Freezer Burn in Saskatchewan

While dining al fresco with relatives on a pleasantly balmy, early evening in suburban Vancouver, British Columbia, we discovered that nobody had any change for the waiter’s tip. We had five, 10, and 20 dollar bills, but no “loonies”, nor any “toonies”, the charmingly nicknamed one and two dollar coins we have up here. Our little currency quandary meant the waiter would either get a woefully low tip or a rather generous one. To solve this dilemma, we decided to quiz the poor, unsuspecting kid with basic, general knowledge questions in a category of his choosing, be it sports, entertainment, or what have you, and if he answered the predetermined question correctly, he’d get some extra cash. He chose “geography” as the category, and the question we had prepared was, “How many lakes are there in Saskatchewan?” Wearing an expression that failed to hide his complete bewilderment, the waiter shrugged and said meekly, “Seven?” When we told him the answer is 100,000 he couldn’t believe it. I think we took pity on the poor guy, and gave him the extra fiver, anyway.

Saskatchewan really does have more than 100,000 fresh water lakes (well, give or take a few thousand), and it is home to some of the finest fresh water fishing in the world. Nearly half of the massive Western Canadian province is covered in forest, where the vast majority of those thousands of lakes are located. Those are two irrefutable facts about Canadian geography, yet it’s something that millions of Canadians either don’t know, or refuse to believe. Nah, they’d rather stick to the time-honored cliché of Saskatchewan being nothing more than a vast, soul-crushingly flat place; a wilderness of extreme temperatures (which can hit 100 degrees in the summer and -40 in the winter); a climate with air dry enough to make shag carpet become an extreme shock hazard during winter; a savage place, plagued by mosquitoes, especially in the more humid forested areas, and crop-devouring grasshoppers, the bane of every farmer’s existence. Well, okay, the fact that Saskatchewan is on the arid side, and hot during summer and brutally cold in the winter is undeniable, and we do have our share of flat terrain (Rejected provincial tourism slogan: “See all of Saskatchewan: stand on a chair!”), but thanks to the horrible luck of having Canada’s most important freeway, the Trans-Canada highway, from Winnipeg to Calgary, slice straight and I do mean straight through the province’s dreary southern half, then that portion of Saskatchewan that the highway cuts through — and all the peril it embodies — is all that most travelers ever see of this region.

Saskatchewan has always lived under the huge, overwhelming shadow of the more heavily populated Eastern Canada, not to mention that it’s flanked by two more populous provinces. Sadly, Saskatchewan is often thought of as “the forgotten province”; it’s not unlike a small child clamoring for attention while the adults continue to talk amongst themselves, oblivious to the kid. However, its recent history is one of the most fascinating in the country. Saskatchewan was the place where, in 1874, the newly appointed Royal Canadian Mounted Police set up camp to restore law and order to the whiskey-ridden area near the Canada/US border. It was also the site where Canada almost came to civil war, as Metis (half native, half French) residents, led by the prairie hero Louis Riel, courageously fought Canadian troops over their land (which the government wanted to redistribute, an affront to the Metis heritage), only to be decimated by the military, leading to Riel’s death by hanging after being found guilty of treason. It’s the home of Medicare, where in 1959, legendary premier Tommy Douglas, leader of the first socialist government in North America, created Medicare, providing every single resident with universal, pre-paid, publicly administered health care. And if that weren’t enough, Douglas’ daughter married actor Donald Sutherland, so yes, that makes him Kiefer’s granddad! Last but hardly least, a scrappy young man named Gordon Howe emerged from the vast farmland surrounding the city of Saskatoon to become one of the highest scoring hockey players who ever played the game.

Residents of this huge yet humble province have always lovingly poked fun at their home and its Pilsner beer drinkin’, John Deere hat wearin’ image (Saskatchewan is the last place in Canada where John Deere hats are not worn for ironic purposes). But these days, you get the feeling that the sense of pride that exuded from its residents in the first half of the 20th century is rapidly disappearing among its younger population. Compared to its rich history, the immediate future of Saskatchewan isn’t looking quite as promising.

