Saskatoon’s weir was conceived in the 1930s as a make-work project. Construction began in 1939 and was finished in 1940. The weir was intended to slow the river down, to make it a bit more manageable in the days when ice and flooding caused problems for the city, before the river was warmed and kept open in the winter by the operations of the Queen Elizabeth Power Plant.
The weir, in hindsight, was a mistake—but a forgivable mistake. The building of the weir provided work at a time of great poverty. And we
didn’t know then what we know now: we now know that it is not a good idea to interfere with natural bodies of water, that such interference causes problems for wildlife, for the sensitive ecosystem around and in lakes and rivers. We now know that natural riverbeds are preferable to artificial channels made out of concrete. Now we know that we don’t know everything about what makes a river a healthy, living entity—but we’re trying to find out.
Yes, the weir was a mistake. It stuns the fish passing haplessly over it; and it prevents boats from going downriver. It has been the site of tragedy; people have drowned in the strong current there, as they have at other locations in the river. The river is a dangerous place, and that’s why we’
ve taken steps to prevent such tragedies. We’
ve banned swimming within the city limits; we’
ve made the weir inaccessible to swimmers and boaters.
Now, seventy years later, we know so much more about ecosystems, and we are more careful about messing with natural bodies of water.
Or at least, that’s what we’d like to think. We’d like to believe that we are making better choices now: we’re making hybrid cars, we’re recycling like mad, we’re riding our bicycles, we’re walking to work. We want so much to be “green”—though it can be hard to tell who wants to appear green and who want to really be green.
When the report on the proposed hydro dam and white-water park comes before City Council in several months’ time, are we going to make an even bigger mistake than we made in 1939? In 2009, when clean water is getting hard and harder to come by, when there are fewer peaceful, relatively undisturbed stretches of riverbank available to us, when the demands on our river are higher than ever, what is our City, and what are we citizens, going to do?
Our river gives us power and irrigation through the Gardiner Dam, it gives us Diefenbaker Lake for boating and fishing, it gives Saskatoon and surrounding communities clean drinking water.
Our river gives us aesthetic pleasure when we walk beside it or canoe on it. And we love encountering wildlife here, right in the city: we love the cormorants and geese and pelicans, the fox and coyote and deer, the muskrats and pine martens.
Now, however, some of us want to build a playground, not beside the river, not on unused or reclaimed land, not inside a building, but right
in the river.
So this is how we as citizens are going to be tested. How much have we learned since 1939? How committed are our civic leaders to the needs of a river? A river needs careful regulation and real stewardship, a river needs quiet, a river needs us to keep our distance from it.
When the time comes, what will we choose? To give up more of the riverbank to development? Or to refrain, to hold ourselves back, and keep a respectful distance from at least this part of the river.
Maybe we’ll pass the test. Maybe we’ll prove that we really do believe that the river takes care of us, and so we must, in turn, take care of the river.
