Pioneering the Future: Storytelling About Saskatchewan since the Great Depression
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Dedication of the Museum of Natural History in 1957
Currently, despite the worsening condition of the world economy, the recent strength of the provincial economy has helped Saskatchewan maintain a relatively buoyant mood. It was not very long ago, however, that Saskatchewan people were very negative about their province’s prospects. In fact, between 2002 and 2007, the government of Saskatchewan felt it was necessary to launch three seperate multi-million dollar advertising campaigns to convince Saskatchewan people that they are not living in a second-class part of the world. The campaigns, “The Future is Wide Open,” the Saskatchewan Centennial and the most recent “Saskatchewan!” all addressed a deeply-felt sense of inferiority that existed within the population. It will take more than a few years of decent crop prices and high oil prices for Saskatchewan to overcome this sense of inferiority.
How so many Saskatchewan people came to accept the notion that their province is second-rate is the subject of an upcoming book entitled Pioneering the Future: Storytelling About Saskatchewan since the Great Depression. The book is currently being researched and written by historian Mike Fedyk and is based on his 2005 Masters Thesis, “Pioneer Narratives as an Aspect of Collective Memory during the 1955 Saskatchewan Golden Jubilee.” “While researching my thesis,” explained Fedyk, “I was struck by how differently people felt about the province in 1955 compared to current attitudes.” Fedyk’s thesis demonstrated that even though the province had only recently emerged from the grip of the Great Depression, during the 1950s Saskatchewan people faced the future with confidence. “It is astounding that today when dealing with problems far less intractable than the Depression, so many people are writing the province off,” commented Fedyk, “just look at Dale Eisler’s False Expectations, he is essentially arguing Saskatchewan was a bad idea from day one – where does that kind of negativity come from?”
To answer that question, Fedyk will journey through provincial collective memory to see what robbed Saskatchewan of its self-esteem. “The key to collective memory,” stated Fedyk, “is the stories that are told about the province and how these stories change as the generations change. Political leaders, historians, bureaucrats, artists and writers tell these stories but the most important stories come grassroots people who wrote local histories, built local museums and celebrated the past during provincial anniversaries. What you see is that as the generations changed, Saskatchewan people stopped telling their own stories and started accepting the stories that others told about them.” The book is about story tellers as much as it is about their stories and figures like John Diefenbaker, Tommy Douglas and James Gardiner figure prominently as do less well-known individuals such as George Simpson, Everett Baker, John Archer, Joe Phelps, Fred McGuinness, Bill Riddell. The most important storytellers, however, were the hundreds of men and women that wrote local histories, established local museums and historical societies and who left important legacies that are too often discounted and ignored by today’s storytellers.
Pioneering the Future: Storytelling About Saskatchewan since the Great Depression is scheduled for release in the Winter of 2009-10. Funding support is being provided by the Rural History and Culture Association and the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society.