Two of the occasions were to mark the centenary of the Hill Companies, intimately involved in the building of the city and province. One of those was here in Regina, the other in Calgary, where I got to poke fun at our neighbouring province in front of an august crowd that included the then-Premier of Alberta, Ralph Klein. So that was cool!

The following version of the speech was given at the 2005 convention of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association‘s annual convention in Saskatoon.

It is a great privilege for me to be here on the occasion of the centennial convention of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association.  My name is Thomas Walter Scott, and I have–or rather, from your point of view, had–the honor of being the first premier of the province of Saskatchewan.

You will forgive any confusion in tenses, I hope. For you, as I understand it, it is January 29, 2005.  However, when I awoke this morning, it was January 29, 1912.  I therefore bring you greetings, not only from the government of Saskatchewan, but also from what is, to you, the distant past, a time when this great province was not a hundred years old, or even ten years old, but barely six.

Before I enter into the substance of my remarks, I must first express my gratitude to Mr. H. G. Wells, without whose invaluable invention, the Time Machine, I would not have been able to be with you here today.

I confess that, having just arrived moments ago, I have no detailed knowledge of conditions in this Saskatchewan of almost a century in my future; but I have made a few observations already that imbue me with confidence that our glorious province has indeed blossomed into greatness as I have always predicted it would.

I note, for example, that the legendary hospitality of the Saskatchewan people has not changed; for after having left the Time Machine in the street outside this great auditorium in a spot conveniently marked with the image of a wheeled chair–an image which looked remarkably like the time machine itself, and which I therefore took to be an indication I should stop there–I glanced back to see a gentlemen in a blue uniform writing a welcome note and placing it in a prominent place where I could not fail to see it upon my return, a generous action indeed.  I must congratulate the current mayor and city council of Saskatoon for establishing what is obviously a corps of men whose duty it is to issue friendly greetings to newcomers. I certainly look forward to reading his warm welcome when I return to the Time Machine after my address to you, and I trust that those of you representing other municipalities issue similar greetings to newcomers to your towns and cities.

And speaking of the street outside, it was with great pleasure that I noted it was paved, and bordered by concrete curbs and sidewalks. This is a great advance from the province’s early days; our standing joke in 1905 was that when it rains one could pick up enough topsoil to claim a homestead simply by walking down the street of any Saskatchewan city.  As one early resident of the province wrote home to Ontario, “we welcome the winters for the reprieve they offer from the sea of mud we live in the other three months”!

But even in my own time, we have made great strides in improving the roads of our cities.  Indeed, just last year, in the spring of 1911, we inaugurated that most civilized means of transportation, a streetcar system, in Regina.  Though I did not see it in my brief sojourn outside, I am certain that Saskatoon and other Saskatchewan communities must by now also enjoy this modern convenience. No doubt most of you rode these streetcars as you made your way to the convention from your various hotels.

I note that this room is lit most brilliantly by electricity–so brilliantly, indeed, that it is difficult to see anything of any of you from here on the stage–which gives me confidence that all the cities of Saskatchewan must enjoy the benefits of electrical power.

Similarly, I am confident that most residents of Saskatchewan now have access to a telephone.  This is of great concern in my own time.  In the last election, in 1908, our Liberal platform called for increased telephone service, and we have committed ourselves to public ownership of long-distance lines.  However, I am firmly against the public ownership of local telephone companies, or other public utilities.  Government oversight, yes; government control, no. This, of course, contrasts with the well-known Conservative position in my day that all public utilities should be government owned.  Now, I know that the Urban Municipalities of Saskatchewan have called upon my government to place telephones under public ownership.  However, I am sure by your time that concern has long since faded.  I have often said it would be suicidal for any government of Saskatchewan to try to provide a telephone to every rural resident. That is best left to private enterprise; and no doubt the decades have proved me right. No doubt by your time hundreds of local telephone companies across Saskatchewan are providing the handful of telephones needed by the smaller towns,you’re your organization and the Conservatives alike have come around the wisdom of the staunch Liberal belief that government should not assume ownership of ventures that could be handled by cooperative or private enterprise.

You know, when Saskatchewan became a province, just seven years ago for me, and a hundred for you, there were only 60 incorporated villages, ten towns and three cities–and yet, the Union of Saskatchewan Municipalities held its inaugural convention, cementing its reputation as a very forward-looking organization. In fact, it wasn’t until 1908, the year my Liberal government won re-election, that the Legislature passed the acts that set up the current system of cities, towns, villages and rural municipalities, and created the new Department of Municipal Affairs.

No doubt the acts have been amended many times since.  You may find it amusing to know that in those early days, a village could be incorporated as a town with a mere 500 residents, and it took only 5,000 to become a city!  But villages longed to be towns. Among other things, towns could acquire parks and recreation grounds, and establish skating and curling rinks.  (The latter power was insisted upon by the many Scots in the Legislature!)

And in my time, villages are springing up and becoming towns with astonishing speed.  To name just three, Melville, Outlook and Watrous hardly existed in 1907, organized as villages late in 1908, and incorporated as towns in 1909.  No doubt by your day they each contain many thousands of residents and are thriving cities.

When the province began, we had only three cities.  Already, in 1911, we have four.  And their populations continue to soar.  In 1901, Regina had just 2,249 inhabitants; that swelled to 6,169 five years later, and 30,214 in 1911.  Saskatoon had only 113 in 1901, 3,011 in 1906 and 12,000 in 1911.  Moose Jaw sprang from 1,558 in 1901 to 13,823 in 1911, and Prince Albert from 1,785 in 1901 to 6,254 in 1911.  Overall, the province’s population has almost doubled, from 257,000 in 1906 to nearly half a million in 1911.

And thus, though I have had no opportunity to confirm it, I am confident that today, in twenty-ought-five, Saskatchewan has proved the prediction I have made often:  “Just as rue as the sun shines there will be within this Province alone some day a population running into the tens of millions.”

That being the case, many of you must represent urban municipalities with populations in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions.  Regina alone, I am confident, has long outstripped the great cities of my age–London, New York, Paris–in population, beauty and culture, and though no doubt Saskatoon continues to lag behind Regina in population, even with only half as many people, I am certain it, too, must be a great city, as must Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, and all the rest.

I did my best, as premier, to spread the benefits of province-hood to all our cities. Regina, of course, was made capital and received the Legislative Building; Saskatoon received the University. Prince Albert was given the provincial penitentiary, and North Battleford the mental health hospital.  And Moose Jaw, the second-largest city in the province in 1911, received…um…well…well, no doubt something came up. Later.  After my time?

Perhaps I can share a little bit more about my time, though the political concerns of 1906 may make you laugh in this more sophisticated age.

I am ashamed to say, for example, that there is great concern about corruption in government in 1912.  My promise on becoming premier in 1905 was that I would present to the people of this province good, clean, honest government.  I am confident that the governments I have formed have set just such an example, so that never again have the Saskatchewan people seen politicians sullied by scandal.

In fact, if I may be permitted one partisan note, I am confident that my Liberal government has presented such an example of good government that Liberals continue to govern this province to this very day.

