Mistaseni

The temperature broke north of zero for the first time in 42 days. The asphalt was bare and dry and a warm breeze wafted in from the north.  It was time for a road trip.  So we headed northwest from Moose Jaw, toward Eyebrow, Elbow and the Gardiner Dam.

Bison sculpture, Hwy 42 near Tugaske. Possibly created by Dave Freeman (Citizens of Craft)

The South Saskatchewan river parallels Highway 11 from Saskatoon to Outlook, where it pours into Lake Diefenbaker, a 225 km lake created in the 1960s to provide water for irrigation and power to a wide swath of central Saskatchewan. The Gardiner Dam was the kind of mega-project that can only happen when the political stars align.  In this case, Saskatchewan’s John Diefenbaker (Conservative) was Prime Minister; Jim Gardiner (Liberal) was a former Premier of Saskatchewan and an MP who had served as federal Agriculture Minister for 20 years; and Tommy Douglas (CCF) was Saskatchewan’s Premier who vividly recollected the ten-year drought of the 1930s Dust Bowl. 

Gardiner Dam official opening, July 1967 (archival photo)

The 1.6 km dam took nine years and $120 million to build.  In the 50 years since completion, this smart piece of infrastructure has provided clean energy, drinking water and recreation to more than half the province and is key to protecting farms and towns from flooding should the South Saskatchewan overflow its banks.

SaskPower turbines on the Gardiner Dam

But, just as Turkish carpet-weavers left one flawed stitch in every carpet they wove (for only God can make a perfect thing), the Gardiner Dam project has a sore point: Mistaseni*.

Mistaseni was a big rock lying all by itself in a field near Elbow, Saskatchewan. It’s an erratic – a rock formation that’s been deposited by glaciation and that has a different mineral composition from the surrounding landscape.  The glaciers that ground out the vast sea bed of what is now the Canadian prairies left these trinkets in their wake.  Mistaseni was huge - 400 tonnes and as big as a Winnebago.  It was a significant presence on the rolling terrain and became a sacred place for the plains people who hunted in the area. But the land where Mistaseni rested was about to be flooded to create Lake Diefenbaker.

Local Cree and Elbow residents, along with provincial archaeologists, wanted the stone moved to higher ground and project leaders tried to comply.  But the engineers weren’t able devise a timely and cost-effective way to move Mistaseni so on December 1, 1966, it was blown to smithereens. Some of the scrabble was used to make a cairn and a large piece of the rock was set near the lake on the outskirts of Elbow.

Perhaps the loss of the rock has been eased by the success of the lake. Diefenbaker is one of the province's great sports-fishing and recreational lakes with sailing, sand-dunes, golfing and four provincial parks. If you are travelling between Saskatoon and Regina, build in some time to explore the east shore. If you time it right, you can have lunch at the Outlook Bakery on Franklin Street, a mother-daughter operation with irresistible slices, bars, and homemade donuts.

  

And if you're headed south, wash it all down with a big cup of coffee in Davidson, on Highway 11.

*There are numerous spellings and pronunciations.  The Cree mistasiniy means “big rock.”