Rocanville is a town in

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

, Canada, and home to the largest

oil can An oil can (oilcan or oiler)Nutrien Nutrien is a Canadian fertilizer company based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It is the largest producer of potash, second largest producer of nitrogen fertilizer in the world and generally the 2nd largest in fertilizers worldwide. It has over 2,0 ...

Rocanville mine. Rocanville is also home of the Symons Oiler

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...

which produced over 1 million oil cans during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. The town erected the giant oil can to commemorate the factory. Rocanville is also known for

crop circle A crop circle, crop formation, or corn circle is a pattern created by flattening a crop, usually a cereal. The term was first coined in the early 1980s. Crop circles have been described as all falling "within the range of the sort of thing ...

s that were discovered there in the fall of 1996.

History

Settlement in the area dates back to the

fur trade The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal ecosystem, boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals h ...

, beginning in 1785 with the building of Fort Espérance, an archaeological site in Rocanville believed to contain the remains of two late 18th- and early 19th-century forts. It was designated a

National Historic Site of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada () are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being of national historic significance. Parks C ...

in 1944. The first settlers of the current townsite arrived in the area in 1882 and 1883. The village was started by two brothers who built the first general store in the middle of what is now Main Street in 1902. Rocanville was incorporated as a village on March 24, 1904, a short time after the railroad reached the area and is named for the town's first postmaster, Rocan de Bastien, who served as overseer of the village. It became a town on August 1, 1967. The Rocanville and District Museum Site, the Rocanville Farmers Building and the Symons Metalworks have all been designated as Municipal Heritage Properties under the provincial Heritage Property Act. Rocanville's potash mine produced its first train car load of potash on September 25, 1970. Upon opening, it was owned by the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, which has since merged with Agrium to become

Nutrien Nutrien is a Canadian fertilizer company based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It is the largest producer of potash, second largest producer of nitrogen fertilizer in the world and generally the 2nd largest in fertilizers worldwide. It has over 2,0 ...

. It is the largest of Nutrien's six potash mines in Saskatchewan.

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; ), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. It is headquartered in ...

, Rocanville had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021. The town is governed by a mayor and five councillors.

Sports

The town of Rocanville is home to the Rocanville Tigers senior team in the Sask. East Hockey League. It also hosts minor hockey and baseball, along with curling. The local indoor pool is undergoing a significant refurbishment project and is expected to reopen in 2025. The town also has a golf course, the Rocanville Town and Country Golf Club.

Notable people

* Jessica Campbell, the first full-time female assistant coach in

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

history.

Climate

References

External links

* {{Authority control Towns in Saskatchewan Rocanville No. 151, Saskatchewan Division No. 5, Saskatchewan