Devine Rule in Saskatchewan: A Decade of Hope and Hardship

Joe Cherwinski is a history professor at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

The cover of this book of essays immediately tells the reader that this
is not a flattering portrait: a boyishly naive Grant Devine, premier of
Saskatchewan, hands outstretched, palms skyward, gazes at the camera
with a stunned look on his face, as if to say, “What am I supposed to
do about your problems?” The passage of time since its publication,
however, has greatly altered the importance of this obvious stinging
indictment of the man and all that he stood for.

The list of contributors reads like a Who’s Who of those left out in
the cold during the nine dismal years between 1982 and 1991, when the
Devine Tories were in power—NDP politicians, social science academics,
social activists, and unemployed former political appointees, all with
axes to grind and the talent and skill to express their views for
maximum impact. Consequently, their essays constitute a catalogue of
sins of omission and commission perpetrated by the right-wing regime
under the former agricultural economics professor who took power
determined to change the nature of the Wheat Province through the magic
of Thatcher-style privatization. The contributors recount in
considerable detail how labor relations, Native rights, the environment,
health care, education, family support services, and social welfare were
savaged in the interests of showing the rest of the world that
Saskatchewan was “open for business.” The short-term fallout was
growing debt, mismanagement, and the alienation of significant social
and economic minorities; the longer-term impact was to be felt in the
erosion of the province’s unique way of life, sacrificed at the temple
of the god Mammon.

The NDP victory in October 1991 elevated the status of this volume from
that of a well-written and well-researched polemic to that of a
significant primary source that helped raise the electorate’s
consciousness regarding the sad state of affairs and thus contributed to
the humiliating end of Devine rule.