Peace, Progress and Prosperity was my slogan for the 1905 election.  I am certain all three have continued to be the lot of Saskatchewan residents in the years that lie in your past, but are still in my future.  This province’s people have unlimited potential. Already, in my time, your association has played a key role in unlocking that potential.  The fact that I am here helping you celebrate your 100th anniversary is proof to me that you have continued to do so.

And…Mr. Wells told me I shouldn’t tell you this, but…well, I happen to know you will continue to play a vital role in Saskatchewan for decades to come:  you see, I must now bid you farewell, remount the Time Machine, and make my way to my next speaking engagement–the bicentennial convention of the Saskatchewan Urban Muncipalities Association, scheduled for Saturday, January 31, 2105.  Reserve your hotel rooms now!

My congratulations and best wishes once again. Thank you for your kind attention.

(The photo: the Saskatchewan Legislative Building at sunset.)

***

Paul Hill says he’s most known in Regina for three things: his blue 1976 Mercury Marquis, his habit of consuming eight Diet Cokes a day, and his addiction to non-fat frozen yogurt.

Of course, that list leaves out one other minor thing of note: Paul is president and CEO of The Hill Companies and Harvard Developments Inc., companies intimately intertwined with the history of Regina, owning and/or managing more than two million square feet in Regina and five million square feet in Western Canada.

The Hill Companies were born in 1903 as McCallum Hill & Company, formed by Walter H.A. Hill (Paul’s grandfather) and a partner. Walter Hill later sold the land on which the Saskatchewan Legislative Building now stands to the provincial government, and went on to develop the Lakeview residential area. Paul’s father, the late Frederick W. Hill, after completing an MBA at the Harvard Business School, joined the company to work with his father in 1947.

Born in the U.S.A.

Although he’s definitely a Regina boy, growing up in the city and attending Campion College, Paul was born in Cambridge, Mass.

“My father was in the Canadian Air Force,” he explains. “He was discharged because he had a rheumatic fever history, and decided to get an MBA at Harvard.

“During his first term, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and the Americans were ramping up their armed services. He went over to the recruiter and said he wanted to get inducted. So when everyone else was trying to get deferments, he ended up in the U.S. Army Air Force.”

Fred flew as a captain of B-17 and B-24 bombers and received the Distinguished Flying Cross with three oak-leaf clusters. During training exercises, he met Paul’s mother in Washington, D.C. while she was working at the British Embassy. They fell in love right away and after five dates got married.

Fred went on to serve in the U.S. Army Air Force overseas, and was discharged in 1945. He returned to Harvard University, and Paul was born in October of 1945.

The family returned to Regina in 1947, but Paul went back to the U.S. for university, thanks to one of his father’s war-time connections: his co-pilot, Paul’s godfather, was from Washington. “He was a Georgetown guy, and so I ended up going to Georgetown University.”

Paul says he was interested in business from a very early age. (Although he admits that one time in Grade 1 or 2 he expressed an interest in being a fireman).

“My father would always bring his associates back to the house at the end of the day,” he recalls. “I would always have a high level of curiosity, and sit and listen to their conversations.”

When Paul met Carol

Young Paul was interested in more than just business, of course. He was also interested in girls. He met his future wife, Carol Erb, daughter of former provincial cabinet minister Walter Erb, when he was actually dating her best friend.

“I took her best friend home and Carol was there, and that’s how we met,” he recalls.

Paul was at Campion College and Carol was in Grade 12 at Sacred Heart at the time, but their paths hadn’t crossed because until that year she and her best friend had been attending Luther College.

“We got married the same year, December 28, 1963,” Paul says. He already knew he was going to Georgetown University, and “we decided that since I was going away the next four years that we wanted to commit to each other for the rest of our life, and we wouldn’t be able to do that if we lived apart for the next four years.”

Carol joined Paul at Georgetown, and also studied there. From Georgetown they moved to London, Ont., where Paul attended the Richard Ivey School of Business, “the Harvard of Canada,” obtaining his MBA.

Like Harvard, the Ivey School of Business teaches business via “case method,” Paul explains.

“It’s a program that involves hundreds of cases that are written about real-life circumstances in various companies and business,” he says. “The cases are focused on various aspects of the business decision-making process. The goal is to learn how to make a better decisions through a disciplined thought process.

“You can’t study for it. It’s a very intense program that goes right up until the last day of class. The next day you go into two sets of four-hour exams. There’s nothing you could ever study for. It was all learning how to make decisions, recognize opportunities, and anticipate problems, learning how to solve them before they occur.”

From school, Paul went into the investment banking business in Toronto with the predecessor of what is now Nesbitt Burns, working as an analyst. From Toronto he went to Winnipeg, where he managed the company’s retail and institutional operation.

Back in Regina

Then, in 1976, he returned home to work with his father. (That was when he bought the Mercury Marquis.) In 1978 he was appointed president of The Hill Companies, the position he’s held ever since.

Paul believes he put his stamp on the companies early, not through any grand strategic planning, but simply by being “entrepreneurial and opportunistic.” One of the first things he oversaw was the acquisition of the local CTV television station, followed by the growth of Harvard Broadcasting Inc. radio stations 620 CKRM and Lite 92 FM and 104.9 The WOLF. “We are a strong regional radio broadcaster today,” Paul notes, the company having extended its media holdings to Yorkton, Saskatoon, Calgary, Red Deer, Edmonton and Fort McMurray.

“The second thing that happened was putting together a team of experienced real estate professionals to fulfill the redevelopment plan for downtown Regina,” Paul continues. “This included the demolition of the old McCallum-Hill building, built by my grandfather in 1912. It was replaced with the Hill Centre Towers I & II.”

(An interesting side note: the Hill Centre Towers I & II were designed by the Chicago architectural firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill, which was just in the news again as the architects of the world’s new tallest building, the Burj Dubai. “You can go to any international city in the world, and you will find a Skidmore Owings building which will stand out as unique to that total environment,” Paul notes. “We went to Skidmore to give us a unique design that will only be in Regina and nowhere else in the world. That’s the difference they make. Our design will never be duplicated. It’s served the city well, and we have that connection on the world stage.”)

The company followed that up with several more distinctive downtown buildings, including the Bank of Montreal Building, the Crown Life (now Canada Life) Building, and the FCC Tower/Agriculture Place Building, and spearheaded the linkage of all those buildings via climate-controlled pedestrian walkways.

The Hill Companies started out focused on real estate and insurance, and that’s still the core business, Paul says. “Today, that includes Harvard Western Insurance, the general insurance company, Western Surety Company, the contract-bonding company, and Harvard Developments Inc., a full service real estate company.”

Diversification into the U.S.

Another big change during Paul’s stewardship has been diversification into the United States. “We made a decision to diversify into the United States, and opportunistically had acquired the Canadian assets of Tenneco Oil of Canada Ltd., with an American partner. It’s now called Harvard Energy.

