The Saskatchewan man has thus been shaped by a sterner physical environment than that of most Canadians. Having been compelled to adapt himself to that environment, he has made his own rules for survival and looks with suspicion on traditional values cherished in softer lands. He tends to take a less optimistic view of life than do his neighbours, particularly those who live in Alberta. He is less ebullient and more independent. To the stranger, Saskatchewan cities may appear dull and colourless, and in many respects they are, but at least what character they do possess is honestly their own. (In this they are to be distinguished from Calgary, now an outpost of Texas, and from Edmonton, striving frenetically to become a suburb of Dawson City.) The Saskatchewan man is politically minded but distrustful of all political parties, remembering that no government did more than keep him barely alive during his time of greatest need—hence his willingness to indulge in far-out political and social experiments and his refusal to conform to any voting pattern that makes sense to the orthodox outsider. What, after all, is one to make of an electorate which for twenty years returned a socialist government to power, supported the introduction of Medicare, replaced the socialists with a government of Liberals led by an ex-socialist, and at the same time sent a solid phalanx of Tories to Ottawa?
-from “The Face of Saskatchewan” by Edward McCourt, from Themes in Canadian Literature: The Prairie Experience (1975), edited by Terry Angus
