| Anecdotal evidence suggests that while Albertans are somewhat blasé about their province’s centenary, Saskatchewanians are fired up and ready to party hardy.
In the province next door, summer is bursting with celebration events leading up to its September 4 birthday. This coming Canada Day and the Labour Day weekend will represent dual pinnacles in the fun – unprecedented numbers of Sask expats are expected to flood the province. Saskatchewan’s centennial website boasts 2,646 registered events in its 100-day celebration. From Meadow Lake to Oxbow to Willow Bunch, the list of cities and towns holding centennial events, from homecomings to family reunions, is huge. Many are scheduled for the Canada Day long weekend.
Chris Shauf, director of communications for Saskatchewan Centennial 2005, explains that the Saskatchewan government has taken a different approach to celebrations than Alberta’s, where the government chose to honour the province’s September 1 birthday by building upon its legacy and sinking cash into, amongst other things, 13 capital projects. Alberta’s twin Jubilee auditoria, for example, received extensive renovations to better serve community and arts groups for the next 50 years. As well, a generous education savings plan has been created and the province will be handing out precious metal commemorative medallions to centenarians and school children.
But Alberta’s banner celebrations are largely over, including the May 23 Centennial Kickoff Party at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium and a three-day visit by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh. Alberta Scene, a 600-artist, 95-event Alberta promo fest, was held in Ottawa from April 28 to May 10. It was a great experience for the province’s artists and performers, but didn’t spark party enthusiasm back home.
Community celebrations are planned in Alberta, but they’re not as pervasive as in Saskatchewan, where the overall buzz is more insistent. Perhaps that’s because the Saskatchewan government focused on community rather than capital projects.
"We’re proud that there are events in every corner of Saskatchewan," Shauf says. "Every community is getting behind this." The province did much research to augment this buzz. People wanted a grassroots focus – to remember and revel in local community and family history. "Home is where the heart is," says Shauf. "We wanted to emphasize people."
Saskatchewan has provided partial means for communities to orchestrate celebrations. Its homecoming program has approximately 180 registered communities. Funding allowed smaller settlements to mail 200,000 event invites. Their return rate hints at the volume of centennial visitors expected – Shauf cites a community of 500 that sent out 2,500 invites and received replies to 50 per cent. Additionally, thousands of informal calls and invitations are being made across the province. The implication is that the province will be flooded with expats this summer.
Annette Beattie, secretary of the Dinsmore Centennial Committee, says preparations for the town’s centennial events have taken a full year. An hour and a half southwest of Saskatoon, the community of 350 received a modest centennial grant and paraphernalia including mailers. Thus far, 609 people have registered for homecoming weekend events. The majority are former residents now living in B.C., the other prairie provinces, Ontario and even Australia.
"The government has done a good job of promoting the centennial," she says. In sharp contrast to Alberta, Saskatchewan’s centennial has been heavily trumpeted in its media for the last six months.
"People are excited," says Beattie. "Small towns are good at picking up on a reason to celebrate." The whole town, she explains, is involved in planning and staging its homecoming. July 1 to 3 celebrations include pancake breakfasts, dances, a parade, a musical revue, a beef and bison banquet and numerous school reunions.
Beyond localized party boosting, Saskatchewan is sponsoring summer events that include a two-and-a-half-month, 50-community theatre tour by Meacham’s Dancing Sky Theatre Group. Also, a free concert tour of 14 cities and smaller communities will feature Saskatchewan performers, including Widemouth Mason and the Wheatmonkeys. Labour Day weekend will see 13 communities across Saskatchewan host regional activities including barbecues, ball tournaments and a carefully co-ordinated, simultaneous province-wide evening fireworks show.
"It’s known across the country that nobody throws a party like Saskatchewan," concludes Shauf. "Saskatchewan people really put their hearts into it. Despite our province being quite quiet, in the centennial year people are inclined to show what we’re made of. We’re proud people."
Spirit of the Holy Land
Perhaps so many people who have left Saskatchewan pine for home that it turns any excuse for a reunion into a community event, but there’s no doubt that romance and obsession fuels the Saskatchewan pilgrimage.
This spring, as a friend’s date, I was lucky enough to attend a high school graduation in Hanley, Saskatchewan, a tiny community an hour south of Saskatoon. I had as much fun at Hanley’s sportsplex, where the ceremony was held, and at the graduate’s family and food-filled home as I’d had anywhere on a recent trip to Mexico and Central America. While the above may sound preposterous, it highlights my and my fellow Saskatchewan escapees’ love/obsession for the place.