“That was a big change that was motivated by what was happening in Ottawa. In 1979 to 1981, when Pierre Elliot Trudeau was prime minister, it became clear that Canada might be in for some long-term problems as a result of fiscal irresponsibility and massive government intrusion into the economy, such as the National Energy Program. It really stemmed from my background in the investment banking industry. I was aware of the penalty Canada was going to have to pay over the next 20 years, which is exactly the same set of circumstances that is now occurring in the United States under the Obama administration.”

Another major diversification move was the acquisition, with partners, of a bankrupt company, UFR Urban Forest Recyclers Inc. of Swift Current. The company developed a manufacturing business making molded fiber products, and now has more than 40 percent of the North American egg tray market.

In 1990, The Hill Companies made national news by acquiring the controlling interest in Crown Life and moving it to Regina from Toronto. “That brought 1,200 jobs to Regina and expanded the GDP of the province by two percent and of the city by 10 percent,” Paul notes. “I became Chairman and it prospered for a number of years. It’s now owned by Canada Life and remains a significant presence in the City.”

“Our western Canadian real estate company continues to grow,” he adds.  “Under the leadership of our talented senior management team, we have under development a major retail urban center in Regina called ‘Grasslands’ at Harbour Landing, as well as ‘Preston Crossing,’ located on the University of Saskatchewan lands in Saskatoon, the ‘Eau Claire’ redevelopment in Calgary and ‘The Currents of Windermere‘ in Edmonton. These are major multi-year developments which include large national retailers. The projects are in the 20- to 100-acre size and range from $50 million to $800 million. This is the next 10 years of our company. It will literally change these cities.”

Green technology is another focus. “We owned a U.S. software company which developed programs for health and safety and environmental management,” Paul says. “The customer base included many Fortune 500 companies and many foreign companies operating out of Asia, the Middle East and Europe. We’re very focused on reducing the costs associated with the production of energy and eliminating, as much as possible, the excessive consumption of products that produce emissions.”

Harvard Developments is the first organization in Saskatchewan operating under private-public partnership to obtain LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver Accreditation, on the redeveloped Century Plaza building located in downtown Regina.

Though Regina has always been, and continues to be, home base, “Saskatchewan has had a history of not having continuous growth, which has encouraged us to diversify into other geographic areas, and also to be entrepreneurial and opportunistic with regard to other industries,” Paul says.

“My grandfather struggled and survived through the two world wars and the 1930s. The company Walter Hill founded is the only real estate business in Canada that has survived a full 100 years: it celebrated its centennial in 2003.”

Now, says Paul, “Saskatchewan is again growing. The Hill Companies have developed an excellent, experienced team with capabilities second-to-none in Saskatchewan. They are dedicated to assisting and helping to bring the province’s growth opportunities into reality.” The cities of Saskatchewan, Paul says, deserve to enjoy the finest facilities and services of any jurisdiction in the country.

Inspired by Mother Teresa

Making Regina and Saskatchewan better places to live is very important to both Paul and Carol. Paul notes that he and his wife had the opportunity to visit Mother Theresa in India with other CEOs and their spouses in the 1980s.

“She really mesmerized the group we were with,” Paul remembers. “Many wanted to help her initiatives around the world. But her response to us was, ‘Go back to your own community, identify the needs, and give both of yourself and your resources to help those people.’”

Paul and Carol have always been interested in helping students become leaders in society. They support Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Wilcox, attended by students from all over Western Canada and other parts of the world.

A major new initiative emanating from Mother Teresa’s message is now at the feasibility stage, as Paul works to establish a Nativity Miguel School in Regina.

“What this network of schools in the United States have done is entered into the inner cities, taken kids from Grade 6, 7 and 8, from diversified backgrounds, and developed their educational and motivational skills to the point where they have been able to change a 90-percent drop-out rate for these students in high school to a 90-percent pass rate.

“The school takes 15 to 20 kids per class at a time, and works with them for extended hours and days for three years, giving them the foundation for success in high school and beyond. We’ve been working on it for two years. We hope to be up and running next year.”

Alongside that initiative, the Hills have set up a foundation called “One Life Makes a Difference” to select one student at a time to be given an opportunity to get out of the environment they are in and attend a school such as Notre Dame to obtain a complete educational experience that can take them on to university.

Other education initiatives have included the evolution of the University of Regina’s Faculty of Business Administration into the Paul J. Hill School of Business. The business school has always been reputable, Paul says, but “there was an opportunity to take it to the next level in terms of quality and recognition.”

The Paul J. Hill School of Business is now partnered with the Richard Ivey School of Business, where Paul received his MBA, “recognized as one of the top schools in the world.” The school is implementing the full case-method program used at Ivey and Harvard, and also includes a student exchange program and Ph.D. development. As well, business cases from Western Canada are now being written and distributed on a worldwide basis under the Hill-Ivey brand name. The program includes a specific emphasis on business ethics.

Paul and Carol have also helped initiate a Catholic studies program at Campion College.

Five children

Their own children have all attended Jesuit-run universities in the United States. “We wanted them to experience American culture, and to go to schools that require a minimum amount of philosophy and theology,” Paul says.

Eldest daughter Rosanne Hill Blaisdell, who like her father obtained an MBA, is working with Harvard Developments and is responsible for the company’s office portfolio in Regina and in Calgary.

Their second daughter, Shannon, got a law degree and now at age 42 has gone back to school, after having three children, for a medical degree.

Their only son, Matthew, married a girl from Michigan and has founded a technology-related company is Los Angeles. Their second-youngest daughter, January, is in early childhood education in Calgary, and their youngest, Kathryn, is a practicing psychologist in Calgary.

Paul and Carol continue to call Regina home, although, Paul notes, “When it gets cold, we go south. I commute back and forth and the rest is done by phone, fax and email.”

In the summer, they enjoy a cottage at the Lake of the Woods in northwestern Ontario (the Winnipeg connection) but still keep the family cottage in the Qu’Appelle Valley. “I grew up going to Katepwa Lake in the summertime and worked at a local beach and boat club,” Paul says.

They play a little bit of golf and enjoy the social amenities at the Wascana Country Club. Both keep physically active. “We were joggers,” Paul says. “Well, Carol still is. My knees have gone.”

Culturally, they enjoy shows at Globe Theatre and the Conexus Arts Centre, and going to the movies. “Mostly, we just like being with family,” Paul says.

Oh, and football. “We as a family have had a lifelong commitment to the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Carol was Miss Saskatchewan Roughrider in 1963! We’ve attended every Grey Cup since then together, along with most of our children.

“Harvard’s 620 CKRM has the broadcasting rights for the Roughrider games,” Paul continues. “I am currently honoured to be on the board of the club. Also, several employees and business associates have and continue to be actively involved in supporting the club.”

Favorite restaurants include Earl’s, the Lakeshore Steak House, Golf’s and Memories (and TCBY, of course, thanks to Paul’s addiction to frozen yogurt).

A love of travel

The Hills love Regina, but they also like to travel. They founded the Canadian Chapter of The Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museum, a select group dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of the collection of art contained in the Vatican Museums. Money raised by the organization is used for restoration projects, such as the four-year restoration of the Raphael tapestry, St. Paul in Prison.

