| Saskatoon’s founders dreamed of creating a temperance
colony in the great North-West. John A. Macdonald’s government, in a
hurry to develop the country, was offering large locks of land to
colonization companies. Many in Toronto’s Methodist community saw this
as a golden opportunity to escape the evils of the liquor traffic. They
formed the Temperance Colonization Society (TCS) in 1881 and signed up
3,100 would-be colonists for more than two million acres. By June 1882
John Lake, a Methodist minister turned entrepreneur, was looking for a
colony site on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River.
The government grant to the TCS was actually 313,000 acres. It ran
from Clark’s Crossing (now Clarkboro) on the South Saskatchewan, about
20 km downstream from today’s Saskatoon, to the Moose Woods Reserve,
about 45 km upstream. On the advice of Moose Woods Chief White Cap, Lake
chose a place in the middle of the TCS grant, called
Minnetonka, where a ferry could cross the river. In 1883 the first
streets of Saskatoon were surveyed on the east bank of the river, just
above Minnetonka. In spite of this hopeful start, Saskatoon grew slowly.
The river was too shallow and too full of shifting sandbars for easy
navigation. As well, fear of native hostility caused by reports of the
North-West Rebellion in 1885 discouraged settlement.
In 1890 the Qu’Appelle, Long Lake and Saskatchewan Railway Company
bridged the river at Saskatoon and built a line to Prince Albert. A new
settlement soon developed on the west side of the river around the
railway station. In 1901 when this tiny settlement incorporated as a
village, it kept the name of Saskatoon. The name of the original
settlement on the east side changed to Nutana. A third settlement,
Riversdale, developed west of the railway tracks. In 1906 with the
promise of a traffic bridge and other civic improvements, the three
settlements amalgamated to form a city. The trickle of immigrants was
becoming a flood and Saskatoon became the fastest growing city in
Canada.
Saskatoon became the central city of central Saskatchewan because a
small group of pioneer businessmen tirelessly lobbied to make sure the
railways came to their town. By 1908 three railway bridges and a traffic
bridge crossed the South Saskatchewan and Saskatoon was the hub of a
transportation network. Today five of the city’s seven bridges are
motor vehicle bridges and only two carry rail traffic. But Saskatoon
remains the place where many trails cross. |
