Strongfield ( 2016 population: ) is a village in the

Canadian province Canada has ten provinces and three territories that are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of Canada, Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North Amer ...

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 ...

within the Rural Municipality of Loreburn No. 254 and Census Division No. 11. It lies approximately 100 km south of the city of

Saskatoon Saskatoon () is the largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It straddles a bend in the South Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province. It is located along the Trans-Canada Hig ...

on Highway 19 between its sister communities of Hawarden and Loreburn. Strongfield was once a booming village with an elementary school, post office, car and farm equipment dealerships, two

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool was a grain handling, agri-food processing and marketing company based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Pool created a network of marketing alliances in North America and internationally which made it the largest agricul ...

grain elevators A grain elevator or grain terminal is a facility designed to stockpile or store grain. In the grain trade, the term "grain elevator" also describes a tower containing a bucket elevator or a pneumatic conveyor, which scoops up grain from a lowe ...

, small restaurants and other shops. Today the school no longer exists and most of the businesses have long been closed down. The village features

hockey ''Hockey'' is a family of List of stick sports, stick sports where two opposing teams use hockey sticks to propel a ball or disk into a goal. There are many types of hockey, and the individual sports vary in rules, numbers of players, apparel, ...

and

curling Curling is a sport in which players slide #Curling stone, stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area that is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take t ...

rinks, an

Elks lodge The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE), commonly known as the Elks Lodge or simply The Elks, is an American fraternal order and charitable organization founded in 1868 in New York City. Originally established as a social club for m ...

, the Strongfield café and post office, and a small

United Church A united church, also called a uniting church, is a denomination formed from the merger or other form of church union of two or more different Protestantism, Protestant Christian denominations, a number of which come from separate and distinc ...

. The town is near the

South Saskatchewan River The South Saskatchewan River is a major river in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The river begins at the confluence of the Bow River, Bow and Oldman Rivers in southern Alberta and ends at the Saskatchewan River Forks in ce ...

, and the man-made

Lake Diefenbaker Lake Diefenbaker is a reservoir and bifurcation lake in the southern part of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It was formed by the construction of the Gardiner Dam and the Qu'Appelle River Dam across ...

created by the

Gardiner Dam The Gardiner Dam on the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatchewan is the third largest embankment dam in Canada and one of the largest embankment dams in the world. Construction on Gardiner Dam and the smaller Qu'Appelle River Dam was started ...

, one of the world's largest earth-filled dams. In the centre of the village is a

cenotaph A cenotaph is an empty grave, tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere or have been lost. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although t ...

to Strongfield's fallen soldiers of both World Wars.

History

Strongfield's beginnings lie from 1903 and the great wave of Western settlement and development of the Canadian prairies. Strongfield incorporated as a village on May 3, 1912. From that time on it progressed as the economic and social hub of the expanding population in the area. The area was first surveyed by government surveyor J.A. Maddock and crew from May to July 1883, shortly after the former

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), originally the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the oldest corporation in North America. It was the owner of the ...

lands became part of Canada to be organized as the

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately and a 2021 census population of 41,070, it is the second-largest and the most populous of Provinces and territorie ...

. The surveying system of the Canadian prairies was based on a similar system adopted in the United States. Townships were divided into 36 sections of each. The square was further divided into quarter sections of . Strongfield would eventually be situated on township 27, range 5, west of the third meridian. The Dominion government, seeking to reassure the railway companies that the West was good agricultural land, enlisted the aid of two Canadians, Col. Davidson (for whom the nearby town of Davidson is named) and A.D. McRae. They visited the prairies and went to the United States to seek capital. They formed the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company, bought 500,000 acres (2000 km²) of land between Saskatoon and Regina from the Dominion Government at a dollar an acre and began to promote settlement. The company subsequently bought 1,250,000 acres (5060 km²) from the railway companies at $1.75 an acre. They recruited over two thousand land agents and sold the land at $1.75 an acre in 1901. This price later rose to seven and then to ten dollars an acre. George Armstrong, a

Markdale, Ontario Markdale is a community in the Municipality of Grey Highlands, in Grey County, Ontario, Canada. The population was 1,216 in 2016, an increase of 3.5% from 1,175 in 2011. In 2016, the average age of the population was approximately 43 years old. ...

businessman, was one of these agents and it is probably due to his influence and encouragement that over a third of the early settlers were former residents of the Markdale- Meaford area in

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

. Another large segment of the early population consisted of Finnish settlers from the Dakotas who came to take homesteads along the banks of the South Saskatchewan River. There are few descendants of these settlers left in the Strongfield area as most sold their land to move to the west side of the river where the majority of the Finnish settlers lived. The third major segment of the population of the area came from the Central United States and were largely of Norwegian descent. This was in large part due to the efforts of Norwegian

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

clergyman and founder of

Hanley, Saskatchewan Hanley is a town in Division No. 11 in Saskatchewan, Canada. It is located 65 km south of Saskatoon. The town's population in 2021 was 540. It was named after Hanley, Staffordshire, England, by early founders. It is also the seat for the ...

, Knute B. Birkeland who was instrumental through advertising in Norwegian-American newspapers in convincing many Norwegians in the

Dakotas The Dakotas, also known as simply Dakota, is a collective term for the U.S. states of North Dakota and South Dakota. It has been used historically to describe the Dakota Territory, and is still used for the collective heritage, culture, geo ...

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

Iowa Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...

, and

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

to take up homesteads in Saskatchewan. Later, relatives of these early Norwegian pioneers would come directly from

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

as well. Unlike most Saskatchewan villages, it experienced a boom in population and economy for a span of about ten years during the late fifties and early sixties due to the construction of the

on the

some 20 km west.

Demographics

In the

2021 Census of Population The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sli ...

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 ...

, Strongfield 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. In the 2016 Census of Population, the Village of Strongfield recorded a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change from its 2011 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2016.

References

{{coord, display=title, 51.33190, -106.58978, type:city_region:CA-SK Villages in Saskatchewan Loreburn No. 254, Saskatchewan Division No. 11, Saskatchewan