History of Saskatchewan

Because Saskatchewan became a full member of the Canadian federation only in 1905, much of the area’s historical interest depends on events vastly older than the province. Dinosaur and mammoth finds have been common. The first known human inhabitants were present at least 12,000 years ago; they were mainly hunters. On the eve of European colonization, First Nations people from a variety of cultural and linguistic origins occupied the forest and prairie regions. With the coming of the Europeans, First Nations became involved in the fur and provisioning trade. The first European known to see the Saskatchewan River was Henry Kelsey, who in 1691 explored part of the plains for the Hudson’s Bay Company, which received its charter in 1670. Fur trappers, traders, and buffalo (bison) hunters, many of whom were First Nations or Métis, along with European traders, explorers, and missionaries, made up the bulk of the area’s inhabitants until the second half of the 19th century.

The area from which Saskatchewan is carved was first granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company and then, in 1869, surrendered by the Rupert’s Land Act back to the British crown, in order that it could be turned over to the newly formed Dominion of Canada, which was done in 1870. Canada administered its newly acquired western territories almost as if they were colonies and in 1873 created the North West Mounted Police (later called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) to maintain law and order. In 1885 the national authorities sent out troops to quell the second Riel Rebellion, an uprising in which a large number of Métis, by then deprived of their main sustenance, the buffalo, sought to establish their rights to western lands in the face of growing settlement. Constitutionally, the territories in 1875 were granted an executive council with a promise of an elected assembly, and by 1897 they had won responsible parliamentary government on the British model.

Saskatchewan, created by the Saskatchewan Act in 1905, entered confederation with its present boundaries and the status of a province equal to the others except that, as with its sister province Alberta, the federal government retained control of its natural resources, paying a subsidy in place of the revenues the resources might have yielded. (The resources were assigned to the province in 1930.) The new provincial government, after a good deal of rivalry among the towns, chose Regina, the former territorial capital, as its centre of operations, and the first premier appointed was Walter Scott, a believer in partisan politics, as opposed to those who favoured a continuation of the kind of cooperative effort that had led to the creation of Saskatchewan as a separate province. A member of the party in federal power at the time, the Liberal Scott was the first of several able politicians who kept the party in power in Saskatchewan except in 1929–34 and 1944–64 and after 1971. The 1944–64 period was unique in North American history. During that era the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), successively led by T.C. Douglas and Woodrow Lloyd, established the first avowedly socialist government on the continent, and the party won international attention in 1962 when it implemented the continent’s first compulsory medical care program.

Regardless of which political party has been in power at any given time, the Saskatchewan environment has always demanded much governmental intervention in the economy. The provincial telephone company and the power and gas utility, for example, were publicly owned (although neither was created by a socialist government) into the 1980s, when privatization began under a Progressive Conservative government. The cooperative movement has been encouraged by all parties and has been influential in a wide range of service, retail, and wholesale activities that include large credit unions and an oil refinery. In the handling of grains, once the backbone of the province’s economy, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool was also a cooperative until it became a publicly traded corporation (known as Viterra) in the 1990s. It was subsequently acquired by Glencore International PLC, a large multinational corporation. The co-ops helped many individuals survive the drought and economic depression of the 1930s, during which Saskatchewan society is considered to have sustained setbacks as severe as any suffered in Canada. After World War II the province attained a major development in mineral exploitation and industrial growth, and its diversified base was combined with new farming techniques to increase economic potential. Unfortunately, periods of prolonged low commodity prices inhibited economic growth, and the province continued to suffer out-migration.

In the first decade of the 21st century, commodity prices improved, spurred by economic growth in emerging countries such as China, India, and Brazil. These developments attracted migrants to the province, providing expanded markets for domestic growth. The revival of population growth and the economic stabilization that resulted increased Saskatchewanians’ confidence in the future, leaving a province that had historically regarded itself as “next year country” tentatively wondering if “next year” had actually arrived.