Yorkton Stories

In Yorkton, where there are no homeless encampments, it would be tempting to think that it's one problem we don’t have to deal with. But that would be a mistake.  Most of us may not see it every day, or at all, but homelessness happens in Yorkton just as it does in larger cities. The people who work with the homeless and deal with it on a daily basis are well aware of the issue, and have some...

Ben and Tony's Barber Shop was an iconic institution in Yorkton from when the two shared a business starting in 1961 to Ben's retirement in 2008. Tony continued on his own until 2013. When he closed his shop, it provided the impetus, and inspiration, for Sean Craib-Petkau to get into barbering, and establish a men's barbershop that is reminiscent of earlier years. Two barbershops. S...

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...

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 Co...

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 reac...

It is January in Yorkton, where a golf season of five months is considered a good year. We're still at least three months from teeing it up, but talk about the game seldom takes a break for golfers; it's a form of self-preservation to make it to the next season.  We talked with four golfers at various stages of their game: one who played pro golf on the PGA and other tours in the 1990s,...

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...

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 busine...

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 anyti...

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 inter...

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 u...

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 one...

Anna Gertrude Ingham of Yorkton was the subject of a cable television documentary called The Quiet Rebel in 1993, which told the story of why and how she developed a revolutionary program for teaching grade 1 kids to read. Why a rebel? Her methods did not always meet with the approval of education authorities, but she persisted because it worked, the kids liked it because it was fun, and the paren...

Our years of reading about food from many cultures, collecting recipes from family, from our own time in the food business, and being graciously given recipes by other restauranteurs, allows us to explore some of them in this podcast, and tell you some of the stories behind our favourite foods. Questions or comments? Please get in touch . We'd love to hear from  you. Text us your comment

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In 1898, J.J. Smith built a flour mill at the new site of Yorkton, which had moved south a few miles from the original York Colony settlement to be alongside the new rail line. The mill, built of brick where most mills of the era were wooden structures, went from a bustling village hub to a dilapidated eyesore by 2000, suitable only for the wrecker's ball, many thought.  Today, 125 years late...

Curt Keilback started in radio in Yorkton, following on the heels of his father Jim who moved to Regina to continue an illustrious career that started in Manitoba and continued in Yorkton. After leaving Yorkton, Curt was the broadcast voice on both radio and television for the first edition of the Winnipeg Jets, and the Coyotes of Phoenix, Arizona, calling the play-by-play for 2,400 NHL games. Now...

The Broadway Restaurant in Yorkton, also called the Broadway Café, was a longtime local institution serving Chinese and Canadian food. It was operated in the early days by Joe Mak, an immigrant from China who had come to Canada with his younger brother to work as cooks for the crews expanding the railroad westward. The younger brother had left his wife and three sons in China when he came to Canad...

Bill and Joyce Anaka spent part of the summer of 1996 creating an inventory of two dozen cemeteries in the RM of Good Lake, part of a project sponsored that year by the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society. It was familiar territory for both of them, having grown up near the south end of the lake. Joyce's grandfather first came there in the 1880s because of the good grazing land, and the Gunn fa...

Fifty years ago, Elwyn Vermette with help from a lot of friends built a geodesic dome house just south of Yorkton along Highway 9. About 20 years ago his daughter Tonia, with Elwyn's guidance and assistance, built a monolithic dome house close by. This is the story of those two projects which resulted in two one-of-a-kind houses that stand alongside a seed potato farm which Elwyn also started...