Saskatchewan and its brash, ultra-conservative neighbor to the west, Alberta, were both incorporated as Canadian provinces in 1905 when the Northwest Territories were divided, but as they both move closer to their centennial years, they seem to be heading in opposite directions from one another. Alberta has been prospering for years now, driven by the province’s booming oil industry as its newfound wealth has led to many job opportunities, paving they way for a massive population explosion, perpetuated primarily by the throngs of young Saskatchewan people, lured by the promise of employment, and making the trek west. The fact that Alberta recently declared itself debt free is yet another kick-in-the-pants to its eastern neighbor.

The differences between the two prairie neighbors were never all that great in the past, but today, it’s astonishing. All you have to do is take a drive east on any two-lane, secondary Alberta highway, towards the provincial border: you’re cruising along on a smooth, well-maintained road, but once you cross the border into Saskatchewan, you find yourself navigating a rough old highway, pieces of pavement broken off by frost, the parts of the road that have been repaired given a cheap, band-aid treatment of oil and gravel. Saskatchewan’s highways were once its pride and joy, its square-mile grid road system a marvel of planning a century ago. The region still boasts the most highways per capita in all of North America, but now, its current image is perfectly epitomized in its pavement: aging and dilapidated.

During the last four years, America’s Bush Administration has not been kind to Canada. Saskatchewan in particular, which is one of the United States’ most important trading partners, has been among the hardest hit. First, in 2001, the US government backed America’s forest industry’s bid to impose crippling duties on Canadian lumber, devastating Canada’s vital forestry industry, and costing producers billions as production at small town Saskatchewan sawmills ground to a halt. Mills closed for months at a time, some permanently. Even worse hit was the beef industry; when it was revealed that a slaughtered cow from an Alberta ranch tested positive for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (more commonly known as “mad cow disease”). The US banned all imports of Canadian beef, and the province was humiliated. Some 5,000 Canadian jobs were lost, and at the height of the crisis, the nation’s beef industry was losing $11 million per day, and in Saskatchewan, the farm in question was quarantined. Many farmers ended up with a surplus of unsold cattle, forcing them to slaughter up to 12 percent of their herds in order to stay afloat, as little financial aid was given from the federal government. Despite two NAFTA panel rulings that said America’s softwood duty increase is unjust, Bush has yet to back down, and although the beef restriction was lifted slightly to allow various cuts of meat from young cattle, the import of live cattle and meat from older animals from Canada is still banned to this day.

The differences between Saskatchewan’s urban and rural communities these days are now greater than ever: a point driven home during the 2000 provincial election, where there was an unprecedented urban-rural split in voting. City residents swayed toward the reigning, social reform-minded New Democratic Party (NDP), while rural people, believing that the NDP ignored the plight of farmers and the overall decline of small town life, so they opted for the hard-line, conservative Saskatchewan Party, which promised to be more frugal, and pay more attention to the needs of rural residents. (The NDP won, but with a minority government). The populations of small towns are steadily decreasing, and job opportunities are on the decline as the lure of city life proves enticing for young people. Consequently, the average age of small town Saskatchewan is quickly rising (four years ago, the average age of lumber mill workers in Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan, was in the late 40s). As a result, schools in several smaller communities are closing, and even worse for the aging baby boomers, hospitals are closing at a rapid rate, leaving thousands in need of medical care stranded, forcing them to drive long distances to larger centers, usually on highways badly in need of repair.

The one demographic that is growing, or rather, recovering in rural Saskatchewan is the province’s indigenous population, which is currently at 11 per cent and is expected to grow to 30 per cent over the next couple of decades. With more native residents per capita than anywhere else in North America, there is also, sadly, a growing sense of unease in urban centers, namely Prince Albert (population 35,000) and Saskatoon (population 250,000). Their sense of disenfranchisement runs deep, and reasons for it are innumerable, dating all the way back to conflicts with European settlers that arrived in the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries. “Residential schools” took children away from their families to instill Christian beliefs in them, only to have many children suffer abuse from teachers and members of the clergy. Today, the natives suffer more from socioeconomic problems like poverty, alcoholism, gang activity, homelessness, and lack of post-secondary education. Their feeling of exclusion is reflected in their lack of faith in the political system. Native people were only allowed to vote in elections in 1960, and these days, native voter turnout is always much lower than the rest of the population (16 per cent lower in the 2000 federal election). Politicians always beg the natives to go out and vote, but the natives always respond by saying their concerns are never addressed by government officials. It’s a stalemate that grows more frustrating as each year goes by.