My friend’s Saskatchewan-born cousin explained that she returns from Alberta for "Saskatchewan moments." Her example was being patiently and continually hit on by a one-armed service station attendant (offered to buy her a case of beer) while clearly having her preschool kids in tow. For me that night, the moments were three: (1) A graduate slideshow pictured my friend’s cousin in cape, cowl and baby-T, the word "Fatman" embroidered on a bat above his mighty and hairy stomach. (2) After a school board member criticized the NDP government’s amalgamation of rural school districts, a female graduate listed her pet peeves as simply "conservatives." (3) A graduate wearing an elaborate zoot suit with brimmed hat and lengthy pocket chain aspired to "become a plumber and to live a good life."
Like many Saskatchewanians, I left the province after high school graduation. Not aspiring to be a tradesman, farmer, Indian chief, doctor or retiree, I headed to Alberta, the first stop for most Saskatchewanians in a long-running economic migration. Alberta is famously full of us – up to a quarter million in Calgary alone.
Being from the middle of nowhere, my peeps also make efforts to get beyond Alberta. Weeks ago in a hostel in San Jose, Costa Rica, a German woman wanted to know where in Canada I was from. I explained that I live in Calgary but grew up in Saskatchewan. "Ah," she said smirking. Surprisingly, she’d met numerous Saskatchewanians. "People from Saskatchewan are very proud to be from there." The tanned blond woman next to her happened to be from Regina. She’d studied tourism in Prince Albert (my hometown) and had a burning desire to return to her beloved province to work in the tourism industry.
The Saskatchewan ethos is profoundly bittersweet. Saskatchewan makes none of the promises that Alberta does. Alberta stands metaphorically in its long wind-flapping riding coat gesturing with a grandly outstretched hand. "One day," it pronounces, "you may experience the economic trickle down generated by the petrochemical wealth below all of this!" Saskatchewan, meanwhile, is busy rummaging for used nails in the machine shed as its folk depart, but manages to call out, "Do whatcha gotta do!" Traditionally, save for during a few good crop years here and there throughout the century, Saskatchewan’s enticements haven’t been monetary. Predominant has been quality of life owing to the grand scenery in which people make their livings and pursue an abundance of recreational activities. Plus there’s its vast cottage country, the ever-lovin’ family farm, tight communities and family bonds. All good, but there’ve been no jobs to keep people home.
This may be changing. Thanks in part to a surging oil industry, Saskatchewan has been newly classified as a "have" province. With a perennially sick agricultural sector as its most visible economic indicator, residents giggle when they hear this. But the numbers speak for themselves. Potash is booming, uranium exploration will generate $67 million in the province this year, diamond exploration is ongoing and the manufacturing sector is heating up. As well, the University of Saskatchewan‘s high-tech Syncotron has become a rallying point for science and industry.
With the province’s fortunes taking off, Alberta may face a modest reversal in cross-border migration. Amber Christensen, a master of library science student at the University of British Columbia, grew up in several Saskatchewan cities and calls her parents’ cottage at Anglin Lake "home." She hopes to work in Saskatoon eventually. Having attended university in Calgary, she’s noted the contrast between how Albertans and Saskatchewanians feel about their respective homelands. "I think Saskatchewan people leave home a lot so they’re more nostalgic about it. We romanticize the place we come from."
Compared to her home province, Christensen says "Alberta is easy." Poverty, racism and long-term economic stagnation are amongst Saskatchewan’s negatives, but expats love the place despite its flaws. Christensen offers an analogy. "Who can appreciate grasshoppers when they’re all over your car?" she asks, then shows off her coffee mug adorned with grasshoppers, drawn by her boyfriend in tribute to her love of Saskatchewan. "I’m always excited about going back."
Interview with Bill Waiser, author of Saskatchewan: A New History
Produced as the University of Saskatchewan’s gift to the province on its centennial, U of S professor of history Bill Waiser spent two years writing Saskatchewan: A New History (Fifth House). In its opening chapter, Waiser captures the hope and excitement brimming in the new province at its entry into Confederation. The mood of the day, says Waiser, was of complete confidence. There was no doubt that this land which had yet to create its identity and forge a destiny would become a prairie powerhouse. It had much going for it including vast agricultural land, a new democracy, a university and close Liberal ties with Ottawa. The province next door didn’t figure in. "Alberta could do what it wanted," says Waiser. This was before the discovery of oil in Alberta and the long decline of Saskatchewan’s agricultural fortune turned the tables.
This ambitious spirit flared again, Waiser explains, after the Second World War during years of policy innovation under the Canadian Commonwealth Federation (CCF) government of Tommy Douglas. When that government went down to defeat in 1964 many of its brightest civil servants (The Saskatchewan Mafia) were stolen away by other provinces.
"Today we have challenges," says Waiser, of the province’s current psychic state, "but I think that because of its tradition, Saskatchewan will find those answers. We can’t wait on outside help. We might not be as confident as we were a century ago, but we are still confident we’ll find the answers." |
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