of London (Imperial College) with degrees in chemistry and organic chemistry. After post-doctoral work at the Prairie Regional Laboratory of the National Research Council in Saskatoon and at Victoria University College in Wellington, New Zealand, he joined Professor J.W.T. Spinks at the University of Saskatchewan to help develop applications of radioactive tracers in the health and agricultural sciences and to investigate the effect of high-energy radiation on chemical systems. Following a year with the Physics Department, Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, uk, he joined the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan in 1963 and remained with the department until he retired as professor emeritus in 1995.

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