KINDERSLEY, Sask. – Growing smaller seems to be the fate of many prairie agricultural communities, a trend that has been ongoing for three decades.
The West clearly won the Canadian population growth battle in percentage terms, with Alberta on top with a 10.6 percent increase, followed by British Columbia with a 5.3 percent boost, Manitoba 2.6 percent and Saskatchewan lagging with a decline of 1.1 percent.
However, Census figures released last week show the story of small towns is a tale of rural decline in agricultural areas.
“Until the (national) census came out last week we figured we’d be Saskatchewan’s next city. That didn’t happen,” said Kindersley, Sask., councillor Bob McTaggart of his town’s hope to reach 5,000 citizens in time for the 2006 census.
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“Things are busy here. You can’t buy a house. Property values are rising constantly. There are more young people than ever. But we went down,” he said of the town’s 136 person decline between 2001 and 2006.
While oil field work is significantly aiding Kindersley’s economy, agriculture is still the underlying base for the area.
Ray Bollman of Statistics Canada said the decline in the population of prairie hub towns, where schools, hospitals and professional services are being consolidated, was a surprise.
“Kindersley, for example, added a Wal-Mart and a Tim Horton’s since the last census. New subdivisions, new businesses, and still it dropped,” he said of the town that went into the five year period with 4,548 citizens and came out in 2006 with 4,412.
“You would expect with the drops in many of the smaller communities, and the shift of regional services and businesses to the larger farm communities, that there might have been some growth. But Yorkton, North Battleford, they dropped too,” Bollman said.
“We saw declines in Alberta in areas where oil wasn’t as big a factor, and where towns were too far away from the larger cities for most commuters.”
Alberta towns such as Hanna, Taber and Pincher Creek saw minor declines of between one and five percent.
Manitoba mirrored the other two provinces.
Bollman said towns such as Virden and Swan River and even the small city of Portage la Prairie had fewer residents in 2006 than in 2001.
“There are always going to be some places that defy the trends for one reason or another. But overall we see a trend at work here,” he said.
Murray Fulton, an agricultural economist at the University of Saskatchewan, said Calgary and Edmonton are not the only beneficiaries of migration to large cities. People are also moving to Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg and Red Deer.
He said even with centralization of services in agricultural hub communities and population inflows, the overall number of citizens in those communities would likely continue to fall.
“In Saskatchewan there is probably one large city that is going to be sustainable. While we won’t see Regina disappear, Saskatoon is the one that will grow sustainably.
“In Manitoba, it’s Winnipeg, in Alberta, Edmonton, Calgary and that corridor in between,” he said.