“Now we are restoring a necropolis under the Vatican parking lot that has perfectly preserved tombs going back to the period from 200 BC to 400 AD,” Paul says. “There are stories about persons, one of whom ran the chariot races for Emperor Nero. Other stories include a description of the daily lives of ordinary people of their times. It’s fascinating. Every two years we take the Canadian chapter to Rome for a full agenda at the Vatican.

“We like Hawaii, of course, everybody does,” Paul continues. “The last three or four years we’ve gone to southern Spain. We’ve learned very little Spanish, but we’ve taken in the history and culture of Spain as well as spending some time with its former president. We developed an interest in Spain and its history and culture.

“We’ve been most places in the world, but there’s one place that we’ve not been to that we will be going to this year, and that’s Russia. We’ll be in St. Petersburg and Moscow for the first time.”

Saskatchewan: A land of opportunity

The Hill Companies were created by entrepreneurs taking advantage of an opportunity that presented itself. Does Paul feel there are still opportunities in Saskatchewan?

“Absolutely,” he says. In fact, he thinks the opportunities are greater now than they have ever been in his lifetime, because at various times in Saskatchewan’s history, “it was very difficult for a company to start and survive during various points in its history,” he notes.

“The wars and the ’30s were very difficult economic times. After the war, in the 1950s, business faced the challenge of the Tommy Douglas government and the CCF manifesto, which called for the total eradication of capitalism. Many companies either left the province or were taken over by the government. One of those companies was ours, Saskatchewan Guaranty and Fidelity, the predecessor to Western Surety Company, which was managed by the predecessor to Harvard Western Insurance. In spite of this we stayed and remained committed.”

But, he says, “The negative aspects of the socialist environment have slowly been removed over time. Successive governments of the province have moved toward encouraging the private sector to grow and develop as well as encouraging the expansion and exploration of the resource sector toward its full potential. It is also becoming a more competitive jurisdiction to attract business and jobs.

“The province is moving in the right direction. The Hill Companies hope to continue contributing to the growth of this great province and at the same time focus on improving the lives of the people who live here. We will maintain our entrepreneurial philosophy, while practicing our principles and values within the context of lessons learned from the past.

“I am optimistic and have great faith in the future of The Hill Companies and our province. I believe our enterprise will continue to enjoy the success brought about by dedicated employees and partners.”

***

First, I’d like to thank you very much for asking me to be your guest speaker at today’s Past President’s Luncheon. It’s a great honour, and it’s certainly made for a memorable launch of Land Surveying in Saskatchewan: Laying the Groundwork for Property Rights and Development. I’ve written more than 40 books so far in my career, of one sort or another, but this was the first one launched at Government House with a speech by the Lieutenant Governor. I guess Jack Weibe must have been busy the week my very first book, Using Microsoft Publisher for Windows 95, came out 15 years, or I’m sure he would have insisted on being part of its launch…

I thought it might be interesting to begin this speech by telling you about my lifelong interest in surveying, how I used to envy the surveyors we would pass by the side of the road during long car trips when I was a child, how I dreamed of one day owning my very own transit, and even saved up my allowance for years hoping to buy one.

And no doubt that would have been a very interesting way to begin this speech, but if would, alas, have been entirely fictional, because in fact the sum total of knowledge about surveying I brought to the writing of this book was…what’s the technical term? Oh, yeah…zilch.

Oh, all right, I exaggerate slightly. It would be more accurate to say that what the small amount of knowledge I did have was singularly unhelpful.

What little exposure I did have to surveying began, oddly enough, with a children’s book. As a kid, I loved the books by British writer Arthur Ransome, collectively called the Swallows and Amazons series, about children who love sailing. One set of the children, the Walker family, like to imagine themselves as explorers, and in one of the books, Secret Water, they are “marooned” in an area of tidal islands on the east coast of England, and set out to properly map the islands using those most basic of surveying instruments, poles and compasses. They measure a baseline, take bearings from both ends on a farm in the middle of the island to pinpoint its location, and proceed to triangulate their way around the rest of the islands, in the course of having other adventures like getting caught on a causeway by the rising tide and finding mysterious footprints in the mud.

My other early exposure to surveying came from science fiction. Today I’m a science fiction author, but long before that I was a science fiction reader (I blame my two older brothers, both of whom read the stuff and left it laying around for their impressionable little brother to pick up.) One of the staples of science fiction, especially from the era when I started reading it, is the survey team that explores strange new planets. Google  “survey team” + “science fiction” and you get more than 3,500 results. Philip K. Dick—author of the books Hollywood turned into the movies Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report—even wrote a story titled “Survey Team.”

But most science fiction “survey team” stories are described in terms like one by Clifford D. Simak in which “a survey team to a strange planet finds an animal that could end world hunger, but dare they eat it?”, which I’m guessing is not a problem terrestrial survey teams deal with on a regular basis, so those stories were not perhaps particularly educational with regard to the actual practice of surveying here on Earth.

(Still, it has gotten me thinking about exciting science fiction and fantasy stories you could write inspired by surveying, stories like, “The Phantom Rodman,” or “Sir Theodolite and the Search for the Lost Monument.” Or my favorite, “Gunter and the Chains of Doom.”

It’s odd I wasn’t more aware of surveying considering I grew up on the prairie. We moved up here in 1967 from Tulia, Texas, a little cotton town in the Texas panhandle. There’s a saying in that part of Texas that there’s nothing between you and the North Pole except for a few strands of barbed wire, and they’re mostly down. Driving from there to here is a lot like driving over a patchwork quilt, and yet it never occurred to me to wonder who had laid out the pattern…although since I had just turned eight, perhaps I can be forgiven.

Once we were here, I was always running into the legacy of surveying without even realizing it. My dad taught at Western Christian College, then at North Weyburn, the airport about four miles outside of Weyburn, and as a kid I roamed over a pretty good swatch of prairie out there on foot or on my bike. I know I occasionally came across these strange metal objects stuck in the ground, metal caps with markings on them, and wondered what they were…but not enough to actually ask anybody who might know, I guess!

The other artefact of surveying that I noticed at an early age was…the correction line. We’d be driving along a grid road or highway, straight as an arrow, and suddenly for no reason I could see there’d be a big curve in the road, we’d change direction for a short distance, and then we’d resume heading north or south. I heard the term “correction line,” and I couldn’t figure out why the road builders had planned so badly that there’d be that much to correct. The only thing I could figure was that they must have started the road at both ends and the correction line was where they came together and realized they’d mis-aimed by a few hundred feet.

You would have thought, by the time I became a newspaper reporter at the Weyburn Review in 1980, that I might have twigged a bit more to work of surveyors that defines property in the province…but you’d be wrong.

I might have known more had I actually gotten that summer job, when I was 17 or so, working as a rodman. I interviewed for it, but I suspect my lack of enthusiasm for anything that would require me to stand outside in the sun for hours at a time with every possibility of days at a time going past when I would not be able to return home to sleep in my own bed and enjoy my Mom’s cooking was palpable. I didn’t get the job.

