When Linda Cymbalisty married Joe Skomorowski, they set their sights on leaving Winnipeg and setting up their own plumbing shop in a rural town. And that included quitting university and becoming a plumber herself! As it turned out, that was easier said than done – much, much easier said than done. She was far ahead of her time, and ran into major roadblocks with educators, and even with the plumbers union. But she was not a quitter. She knew what she wanted, and would not, did no...

In 1997 Gene Krepekavich, the longtime Yorkton Terrier booster, volunteer and club president for six seasons published the history of the first 25 years of the junior Terriers hockey team. It starts with the 1972-73 season. But what few, if any, remembered then and now, and what is not recorded in recent official histories of junior hockey in Yorkton, is an earlier team, also known as the Yorkton Terriers, which also played in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League. It played one season,...

A local fundraiser that started in a snowy highway ditch has grown into an event that refuses to slow down, and now includes wheeled riders in the desert. We follow the history of Yorkton’s Snowarama from a 1977 ride sparked by the pro wrestler "Whipper" Billy Watson to a multi‑chapter effort that supports SaskAbilities programs including Camp Easter Seal, the summer fun program, and adaptive technology services that enhance the lives of clients with various challenges. A number o...

Duval Lang, known to many as Duve, has been immersed in Calgary live theatre for 46 years now. He ended up there for university, and has called it home ever since, other than when he travelled the world as an actor. But in Yorkton, in the 1960s, he was one of the players on a provincial high school championship football team, representing Yorkton Collegiate Institute; not a big guy to be playing on the line, but fast and pesky for the opposition to deal with. His dad, Elmer Lang, owned ...

To the many newer residents of Yorkton, the name Ruth Shaw likely isn’t recognizable. But to those who lived here in the latter half of the previous century, the name, and the woman who bore that name, was an unassuming but powerful force and voice in helping the province and beyond know about Yorkton through at least three major roles she played in the city. For 16 years she was the reporter and bureau manager of the Regina Leader-Post, a job she took over from her husband when Cliff died un...

They were typical teenage boys when they lived in Yorkton in the 1970s, 80s, and into the early 90s. They came from different backgrounds, attended school here, took part in a variety of activities, pursued different goals, and left when they completed high school, four ending up in Alberta and one in Saskatoon. A common factor for these five young men from Yorkton is that they ended up at higher levels of politics – three are now members of Parliament, one was an Alberta cabinet minister, on...

Dan Calef was, and sometimes still is, Dan the Storyman, known locally as the story-telling head of the Yorkton public library from 1983 to 1999. He looked after story time for kids, and told stories on local television in a show that ended up being shown nationally, and then also on American television. We turn the tables on him in this podcast by telling his story. Here in Yorkton, he was also regularly seen to be running on the streets of Yorkton, easily recognizable by his long-ish...

In the summer and fall of 2025, several factors came together, one of them out of the blue, to tackle and do more about hunger and food insecurity in Yorkton. The first was in early summer when the city of Yorkton hired a barriers to access co-ordinator, someone who was tasked with helping to set up local committees to address various barriers in the community. There was already a social housing committee dealing with homelessness and housing, but other needs and opportunities were identified...

Those working in the field of psychiatry and mental health treatment across Canada and the United States came to Yorkton in 1964 and 1965 in large numbers to see for themselves how a new way of treating mental health patients was being implemented at the new Yorkton Psychiatric Centre. The new facility was a radical departure from what had been standard mental health treatment facilities in Saskatchewan: large impersonal buildings at Weyburn and North Battleford that, from the outside, could ...

Kristopher Grunert was born and raised on the family farm on Orkney Road, a short drive northwest of Yorkton. His parents, sister and he lived on land first established as the Grunert homestead in 1888. Farming, however, was not in Kris’ future. As a teenager he developed a keen interest in skateboarding, then a relatively new sport in Yorkton, and that led him to Vancouver to pursue that dream. As it turned out, the skateboarding dream clashed with reality, but it did lead to a career and wi...