Class was in session on the South Saskatchewan River Sunday afternoon when the Prairie Steamship Heritage Association hosted a unique seminar on the Prairie Lily. The symposium focused on the history of steamships in the province and even a shipwreck in Saskatoon.
It may be hard to imagine now, but over a hundred years ago Saskatchewan rivers were the highways of today.
“The age of steam arrived in approximately 1860s in the Prairies,” said association chair Butch Amundson.
“It opened this part of the world to the modernization starting in the east and going to the west. There was a big spike when steamboats happened.”
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According to Amundson, even landlocked Saskatchewan has had its fair share of shipwrecks, even one in Saskatoon – The SS City of Medicine Hat.
“On June 7th, 1908, it collided with the traffic bridge and sank,” Amundson recounts.
The anchor of the ship was found by fire department divers in 2006, but the re-discovery of the ship happened when Amundson was doing geo-technical testing for the new bridge.
READ MORE: Steamship on the Prairies: wreck from 1908 found in South Saskatchewan River
Dr. Jennie Christensen was one of the speakers at the symposium and is researching how the crew members of the 1845 Franklin Expedition died trying to find the Northwest Passage. She’s analyzing the nail of a crew member to find out if they could have died from lead poisoning.
“For the last couple of years I’ve been working on one particular tissue, which is a thumbnail from one of the deceased members of the Franklin, John Hartnell,” Christensen explained.
Christensen said there were high levels of lead in the cans of food, but if that’s the official reason for the deaths we’ll have to wait to find out. Her research won’t be published for the next couple of months.
WATCH BELOW: The steamship era on the Prairies