Weyburn centenarians reflect on Canada's changing demographics

Canada is celebrating 150 years as a country this year and, while no Canadian is close to old enough to remember that, some are closer than others. 

Centenarians were the fastest-growing portion of the population from 2011 to 2016, increasing 41.3 per cent. This demographic has been growing rapidly for many years, mainly due to the gradual increase in life expectancy. According to the most recent national census, in 2016, there are 8,230 centenarians in Canada. Five of them are in Weyburn and two of them are sisters-in-law.

Hilda Murray and Bobbi Winter are both 102 and lived Yellow Grass before taking up residence in the Weyburn Special Care Home. The duo, now hard of hearing and unable to answer some questions, still had lots to say about the changes they have noticed in Saskatchewan over the years.

Murray was one of tens of thousands of immigrants who found their way to Saskatchewan in Canada's early years to help grow the country and seek new economic opportunities. Murray came from Germany with her parents in 1927 and they settled immediately in Yellow Grass. There she met Winter, whose grandfather immigrated from Scotland and was one of the first immigrants to settle Yellow Grass.

In 1927, when Murray immigrated to Canada, the shift was already underway. From that time until today, the number of proportion of Canadians living in rural communities has decreased drastically.

"You know, Yellow Grass has changed, like the town," said Murray. "It used to be a really good town but now there's nothing. The town has just sort of dried up. It's the government. They just seem to shut down the elevators. Everything is clsoed up."

"People are moving to Weyburn and building homes in Weyburn. Yellow Grass is just kind of fading away. We used to have a lovely restaurant. It's closed. We don't have a post office anymore. What else is gone? We don't have a grocery store anymore. We have to come to Weyburn for our groceries," said Winter.

The 1861 Census, conducted a few years before Confederation, contained questions on the acres of land attached to a dwelling, the number and type of animals owned as well as the horsepower of the equipment used on the property. At that time, 3.2 million people lived in Canada, of whom 2.7 million (84 per cent) lived in a rural area. 

"I started out at Beautiful Plaine. That was a country school. Well then my sister started to go to high school so I had to go to town school - the Yellow Grass Public School," said Winter. Yellow Grass still has a public school with classes from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Canada's economy was based mainly on the primary sector—chiefly agriculture— at formation and that changed slowly over the years. Farming still was, and is today, a mainstay in the economy on the prairies but that same can not be said for the rest of the country where manufacturing and customer service jobs are where many find employment.

"I always said I wasn't going to marry a farmer but when I got married, I married a farmer. He went to the same school as we went to. We were all in the same room," said Winter.

The proportion of Canadians living in a rural area has steadily declined over the past 160 years, falling below the 50 per cent threshold between 1921 and 1931, mainly as a result of economic changes. Likely due to the Great Depression in the 1930s, the urbanization process stalled but the number of Canadians living in urban areas continued to grow in the 1940s to the 1970s.

"In the (19)30s it wasn't that good. It was hard times but we got by," said Murray.

"Your mother was a busy one then. Well, your dad was too because he was a train painter. And her mother was a train seamstress," said Winter, adding to Murray's comment.

Since then, the decline has been less pronounced between censuses. While the number of Canadians living in rural areas has been relatively stable, the population living in population centres has been rising steadily. Consequently, the proportion of Canadians who live in rural areas has fallen.

The proportion of Canadians living in a rural area is the third lowest among the G8 countries following the United Kingdom and the United States. More than 30 per cent of the population of Japan and Italy lived in a rural area in 2010 or 2011, compared with 50 per cent of the population in the emerging economies of South Africa and China and 70 per cent in India.

By 2011, fewer than one in five (nearly 19 per cent) people lived in a rural area. This shift reflected major changes in Canada's economy and society over several decades.