Strongfield, Saskatchewan
Strongfield is a small village in the centre of the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. It lies about 100 km south of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on Highway #19 between its sister communities of Hawarden and Loreburn.
According to the 2001 Census it had only a population of 42. Like many small towns of the Canadian prairies, Strongfield was once a booming village with an elementary school, post office, car and farm equipment dealerships, two Saskatchewan Wheat Pool grain elevators small restaurants and other shops. Today the school no longer exists and most of the businesses have long been closed down, their former buildings left to the designs of the often cruel Saskatchewan weather.
Still persevering against the odds are the town's Hockey and Curling Rinks, the Elks lodge, the Strongfield café and post office, and the small United Church of Canada. The town is very close to the South Saskatchewan River, and the man-made Lake Diefenbaker created by the Gardiner Dam, one of the world's largest earth-filled dams begun in 1959 and completed eight years later. In the centre of the town is a large (for a town of its size) cenotaph or memorial to Strongfield's fallen soldiers of both World Wars.
For the Saskatchewan Centennial a celebratory event was held on July 2, 2005 in Strongfield at the Community Rink where activities included a pancake breakfast, horseshoe tournament, parade, street, hockey, slow pitch, beer gardens, supper and a street dance.
Strongfield's beginnings lie from 1903 and the great wave of Western settlement and development of the Canadian prairies. It was incorporated as a village in 1912, just seven years after Saskatchewan's entrance into the Canadian Confederation. 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 lands became part of the Dominion of Canada to be organized as the Northwest Territories. 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 640 acres (2.6 km2) each . The 640-acre (2.6 km2) square was further divided into quarter sections of 160 acres (0.65 km2). Strongfield would eventually be situated on township 27, range 5, west of the third meridian.
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