For the next year, this column will mark The Western Producer’s 100th anniversary by taking a deep dive every week into a past issue of the paper.
The April 20, 1989, issue reminded me of a drive I took last fall with my father through the countryside surrounding Estevan, Sask., including along the reservoir, west of the city, that was created by the Rafferty Dam.
Construction of the dam and its 57-kilometre-long and 1.2-km-wide reservoir was controversial when it was planned by the provincial Progressive Conservative government in the 1980s.
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One of those controversies erupted on the front page of this issue when a federal court order quashed the licence for the project.
An angry deputy premier Eric Bernston promised to abide by the court order but railed against the Canadian Wildlife Federation, which had launched the legal challenge.
“Who do they think they are?” he thundered.
The court order was eventually lifted and the dam was completed in 1991.
However, that’s not the end of the story.
While in opposition, NDP MLA Duane Lingenfelter had ridiculed the project, predicted the reservoir would never fill and promised to walk across it once it was completed.
Years later, with Lingenfelter now the deputy premier, PC MLA Dan D’Autremont, in a member’s statement, recognized in the legislature that it was Family Fishing Week, but then couldn’t resist sticking in the knife.
“But for those who don’t like to fish, perhaps they could swim, and this would provide an opportunity for the deputy premier to fulfil his promise to walk across the Rafferty reservoir,” D’Autremont was recorded in Hansard as saying.
A good news story, complete with photo, shared Macoun, Sask., farmer Jack Pick’s optimism about the upcoming growing season, considering the good snow cover from the previous winter.
He told the Producer he and his neighbours were optimistic following the drought of 1988, when his dugout went dry for the first time since his father had built it in 1946.
Runoff from the winter snow had filled the dugout to half to two-thirds.
Let’s hope for a repeat this spring.
