It was the 2003 election campaign when it really dawned on me that the great voter-divide in Saskatchewan isn’t necessarily geographically or even the much-talked-about urban-rural split. It’s often based on your occupation. I was in Coronach following the leaders and wound up talking to a SaskPower plant worker during lunch _ a rare rural [...]

While agriculture still manages to maintain its own identify in the world of politics, increasingly farming is simply a different form of business. At one time every farm was family operated, and while most remain influenced by a single family unit, the size and scale of farms have made many producers incorporate. They rely on [...]

You don’t know what you have until its gone. Anyone trying to travel through Prince Albert hauling freight or driving a bus learned that this summer with major weight restrictions placed upon the Diefenbaker Bridge this summer. The weights increased this week from 15,000 kg to 47,000 kg. A further increase to the primary weight [...]

This year’s Super Bowl was worth an estimated $150 million to the City of Indianapolis. That from a report prepared by Harris Bank, the US arm of Bank of Montreal which said last year’s impact in Dallas was even bigger. That is the straight up financial impact – from tourists descending on the city, hundreds [...]

You likely noticed the fuss kicked up by Saskatoon Humboldt MP Brad Trost over the “ironclad” discipline demanded by the federal governments like Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative regime. From one perspective, one has to admire Trost’s pluck. He clearly speaks the truth when it comes to this particular administration having little tolerance for caucus [...]

Have you ever wondered who has the authority to declare named days, weeks or months? Is there a clearing house of some sort that considers and approves—or rejects—the naming of calendar dates for certain causes? However the process works, lobby groups certainly have been successful in getting specific dates appropriated for their particular charity or [...]

In our busy lives, adults tend to fall into a pattern of just doing things. We wake up in the morning, follow our morning ritual — whatever that may be — and then we sleepwalk off to work, do the job and come home. Wash, rinse, repeat. Because of the pace of our lives we [...]

If there is one thing I have written about before which I see as critical to the future of farming, at least as we know it, it is a public investment in varietal crop development. It is great to see major corporations involved in crop research, but the result of that work often comes with [...]

If there is a newfound entrepreneurial spirit in our “new Saskatchewan”, it arrived in rural Saskatchewan long before it arrived elsewhere. In fact, much of the political fight the past four-, five- or even six decades has been over this issue. For years now, the NDP have talked about the province being founded by the [...]