Anyway, once I was working at the Review, I began to run into other odd things I didn’t really understand. Like parcels of land described by mysterious codes: things like NE15-6-20-W2. Amazingly, this actually seemed to mean something to the people who ran rural municipalities or lived out in the country. To me they might as well have been Swahili. (Worse, actually: as a Star Trek fan I actually know one word of Swahili, “uhuru,” meaning “freedom,” because that was where the name of Nichelle Nichols’ character Uhura came from…but I digress. Did I mention most of my public speaking is done at science fiction conventions? You guys dress better.)

Nor, though I drove over them all the time, did I understand even yet those mysterious correction lines. They were just a fact of Saskatchewan life.

And the truth is—the rather embarrassing truth, really—is that I still didn’t understand those codes or the purpose of correction lines until I wrote the first chapter of Land Surveying in Saskatchewan: Laying the Groundwork for Property Rights and Development, and I trust that’s the last time I have to say the full title. (Although it’s actually a bit shorter than my last book along these lines, A Safe and Prosperous Future: 100 years of engineering and geosciences achievements in Saskatchewan.)

So you might be wondering, “Why did they get this guy to write our history?”

To which I answer, “You’ll have to ask the committee.”

But honestly, I believe that my relative ignorance may have served the project well, because I think books of this nature are most useful, not to the organization whose history they tell, although I certainly hope you all enjoy reading it, but to the general public—people who, like me, don’t know a thing about the topic until they start the book: start writing it, in my case, start reading it, in theirs.

What did I learn in writing this book?

Well, chapter by chapter, it goes something like this:

Chapter 1 is about the history of surveying in general, and the Dominion Land Surveyors in particular. This is where I learned why Land Surveying is sometimes called “the world’s second-oldest profession,” which I rather hoped might have been the title of the book…since “Gunter and the Chains of Doom” was apparently out right from the start.

But seriously, the importance of surveying really begins to sink home when you realize how long it has been practiced, and how it underpins everything else. And the Dominion Land Survey of western Canada has to be one of the great unsung stories of Canadian history.

But the most important thing I learned in writing Chapter 1: what those mysterious numbers mean…and what a correction line is. Apparently correction lines don’t correct some horrible mistake made by the surveyors and/or road builders at all; they’re a correction forced by the curvature of the Earth. Who knew?

Oh, well, OK, lots of people. But maybe more people will know now, thanks to this book.

Chapter 2 deals with the birth of the SLSA, of course, but before the provincial organizations were formed, there was a Dominion Land Surveyors’ Association, and I enjoyed this account of how it was formed:

In 1882, record snowfall and heavy spring rains made the land around Winnipeg almost impassable. Stuck in the city, a group of Dominion Land Surveyors got together “for the purpose of discussing the advisability of asking for an increase of pay.”

Dominion Land Surveyor O.J. Klotz wrote about the momentous occasion in his diary on Saturday, April 22: “I was elected chairman, and after some discussion a committee was appointed to draft a memorial. Bray, J. Garden and A. Cotton came to my room afterwards and we had several bottles of beer.”

Two days later the “memorial” Klotz had drawn up was approved at a second meeting and the group proposed forming an association “to further our mutual interests and to meet in Ottawa next winter,” Klotz wrote. “Whereupon I was unanimously elected president and A.F. Cotton, secretary-treasurer, and we immediately formed a fund for current expenses of two dollars per man.”

It wasn’t until 1910, of course, that the Saskatchewan Land Surveyors Association was formed. Again, from the book:

On March 8, 1910, the district surveyors met again, in the District Surveyor’s office in Regina, to consider the report of the previous year’s committee, and decided to seek the incorporation of an association with the primary purpose of gaining some autonomy for the profession. A motion was passed “that an Association of Saskatchewan Land Surveyors” be formed, and J.L.R. Parsons was elected president. W.R. Reilly was elected vice-president, and A.C. Garner, H.K. Moberly and M.B. Weekes formed an executive committee of three.

(An aside: apparently it never occurred to anyone back then that anyone in the future would ever wish to know the actual first name of an individual; initials would suffice for all time.)

The new executive’s first order of business was to investigate what would be involved in incorporation and “if it could be done for less than $50.”

Membership fees for the (then still strictly voluntary) association were set at $5 to start, then $2 a year thereafter, payable in advance. After some discussion, the straightforward “The Association of Saskatchewan Land Surveyors” was adopted as the organization’s name (though it wouldn’t remain the name for long).

One topic of considerable debate at that first meeting was the schedule of fees a surveyor could charge. The daily rate was set at $12, and the rate a surveyor could charge an articled pupil for instruction was set at $100 a year.

I suspect that the daily rate has gone up a bit since then.

Chapter 3 is called, “What do SLSA members do?” I trust those of you who are SLSA members actually know what you do, so I won’t describe the chapter in detail, but I didn’t know that they did all the things described in this chapter, and I’m sure there’ll be a lot of readers who, like me, were unaware of the challenges involved in, for example, locating those old monuments out in the field.

One of my favourite anecdotes appears in this chapter, provided by Dan Babiuk:

“When we were out in the Great Sand Hills looking for section corners, I noticed these short telephone poles. They were maybe six feet high. I thought in the ’30s they must have run short of money to buy real telephone poles.

“A farmer came by, and I said, ‘I can’t find the monument.’

“He said, ‘There’s a lot of blow dirt here.’

“He showed me where to dig down. I dug down more than my height, while the sand kept blowing in, and sure enough we found the survey monuments about six or eight feet down.”

The telephone poles, it turned out, were normal height: they’d just been partially swallowed by drifting dirt over the years.

Chapter 4 was one of my favourites. I’ve mentioned my interest in science fiction. Out of that interest, or at least concurrent with it, grew an interest in science. For a long time I thought I’d be a scientist, but instead I ended up as a writer who writes about science quite a bit. And in Chapter 4, I got to explore the technology of surveying, and how it has changed over the years. I learned about gromas and chorobates, plane tables and astrolabes, theodolites and transits…and then tellurometers, total stations, inertial survey systems and, of course the Global Positioning Satellite system.

Having already written about the Dominion Land Survey, though, I felt a bit by the time I got the end of this chapter like some old curmudgeon going on about how the young whippersnappers of today don’t know how good they’ve got it. Maybe it was because of this explanation, from the 1903 Manual of Instruction for the Survey of Dominion Lands explain just what was involved in compensating for temperature in the good old days when using a Gunter chain:

“As every ten degrees Fahr. more or less heat would give to measurements a corresponding increment or decrement of somewhat more than half a link to the mile, and since in the North-west Territory a season of field work, extending from early spring to

beginning of winter, will include variations of temperature covering a range of at least 80 degrees, and sometimes 100 degrees, the side of a block chained in July or August might, from this cause alone, differ from that of an adjacent one measured in November, fully a chain…

“The surveyor will, therefore, apply this correction for all variations of 10 and over, from the temperature for which the chains are compared or adjusted to standard. This he can conveniently do, by allowing half a link to the mile for each ten degrees Fahr., not attempting to note or estimate the temperature of his chain to less than ten degrees. This will keep his corrections in the convenient form of multiples of half links, and render tables unnecessary.

