FTLComm - Tisdale - November 22, 2000

The provincial government has been experiencing a windfall in revenue as a result of the high value of crude oil. This extra money is reported to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. With this in mind it was interesting that the provincial government announced Tuesday it was going to spend $5,000,000 in highway repairs. Within minutes of hearing this on the news this is the scene encountered about eight miles North of Tisdale Tuesday afternoon. A crew were in the midst of repairing a bridge, this kind of work is almost always done in the summer and it is very rare to see work of this kind being carried out during the winter months. Perhaps it is only a coincidence but it certainly seemed odd that the announcement and the actual work in progress would come so close together. It might also reflect a matter of attitude. In many parts of Saskatchewan highway conditions suggest that little or no maintenance is being performed on the roads at all and any work is in fact a newsworthy item. However, around Tisdale highway maintenance has been pretty good with the exception of the road over to the abandoned railway line from Bjorkdale to Weekes where the road conditions have always been poor but the high volume of heavy trucks is destroying what little highway was there in the first place.