Germans from Russia in Saskatchewan: An Oral History

The Germans from Russia are a prominent settlement group in the rural landscape of Saskatchewan. Perhaps because they came incrementally, by chain migration, rather than by organized group colonization, they compose an ethnic group little noticed by historians. Also, their immediate origins are divided, inasmuch as earlier German-Russian immigrants came directly from Russia, whereas many twentieth-century German-Russian immigrants came to Canada from the United States, mainly from North Dakota and South Dakota. This article offers the first focused, scholarly historical treatment of German-Russian immigration and life in Saskatchewan. Drawing on oral histories collected with the support of the Faculty Research Program of the Canadian Embassy, it focuses particularly on growing up German-Russian on the prairies, positing a German-Russian ethnic identity distinct both from neighbor immigrant groups in Saskatchewan and from origin communities in the United States.     

A REGIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR PLANNING ECOTOURISM IN SASKATCHEWAN

An analysis of opportunities and constraints reveals potential for a limited ecotourism sector in Saskatchewan dominated by an intraprovincial market. A framework is proposed which augments the existing inventory of individual ecotourism sites by taking into consideration the variable spatial context within which these sites occur. Encompassing the entire province are five zones, progressing according to the degree of environmental modification through the Urban, Agricultural Heartland, Agricultural Frontier, Resource Frontier, and Wilderness. Each zone is characterized by distinctive configurations of ecotourism space, as well as economic status, participants, constraints, and opportunities.
Une analyse des avantages et des contraintes démontre le potentiel d'un secteur ecotouristique limité en Saskatchewan oú le marche interprovincial joue le rôle principal. Le cadre proposé augmenterait l'inventaire existant de sites individuels écotouristiques en tenant compte du contexte spatial variable dans lequel se trouvent ces sites. La province est divisee en cinq zones selon le niveau de transformation environnementale: une zone urbaine, une zone centrale agricole, une zone de developpement agricole recente, une zone nouvelle de dé veloppement des ressources et une zone sauvage. Chaque zone se caractérise par des configurations différentes d'espaces ecotouristiques aussi bien que par un statut economique, des participants, des contraintes et des possibilites differents.     

Are Canadians Stealth Democrats? An American Idea Comes North

In an influential 2002 study, John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse make the provocative argument that high numbers of Americans seek “stealth democracy,” that is, processes that discover the will of the people without requiring substantial citizen effort. This article applies the concept in a Canadian province and argues that the stealth democracy measure represents an ambiguous amalgam of attitudes that are only loosely related to one another, and which do not appear to represent a single, underlying concept. We draw on 2011 Saskatchewan Election Study data and find that Saskatchewan responses to the stealth democracy items generally parallel the responses gathered in previous studies conducted in the United States, Finland, Britain, and Australia. We move beyond these studies by examining the components of the stealth democracy index. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of stealth democracy be rebuilt to better distinguish among attitudes toward democracy, politics, and governing.     

The politics of water security in southern Saskatchewan

This paper examines long-term water and resource management in Saskatchewan. Agriculture has long sustained Saskatchewan's economy, but the province experienced a resource boom in oil and potash in the 2008–2015 time period. What potential water-related risks are posed by oil and potash? And is the province able to balance the short-term economic gains of these developments with the long-term goal of water security? The research is based on interviews with policy elites in the province of Saskatchewan and argues that four factors explain why the government continues to favour industry over water security: low-issue salience, economic and political interest, ideology, and political culture.