“A thermometer attached to the end of a chain near the hand, fails to give the temperature of the rest of the chain; fastened to the middle and allowed to drag on the ground, it is liable to derangement and injury, it is therefore extremely difficult for the surveyor to obtain even a rough approximation of the temperature of his chain. By repeating at convenient times, and under varied conditions, the experiment of placing a pocket thermometer on, or in, the grass or brushwood, as nearly as possible, similarly to the average position of the chain during the trial, and comparing the temperature attained by the thermometer so placed with that of the air, or indicated by a thermometer attached to the leading end of the chain, a rough idea may be got of the allowances that should, in practice, be made in taking the indications of the latter, or in rudely estimating the temperature of the chain from that of the air at the time.

“Attention is to be paid to the condition of the chain during measurement, whether wet or dry; a wet chain will have its temperature lowered to a great extent, especially in dry weather. The colour of the chain also has some influence; a black or dark blue chain will absorb more heat than a bright one.”

As if they didn’t have enough to do.

Chapter 5 deals with the history of monuments, and draws heavily on a history paper, a monumental history paper, you might say, by Peter Unger, written in 1986. All I can say of the early history of monuments is that it’s my distinct impression that somebody in Ottawa was justifying the existence of their job by making changes more or less at random, especially when it came to the details of pits and mounds.

Chapter 6 is all about the process of becoming an SLS, in the past and today, and by this point, I kind of wished I had become one, the work sounded so interesting. Alas, “surveyor” did not come up as a possible career choice back in high school, or at least my guidance counsellor never mentioned it. (When I took career aptitude tests, I mostly got pointed to things like architect and forest ranger, with strong indications that I should stay as far away as possible from any of the “helping professions.” I’m not sure where writer fell on the list of possibilities, but I’m quite sure I never saw “surveyor” listed at all.)

Chapter 7 talks about government agencies and their role in surveying, and once again, I was learning stuff right and left. Among other things, I learned the difference between a brown print and a blueprint (I know, I know, one’s brown, one’s blue, I mean I learned how each one is made), but that was just a minor aside: the main thing I learned about was Saskatchewan’s astonishing LAND system, involving the digitization of all of those old Dominion Land Surveyor notebooks, among other things. It’s a truly amazing achievement…and I knew next to nothing about it until I wrote this book.

Finally, the book is rounded out with chapters about specific projects, illustrating the many varied tasks Saskatchewan Land Surveyors undertake, and a look ahead at the future of land surveying.

I think the chapter about what projects Land Surveyors have undertaken in the past few years was one of my favourites. For one thing, one of the projects discussed was the Rafferty-Alameda Dam project, which was a major topic of debate back when I was working as a reporter and then editor of the Weyburn Review. That was interesting, too, in light of the earlier chapter on changing technology. Those eight years in the 1980s that I was at the Weyburn Review saw us move from manual typewriters to working directly on a computer system that boasted a massive hard drive to store data on: a whopping 20 MB of data, in a device twice the size of a microwave oven.

An anecdote from Pat Maloney about working on Rafferty-Alameda reminded me of how much technology changed about that time for everyone:

“The construction crew and the supervisory crews from SPC had just come off the building of the Nipawin Dam,” Maloney remembers. All the surveying work and all of the calculation was done manually at Nipawin. But at Rafferty, for the first time, “we used digital data and computer programs to calculate volumes and things like that.”

In fact, says Maloney, “The first PC I sat in front of was at Rafferty. I’ve got the field equipment sitting in my office, and all the guys laugh at it for being archaic.”

The computer he used at Rafferty was an IBM 286 with a 40 MB hard drive running DOS 3.3. It ran at 6 to 8 megahertz. (On the “turbo” setting you could get 10 megahertz, but on the turbo setting “the software would pile up and crash.”)

“It was interesting,” Maloney says. “We would do volume calculations on the earthwork, and using the 286, one calculation was probably 30 to 45 minutes. That seems horrendous by today’s standard, but given that on the Nipawin Dam that probably would have been a week’s work for six or eight guys hunched over drafting tables, it was pretty impressive.”

Throughout the process of writing this chapter, I was impressed by the variety of work surveyors may be called upon to do, from helping an artist mow a giant Canada Summer Games logo into a field outside Regina to surveying the sites for the giant windmills generating electricity in the southwest trying to find a channel in the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon down which rowing races could be held without anyone running aground.

And the variety of tasks described in this chapter made me realize that though the work of the Dominion Land Surveyors may be long over, the work of Saskatchewan Land Surveyors continues and continues to be vital.

The final chapter talks about the future of land surveying, with challenges ahead such as the possible transition to a coordinate based cadastral system and the necessity of maintaining the survey framework that already exists—plus, of course, the need for new surveyors to continue to enter the profession.

I learned a tremendous lot about surveyors and surveying writing this book, and came away with an immense appreciation for the profession and its importance. It may not be quite as exciting as surveying in science fiction, but on the other hand, the fatality rate among Saskatchewan Land Surveyors is much lower than it tends to be among science fictional surveyors, who are always getting blasted or eaten or infected or taken over by mind-controlling parasites.

And much as I enjoy my fictional worlds, I live in the real one, and it is in this world that Saskatchewan Land Surveyors, and all land surveyors, make their mark.

I can’t think of any better way to conclude this speech than with the conclusion of the book:

Ultimately, all that we really know about the future is that it won’t be like the past. Except, that is, in one respect:

Saskatchewan Land Surveyors will continue to be an integral part of it, maintaining the cadastral survey that underpins the every piece of property, surveying new roads, subdivisions, building sites, mines, bridges, resorts…in short, continuing to, literally, lay the groundwork for Saskatchewan’s future growth and prosperity…

…just as they have for the last one hundred years.

Thank you.

I expect to be signing lots of copies of the book tomorrow, and I’m also very pleased that a copy has gone out to every high school library in the province. You can check out the first chapter online here.

But wait, that’s not the only writing news from me this week! My other big task over the past while has been editorial revisions for my new YA fantasy novel, Song of the Sword, Book 1 in The Shards of Excalibur, coming out this fall from Lobster Press. It’s been an interesting process–much more of a line-by-line edit than what I do with Sheila Gilbert at DAW. I finished the final section today and it’s already going into layout. I expect to see cover art soon and ARCs. I’m very pleased with the book and looking forward to continuing the story I’ve sketched out for the remaining four books in the series.

Oh, and I’m very pleased that the cover artist is going to be Allen Douglas; check out his work here and you’ll see why!

Now I’ll be returning to Blue Fire, my other YA novel, which isn’t sold but at least has an editor interested in looking at it once it’s completed. And you know what that means: starting next week, the return of The First Sentence I Wrote Today!

I can’t wait!

Finally, an update arrived this week on Magebane, the first Lee Arthur Chane fantasy novel. It looks like I won’t be getting editorial comments on that on until I see Sheila at KeyCon in Winnipeg in May (where she’s editor Guest of Honour). Currently it’s not slated for publication until August of 2011, though it could move up a bit.

Enjoy!

***

Premier Brad Wall: “The luckiest guy in the country in terms of a job!”

