To the Editor:

There won’t be many people left around who can actually remember 1907, but it was a year of celebration in the two-year old province of Saskatchewan. The settlers were holding picnics, staging a big regatta, developing parks, and doing everything people do to celebrate an anniversary. 1907 was the 25th anniversary of the found of the Territorial Districts.

Pioneers who settled in the southern part of the province in the 1880’s and 1890’s had come to District of Assiniboia. Assiniboia was their address and Assiniboia was home. Their administrative headquarters was in the Territorial building in Regina. Their children were born and raised as citizens of Assiniboia.

My aunt was 20 the year Saskatchewan became a province and she was born south of Wolseley. There were hundreds of children in the same situation. My aunt always felt as if she’d lost her country at the age of 20. Since the generation born to the pioneers prior to 1905 didn’t die until the period roughly between 1950 and 1980, it isn’t long since we lost the last of the citizens of the lost land.

Yet there seems to be a collective amnesia in the province when it comes to the Territorial Districts. Assiniboia’s 50th anniversary, in 1932, was barely mentioned.

When Saskatchewan held a bang-up and expensive 50th anniversary celebration in 1955, I was working at the Arts Board, where much of the planning was going on. When I asked what was to be done to commemorate the days when the pioneers arrived, I was told it was all too long ago. In other words, “Forget it.” Forget my roots? The original home of almost everyone i knew? Not me. I moved to Ontario and stayed there for two years, skipping all the hoopla. It isn’t that I dislike Saskatchewan; what i dislike is this collective loss of recall about the days when courageous people were laying our foundations.

The towns along No.1 highway were established in Assiniboia (though there was n o highway at the time.) Most of the early fieldstone buildings were erected in those days. From a point north of Yorkton to just beyond the present Alberta border, and all of the territory from there to the American boundry . . . that was Assiniboia. It was an identity, a unifying reality, and it began 125 years ago this year.

Many a town will be celebrating their 125th anniversary in 2007. Isn’t it time to spare little thought for the pioneers?

Can’t we, just once, celebrate Assiniboia? It’s holding its 125th anniversary too.

Kay Parley,
Saskatoon, SK