A bare-backed canoeist rows in a puddle one month, while a long lens dangles in front of a naked pharmacist on another page of the 2007 Highway 32 Pothole calendar.
In all, 12 months of images direct attention to the declining state of the main highway between Leader and Swift Current, Sask., said Ray Hawkins.
The past-president of the Leader Lions Club said a group of local businesspeople hatched the idea for the calendar at coffee row.
“Our highway is in deplorable shape and we were not getting any government action,” he said, noting ambulances were driving an extra 40 minutes to avoid the road.
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Calendar sales will soon top 3,000, with the proceeds used to help pay for the community hall’s new roof.
The group’s main goal in creating the calendar and related bumper stickers was to stir public awareness of the highway’s disrepair and bring it to the attention of government. It prompted
Cypress Hills MLA Wayne Elhard to introduce the calendar in the Saskatchewan legislature in November.
Saskatchewan Highways also took notice, hiring a contractor to transform the most troubled sections back into a hard packed grid road.
While that provides temporary relief, Hawkins fears the road will become a soupy mess in spring from trucks servicing the local oil and gas industry.
The thin membrane road surface was never built for that use, he said.
He wants money leaving the area in oil and gas to return to the community for infrastructure upgrades.
The group plans to keep the issue before government, perhaps by naming potholes after cabinet ministers, said Hawkins.