By Edward Willett

(Originally published in Fine Lifestyles Regina, Fall, 2009.)

Brad Wall fully realizes that as premier, he has to represent the entire province—but he still hopes people will understand, if they see him at a Western Hockey League game between the Swift Current Broncos and the Regina Pats, why he might be wearing a Broncos jersey.

“Swift Current is home,” Wall says on the phone from (where else?) Swift Current. “Here, I’m just Brad. At the Legislature, no matter how much I tell them that ‘Brad’ is fine, it’s Mr. Wall, or Premier.

“Here, that’s just the way it is. I have a different job, but I’m still Brad, the same guy that grew up here. There’s a familiarity that is kind of a comfort when I’m here in Swift Current.”

But, he hastens to add, “Tami and I have always loved Regina.” They used to live in the city, owning a condo here, and they were married at Westhill Baptist Church. “I like the people in Regina. And Regina has absolutely everything to offer: there’s a lot to do, everything from the arts to, obviously, sport.” And though he might cheer for the Broncos, he’s also a football fan, “so there’s an obvious magnetism that Regina has.”

Among the city’s highlights for Wall is Wascana Centre “We take it for granted,” he says. “It is breathtaking. It’s absolutely a jewel…and I get to work there every day.

He remembers that when he was elected premier, he was shown his private parking space in back of the Legislative Building. He elected to give that up to a staff person so he could park in the front. “Walking up the steps into that entrance right in the middle of Wascana Park, it’s quite an honor.”

Family life
Wall and his wife, Tami, met in Saskatoon in 1984 when they were both students at the University of Saskatchewan. “We met on campus…I was a second-year arts and science student, she was a first-year engineering student. The pursuit began.” He adds, “It struck me that when arts and science students date engineers, there may not be many dates, because engineers are busy!”

They were married in 1991. By 1993 Wall, who completed university with an honours degree in Public Administration and an advanced certificate in Political Studies, was hired as Director of Business Development for the City of Swift Current.

Elected to the Legislative Assembly as MLA for Swift Current in 1999 and re-elected in 2003, Wall became leader of the Saskatchewan Party, then the Official Opposition, in 2004, and led the party to a majority government in the 2007 election.

Wall has three children, Megan, Colter and Faith, and he admits family life can be a challenge when you’re a provincial premier. “When I first ran I talked to two former MLAs,” he says, both of whom had families. “I asked, ‘Can I be a good dad and a good husband and do this?’”

Their answer, he says, was that in their experience the answer is yes; but that “it’s a matter of will, a matter of priority.”

“Yes, you’re going to miss a ball game, miss a recital, but perhaps not much more than if you had another vocation,” Wall says. “We just work hard at it all. I keep checking with the family, they’re OK with it. We’ve just managed to work it out.”

Megan, Wall’s oldest daughter, is 15, and has just started Grade 11; Colter, who’s 14, has just started Grade 9; and Faith, who is 10, is in Grade 6.

“We also have a neurotic border collie named Ezekiel,” Wall adds.

Megan loves “music, art and literature,” Wall says; and in fact she could be heard playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” on the cello in the background during the interview. “She reads and reads and reads,” he says. “Her part-time job is at a bookstore; she loves to be surrounded by books—and the employee discount!”

Colter, he says, also likes music. “He likes guitar and football—or maybe AC/DC and football would be more accurate.”

And finally, “Faith loves to sing, and plays music as well as being in sports,” Wall says. “She also loves summer, and she’s now excited about moving on to middle school this year from elementary school.

“And of course there is my wife Tami, who is obviously a busy mom, as well as a small business person and community volunteer. “

Fishing, golf—and muscle cars
Walls’s own leisure-time interests include fishing and golf.

“I like fishing, more than I thought I would,” he says. “My problem was I never caught anything.”

He also loves golf, but “it’s an unrequited love,” he says. “It doesn’t love me back, no matter how much I lavish my attention on it. The problem is it’s a five-hour game!

“We are spoiled for golf in our province,” he adds. During the recent premiers’ conference he took some of the premiers out to Wascana Country Club, which he enjoys very much. When he lived in Regina, he also enjoyed playing all of the municipal courses. Deer Valley is another favorite.

A much noisier interest of the premier’s is muscle cars. “I had a few when I was growing up,” he says. Now he has what he calls his “midlife crisis,” a 1967 Dodge Coronet 500 which he just outfitted with new mag wheels. He also owns a 1970 Chrysler Newport convertible. “There are two different area codes in that one, one for the trunk, one for the hood,” he laughs.

The man who owned the Dodge before the premier did some performance tweaking of its small-block 318, including adding dual exhausts. “It sounds good,” Walls says. “Colter likes that and I like it, too. It’s fun to drive around.”

Family activities
As a family, the Walls love camping and travelling together, with trips to Disneyland and Arizona among the recent highlights. “A lot of our family highlights are around great vacations and great travel plans together.”

They also enjoy exploring everything Saskatchewan has to offer, taking what Dustin Duncan, Minister of Tourism, Parks, Culture and Sport, has dubbed “stay-cations” to places like Candle Lake, north of Prince Albert.

Of course, not everyone is interested in the same things. “Some of the family activities take members in different directions,” Wall says. “The girls aren’t huge football fans, but Tami and I are. We enjoy watching football on TV as well.

“Some of the best times we have are around the table,” Wall goes on. “My wife and I enjoy cooking together, especially in the summer.”

They try to find other times to enjoy each other’s company as a couple, maybe doing a “nine and dine” at the Riverside Golf Club, or going out for supper. “My folks live here in Swift Current and her dad is in Herbert, so we have generous access to help if we’d like to sneak away. We try to work in as much of that as we can, since the schedule is really crazy.”

And Wall’s schedule has been “crazy” for a long time, ever since he was first elected in 1999. Although it was less intensive then than now, obviously, there was a lot of commuting even as an MLA, and even more so as leader of the opposition.

Fortunately, Wall says, “it’s a great highway” between Swift Current and Regina, so it’s not very stressful to drive it.

“I can get a ton of work done on the road,” he says. If someone else is driving, he can make phone calls. But often he’ll ask to drive himself. “I do a lot of thinking. I still write most of my own speeches, so it’s a great time to be thinking about those things.”

Since the Legislative Assembly has afternoon sessions Mondays to Wednesday, with a morning session on Thursday, even while it’s sitting Wall often returns to Swift Current on Monday and Tuesday nights, if he doesn’t have meetings, so he can spend as much time at home as possible.

“There’s something special about your own house and being with family,” he says, and when he’s away, “I miss sitting on the couch in the basement. I miss home, the people who make home, my family.”

Favorite Regina restaurants
Over the years Wall has had the opportunity to explore a lot of Regina restaurants. “When I was first elected we didn’t have any members from Regina,” he recalls. “It’s amazing how much restaurant information you can get from a team of women and men who don’t live there but spend a lot of time there.”

Although he won’t identify a favorite, he did mention several by name, including The Diplomant, Golf’s, Earl’s, the Rooftop, Beer Brothers, and Tim’s Souvlaki in the Golden Mile Centre.

