For better or worse the Rural Municipality of Dundurn is changing.

The RM’s population is increasing daily due to the rapid growth of Saskatoon and the desire of the city folk to escape the concrete jungle that obscure their vision during the hours of 9 to 5 to a place more in tune with nature for the rest of their day.

Fred Wilson, Reeve of the RM of Dundurn, confirmed the municipality’s population grew by around 81 per cent between 2006 and 2011 to about 1,148 citizens. He said the growth has been a challenge, but they are prepared for even more people moving to the municipality in the near future.

“We’ll take it as it comes,” said Wilson. “We have made preparations for future expansion. It’s like everything else. It’s changing the perspective of our municipality considerably. When change comes you have to adapt to it, so we’re adapting.”

Wilson said the RM has increased their fire protection services, outside staff and equipment base in the past few years to meet the needs of the increased population. He said they have been able to cope primarily due to their dedicated staff who is working to keep the municipality moving smoothly along and because of the locations where the majority of new residents are moving.

“Everything that has been happening has been in fairly close proximity to Highway 11, which is our main artery to Saskatoon,” he said. “That has helped the development quite a bit. We’re not having to build a lot of extra roads. We are refurbishing our roads all the time, that is a cost, but the expansion of the tax base has helped cover the cost of that.”

The majority of the subdivisions being developed are at the north end of the RM, said Wilson, noting that land is not friendly to large farm operations, so when the farmers that were there retired nobody was around to take it over.

“That’s how the developers came in,” he said. “They sold the land to developers and that is how it actually started happening. The developers were prepared to pay considerably more money for the land than what the local farmers were prepared to pay for it.”

Wilson said to meet the growth experienced in the past seven years the RM has been increasing the residential subdivisions in the municipality considerably and they are now filling in with houses. He said two more subdivisions have been recently applied for and approved with 30 lots per subdivision and construction is beginning on those already.

To read more please see the Sept. 16 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

The next time you drive or walk by Steven Barlow’s brick building on Railway Avenue, stop, look up and learn to appreciate.
Barlow, who operates a registered massage therapy clinic inside, sees the building as a piece of art.
He’s been steadily restoring it for the last couple of years since he bought it from Dr. Al-Katib in 2011. He says most people fail to notice its architectural features because it is so close to the street.
There are three brick pilasters at the top and two arches that gracefully cover the second-storey windows.
To get a better look, try stepping back, going as far as the railway tracks. From this distance take a trip back in time and imagine you are a passenger on a Canadian Northern Railway train, pulling into Davidson for the first time. It is from this perspective the building is meant to be viewed. Back then the railway, not the highway, was the town’s main street.
Brick buildings like Barlow’s, although modest in size, were built not just for function, but also for beauty. They were to impress people and to demonstrate that this is a progressive, prosperous community where a businessman could afford to erect a building that would last a century.
Now that it’s in Barlow’s care, it should last another 100 years.
The building on Railway Avenue was built in 1906 by general merchant W. J. Robinson and was known as the “Robinson Block”. It became a medical centre in 1908 when Dr. H. G. Craig arrived in Davidson and opened an office in the brick building. Ever since, the main floor served as a medical clinic until Dr. Al-Katib moved his practice to Saskatoon in 2001.
Barlow has invested much time and money restoring the solid brick building and its stone foundation.
The most recent phase of the work was completed last week when masons, who have spent most of the summer re-pointing the brick on the front wall, packed up their scaffolding and headed for home.
Barlow is pleased with their work.
Master Stone Masonry did the restoration.
Last week, master stonemason Wayne Kent was on the job.
“My great-grandfather was a stonemason, my grandfather was a stonemason. My father was a mason, but he figured there was a warmer way to make a living,” says Kent, who followed his grandfather into the family profession, which, he jokes, is also one of the world’s oldest. Kent is proud that his son Adam now owns the company, carrying on the family tradition.
He said he and Adam were splitting stones in a field and nearby was a house that stood on a stone foundation built by his great-grandfather and grandfather.
That day, “my son was the fifth generation stone mason splitting stone in that yard,” Kent says.
To read more please see the Sept. 16 print edition of The Davidson Leader.