Yorkton, where Harry planted the money tree

The history of newspapers in Yorkton now spans 132 years, starting with The Messenger, published in 1892, two years before Yorkton officially became a village. It was written by hand on notepaper, and reproduced by stencil. 

But we wonder, in 2024, if the writing is on the wall for newspapers printed on paper, as we explore the long history of this first, and for for several decades as Yorkton was established and grew, the only means of local mass communication.

For me, this story is up close and personal, having been one of the founders and the editor of Yorkton This Week, an upstart weekly newspaper that  in 1975 took on the behemoth of media companies at the time, Thomson Newspapers, a Canadian company with massive holdings at home, as well as in the United States and Britain. Thomson owned The Enterprise, which by then had been the dominant newspaper in Yorkton for 80 years.

From early travelling shows that entertained settlers in the Yorkton area, to occasional local little theatre productions, Open Lit nights at the old Yorkton Collegiate Institute starting in the post WWII years, elaborate musicals performed by students at Sacred Heart and Yorkton Regional High Schools starting in the 1960s, the founding of Paper Bag Players in 1984, Broadway musicals by Yorkton Community Theatre in the first decade of the 2000s, and the establishment of Free My Muse drama school for children and teens in 2005, Yorkton has long had live theatre, and still does. 

Attendance may, at times, go up and down, but the passion and dedication of the actors and crews has never waned, and has led some to careers in theatre and film.

Clay Serby was first elected as the New Democrat member of the Saskatchewan Legislature for Yorkton in 1991.  While he and Premier Roy Romanow had their differences initially, they became close friends, and Clay subsequently served in cabinet in high-profile portfolios – Health, Education, Highways, Municipal Affairs and Agriculture.

 It was under Romanow’s successor, Lorne Calvert, that Clay reached the highest level of any Yorkton MLA, deputy premier. He also continued in the Agriculture portfolio, and dealt with economic development and rural development specifically.

It’s now just over 16 years since Clay left provincial politics, and government, in November of 2007 in order to devote his time to dealing with health issues – cancer – for which he had been under treatment for the previous three years. We talked about life in politics, and in government, which he viewed from a side few of us get to see. 

The Balmoral Hotel on Livingstone Street was a Yorkton landmark for almost 90 years. It was owned in the early 1900s by Harry Bronfman, whose family later owned the vast Seagram empire founded on the production and sale of liquor. Their booze business started primarily at the Balmoral during prohibition from 1915 to 1924, leading to stories about tunnels, Studebaker Whisky Six cars, a blending and bottling operation housed next to the Balmoral, and much more, as we talked about in the previous podcast. 

In 1950, the Balmoral was sold to Emanuel and Marj Balacko and friends from Winnipeg, with the Balackos taking sole ownership a few years later. They owned and operated the hotel until their retirement in 1980, and lived in a suite in the north wing. Their son Ron, a toddler when they took over, grew up in the hotel. We talked to him about his parents, the hotel, and, of course, those tunnels.

From 1928 to the early 2000s, the Seagram corporation was one of the giants in Canadian industry. Its primary business was making and selling alcoholic beverages – it owned such distinguished product lines as Crown Royal, Chivas Regal Scotch, Captain Morgan rum and many more, including the distribution rights to Absolut vodka.

But that wasn’t the whole story, or the full extent of Seagram’s business assets, which spanned the globe and included investments in oil, fruit juice, entertainment and more. 

Not bad for a company that had its roots in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, specifically in the Balmoral Hotel on Livingstone Street, where the Cornerstone Credit Union parking lot is now located. 

Not bad for a young man whose father bought the hotel in 1905 for Harry and his older brother Abe, who did not stay here.

A community fridge opened in Yorkton in mid September 2023. It's a place where someone who has no food to eat, and at the time doesn’t have the means to buy it, can go anytime day or night, every day of the year, and find food for themselves and their family. 

It's also a place where those who would like to help people who have little or no food can drop off donations of food, also anytime.

It's a mutual aid project operated by a working group of volunteers who want to help solve problems -- in this case food insecurity in the community -- through collective action rather than waiting for someone else to come to the rescue. 

Most Yorkton streets are named for people who were part of our story going back to the founding of York Colony in 1882. Mayors, council members (called aldermen until about the 1980s, then councillors), prominent business owners and others who were deemed worthy of the honour have all lent their names to local roads. But that doesn't account for all streets and avenues, and some have an interesting (and sometimes surprising) history, as we explore in this podcast.

We answer questions about podcasting for those who may be interested in contributing ideas, starting their own podcast, or who may just be curious about how this all works. After hosting a workshop for Yorkton Culture Days 2023, the idea of putting all that information out there for all to hear seemed like a good idea. And we conclude this podcast with another good idea -- a co-operative podcast umbrella or hub for Yorkton where we broaden our look at our community today, and places, people and events from the past.

To the people of Yorkton back in the late 1940s and 50s, a young man who was born and grew up here, Stan Obodiac, was a bit of a puzzle. He was a really good athlete, and a sometime-writer for the Yorkton Enterprise weekly newspaper. He played hockey, baseball, golf, softball, bowling and soccer. He wrote at least 10 books, several of them while living here as a young man, several of his later ones best sellers. But the local coffee row didn't quite know what to make of him -- did he have a real job? There is much about him worth telling. There are many sides to the man, and to his life.