“He makes this great souvlaki on a bun which is a great lunch,” Wall says, joking that he’s not sure whatever it is Tim flavours it with is strictly legal, considering how addictive it is. During caucus and cabinet meetings they’ll sometimes call him up and say, “We need about thirty of these.”

The Willow on Wascana came in for special praise for the “amazing” meal they served the premiers during the recent premiers’ conference.

“I think Regina is blessed with both some of the nice chain places, but also some local places that you won’t find anywhere else.”

History and innovation
Besides great restaurants, sports teams and the arts, Regina also has something else going for it that is near and dear to Wall’s heart: history.

“Regina really tells the history, not just of the province, but of western Canada,” he says. He noted that the visiting premiers were impressed to discover that for decades the seat of governance for the bulk of the country, geographically, was right here in Regina in the old Northwest Territories Administration Building on Dewdney.

“I love the history of Regina,” he says. “It’s something we need to do a better job of telling.”

So, looking ahead, he would like, with support from all levels of government, to see the city fully develop its heritage assets, which, he says, “rival anything else in the country.”

“We don’t have 400 years of history like they do in Quebec, but we have very compelling history, much of which unfolded in Regina as the result of the settlement of the west.”

But he’d also like to see Regina recognized as a hotbed of innovation. “The world knows Regina for another reason, the Petroleum Research Centre, the international center for carbon-capture monitoring and science,” he says. “As the world tries to find some long-term and more immediate ways to deal with carbon, they’re going to be drawn to Regina. We need to build on that. In 10 years, I’d like to see us continuing this leadership position, developing clean and alternative sources of energy.”

In fact, he says, “I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next while we see some senior elected officials from the United States come see what’s happening here.”

He’d also like to see Regina grow in the next 10 years, part and parcel of his hope that Saskatchewan as a province might reach 1.1 million people inside of a decade. “A growing population is indicative of continued strength of the economy. The more taxpayers you have, hopefully paying a lower level of tax, the more things they can fund.” He calls the idea of a bigger tax base leading to a better quality of life, which in turn draws more people to the province, a “virtuous circle.” He’d also like to see the province debt-free in that time.

“The luckiest guy in the country”
As for his own (he hopes distant) future, Wall jokes that he has three post-politics dream jobs: Canadian ambassador to Washington, CFL commissioner—or a voice-over man for Disney. “That would be fun!”

In the meantime, though, he loves the job he has, and the people he works for—the people of Saskatchewan.

During the premiers’ conference, he says, he heard many comments from the visiting officials from other provinces about how friendly the people they met in Regina were. They liked the great food, they appreciated the beauty of the Legislative Building, Wall says, “they liked all that, but what made me proudest was the comments about the people.

“Increasingly, you don’t have to explain as much about where Saskatchewan is or where Regina might be. People understand, they read the same reports about the economy. People are seeing we have the lowest unemployment stats in the country, or Regina leading the country in terms of employment figures.”

He points to recent stories about Saskatchewan on CNN and in Fortune magazine. “People are talking about our province, so they’re talking and reflecting on the capitol. I’m the luckiest guy in the country in terms of a job, and I get to do that job in Regina.

“It’s an honor. What a great place to work!”

Already working toward the next one…and still looking for writers. If you’re (preferably) in the Regina area and interested, get in touch!

Not all of those roads are paved, however. In fact, most aren’t. And as anyone who has had occasion to drive extensively on the rural road system can tell you, while gravel roads are better than mud roads, they have their own…interesting…characteristics, of which one of the most annoying is the “washboard effect.”

Washboards are fine if you’re a 19th century pioneer woman trying to clean the clothes or the abs of a 21st century male bodybuilder, but washboard-like ridges on a road are downright dangerous, reducing traction, causing extreme wear and tear on the vehicles vibrating over them, and threatening to extract the fillings of the unfortunate drivers.

Nor is this washboard effect limited to gravel roads: those annoying ripples appear on just about any road with a loose surface, from sand to snow.

Nobody has been entirely sure how this annoying phenomenon arises—until now.

A team consisting of Anne-Florence Bitbol and Nicolas Taberlet of Ecole Normale Superieure in Lyon, Jim McElwaine of the University of Cambridge, and Stephen Morris of the University of Toronto, working in England and France, have managed to create washboard surfaces in the laboratory—and just as importantly, model them mathematically.

Seeking to find the simplest possible instance of the effect, they created an experimental setup consisting of a rotating table a meter in diameter, covered with a layer of sand between five and 10 centimetres thick. A hard rubber wheel attached to an arm was free to roll on this granular “road,” which moved beneath it at a velocity ranging from 0 to 10 km/h.

Unlike there would be a with a car driving over a road, there was no suspension involved, no torque from the engine, and no bouncy inflatable tire—but even so, the ripples formed, rapidly, after just a few passes of the wheel.

As the researchers put it on the experiment’s website, “The fact that our simplified systems produce washboard ripples is important since it shows that neither tyres nor suspension are necessary to obtain washboard roads, although of course, adding a spring, a dashpot, a tyre or an engine would affect the size of the bumps. In other words, it is not because of the suspension of cars that washboard roads exist. The ripple wavelength is not simply the speed of the wheel times the bounce frequency of the suspension, which seems to be a common belief.

Also surprising: neither the size of the wheel nor the size of the grains covering the road influenced the pattern (although the mass of the wheel did). In fact, the wheel didn’t even have to spin: even when it just plowed along the surface, the washboard developed.

In fact, ripples formed in sand both wet and dry, with both fine and coarse grains, and even in long-grain rice; with or without an added spring on the wheel; for various weights of the wheel; and at a large range of speeds. In scientific terms, the phenomenon is “very robust.

It’s not just seen on roads, either. You see it on ski hills (as moguls), steel railway tracks (as tiny bumps), and even in computer hard disks, where the hopping of the read head sometimes creates a washboard pattern

So if the fault lies not in our automobiles’ suspensions, where does it lie

According to the U. of T.’s Morris, the effect is related to the physics of stone skipping. A skipping stone creates a ripple that the stone then launches off of into the air, landing and creating another ripple, and so on. This carries on until the stone’s speed falls below a certain threshold

Similarly, a car’s wheel, travelling over a granular surface, creates ripples that it launches off of, landing and creating another ripple, and so on, and so on. The difference is that, unlike water, a granular surface “remembers” the ripples, which grow larger with each subsequent pass of a wheel

Fortunately, there’s a simple way to avoid a washboard effect: you just have to keep the cars travelling on the road below a certain critical velocity. For cars that’s around 8 km/h, which means there is a strong scientific argument for the government setting the rural speed limit to, oh, say, 5 km/h

I’m sure that would be acceptable to all concerned.

I still have vivid memories of seeing a fireball streak cross the skies over Texas when I was about seven. I would have loved to have seen this one.

Oh, well. Looks like they’ve found some pieces of it, at least.

I’ve never seen a total solar eclipse, either. There was a near-total one in southern Saskatchewan on February 26, 1979…and I missed it because I was away at university in Arkansas.

(Stamps feet.) It’s not fair!