Yorkton Stories

Jason Payne has taught at the Yorkton Regional High School since 2002, but his involvement with youth and sports has expanded greatly beyond the boundaries of the school. His dedication to high school sports and youth sports in Yorkton is unquestioned, yet in 2018 he nearly hung up his whistle. “I was burnt out by the demands of coaching. Instead of quitting I focused on the holi

In the 2010s, Dr. Brass elementary school in Yorkton was down to under 90 students, and consideration was being given to closing the school. It is one of the older schools in Yorkton and parents in the area preferred to send their kids to other newer schools in the city. Today it is bursting at the seams, primarily due to a program that started in 2020 to attract students not only

Cambodia is a country of 17 million in southeast Asia, sandwiched between Vietnam to the east and Thailand to the west, with Laos bordering it to the north. Eighty percent of the population lives in rural areas, and 57 per cent of households in the country are involved in agricultural production, mainly rice. It is a poverty-stricken country.It's also a long way from Yorkton, but i

In Yorkton, where there are no homeless encampments, it would be tempting to think that it's one problem we don’t have to deal with. But that would be a mistake. Most of us may not see it every day, or at all, but homelessness happens in Yorkton just as it does in larger cities. The people who work with the homeless and deal with it on a daily basis are well aware of the issue, a

Ben and Tony's Barber Shop was an iconic institution in Yorkton from when the two shared a business starting in 1961 to Ben's retirement in 2008. Tony continued on his own until 2013. When he closed his shop, it provided the impetus, and inspiration, for Sean Craib-Petkau to get into barbering, and establish a men's barbershop that is reminiscent of earlier years. Two barbershops.

The history of newspapers in Yorkton now spans 132 years, starting with The Messenger, published in 1892, two years before Yorkton officially became a village. It was written by hand on notepaper, and reproduced by stencil. But we wonder, in 2024, if the writing is on the wall for newspapers printed on paper, as we explore the long history of this first, and for for several decades

From early travelling shows that entertained settlers in the Yorkton area, to occasional local little theatre productions, Open Lit nights at the old Yorkton Collegiate Institute starting in the post WWII years, elaborate musicals performed by students at Sacred Heart and Yorkton Regional High Schools starting in the 1960s, the founding of Paper Bag Players in 1984, Broadway musica

Clay Serby was first elected as the New Democrat member of the Saskatchewan Legislature for Yorkton in 1991. While he and Premier Roy Romanow had their differences initially, they became close friends, and Clay subsequently served in cabinet in high-profile portfolios – Health, Education, Highways, Municipal Affairs and Agriculture. It was under Romanow’s successor, Lorne Calve

It is January in Yorkton, where a golf season of five months is considered a good year. We're still at least three months from teeing it up, but talk about the game seldom takes a break for golfers; it's a form of self-preservation to make it to the next season. We talked with four golfers at various stages of their game: one who played pro golf on the PGA and other tours in the 19

The Balmoral Hotel on Livingstone Street was a Yorkton landmark for almost 90 years. It was owned in the early 1900s by Harry Bronfman, whose family later owned the vast Seagram empire founded on the production and sale of liquor. Their booze business started primarily at the Balmoral during prohibition from 1915 to 1924, leading to stories about tunnels, Studebaker Whisky Six cars