Prince Albert, a city so desperate for improved racial harmony that it resorted to painting a gaudy mural on the face of the beautiful postmodern design of the city hall, has an inner city that is rapidly becoming a ghetto. Non-natives are staying away from the older areas of the city, and the majority of the city’s crime is concentrated within a small area. Also, in a frightening example of many residents’ disturbing, underlying racist paranoia, the local French immersion elementary school is now one of that city’s biggest schools, as more non-native parents are registering their children at this school just to keep them away from the poorer native kids in the public schools.

In the bustling Central Saskatchewan city of Saskatoon, similar trouble seems to be brewing. The local police force has been embroiled in scandal for the past several years, as officers were found guilty of taking intoxicated natives out to the city’s outskirts in winter and leaving them to freeze. Saskatoon’s inner city is threatening to become as bad as Prince Albert’s, as child prostitution, drug abuse, and rising native gang activity continues to be a major problem. If that weren’t enough, Jim Pankiw, an outspoken, extreme, right wing, independent member of Parliament for a Saskatoon constituency has been staunchly anti-native. He’s constantly calling for the abolishment of Canada’s Indian Act (which would essentially wipe out all treaties), angrily declaring, “Stop Indian Crime” in the plethora of hostile propaganda he mails to his constituents every week. The fact that he served two terms as a member of Parliament before finally being ousted in the 28 June federal election is a very frightening indication of just how deeply resentment toward natives runs amongst Saskatoon’s so-called “silent majority”.

Mistakes have been made by native leaders as well. For instance in 2002, when David Ahenakew, then senator for the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (which represents 74 different tribal councils in the province) expressed his support for the Nazi holocaust, the quote made international headlines, creating a public relations disaster. Yet race relations between the natives and the majority have been improving recently, exemplified by the opening of First Nations University in the capital city of Regina, and a new native-run hospital in the town of Fort Qu’Appelle. Native history and spirituality is now taught in public schools. And the ever-lucrative, native-run casinos are booming. But the healing process is slow, and it will take a concerted effort on both sides decades to overcome all the wounds.

Still, despite all the negatives: the extreme cold; the plagues of grasshoppers every August; the constantly complaining farmers (the beef ban, grain prices, not enough rain, too much rain); the perennially disappointing Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League (which the entire province obsesses about from June to November); and in spite of the truly bizarre obsession with watching curling (the 2004 national men’s’ championship attracted sellout crowds of 11,000 people, three times a day, for a week), there’s generally a sense of friendliness among the great majority of people, here.

The importance of such exports of wheat, canola, paper, and lumber is undeniable; however, Saskatchewan’s greatest export is that kind of small town friendliness that’s ingrained in practically everyone here, be they rural or urban. When a high school or university graduate bolts for more booming locales like Calgary, Vancouver, or Toronto, they take that unmistakable, quintessentially Saskatchewanian quality with them.

What is that Saskatchewanian quality? Well, back when our family lived in the tiny mill town of Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan, my mother drove our only car to a local garage for some maintenance, planning to take the 20 minute walk back home in the pleasantly warm summer weather. Five minutes later, she was driving home in a gigantic Chevy pick-up truck, a sight made even more inexplicable by the fact that this lady had never driven a truck in her life. It turned out that the receptionist at the garage had insisted that my mother not walk home, and said, “Here, take my truck,” refusing to take no for an answer, handing over the keys to my flabbergasted mom.

That’s right, the people here are by and large approachable and hospitable, and there’s a sense of community wherever you go. That may sound corny, but darnit, that’s what we are. And it might be a painfully slow process, but we’re gradually improving our rather embarrassing highways.

The unmistakable charm of Saskatchewan and its residents and its effect on outsiders is exemplified perfectly by the affection for the area felt by none other than the late Johnny Cash. Saskatchewan was one of the first places in Canada to embrace his music when he was starting out in the ’50s. Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, fell in love with the area and were regular visitors, making many regular fishing trips to the northern lakes. In 1983, when Cash learned that the small town of La Ronge needed to raise money for a new recreation center, the man kindly offered his services free of charge, and performed a benefit concert that the locals still talk about to this day. And if that weren’t enough, leave it to the Man in Black to pen the most appropriate description of this huge, yet humble place that you will find anywhere:

“Then I found the trail that had packed beneath the snow
I made the final miles where the prairie lilies grow
The steeple on a church glistened by the prairie moon
I’m freezing but I’m burning for the girl in Saskatoon.”