Hellway 368 “The Calvert Trail”

Gopher News 167 Comments

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Rita Bourgault is trying to get the attention of the Calvert government – always easier said than done when you live in rural Saskatchewan;

I just moved back to my home community of St. Brieux after living in Saskatoon for 30 years and, then most recently, Calgary for 4 years. This little town is an entrepreneurial success story. It has a population of just over 500 people and about 500 manufacturing jobs. As you would expect, many of the employees have to commute from neighbouring towns.
The crux of the problem is the abominable condition of Highway # 368 (I use that term loosely), between St. Brieux and the town of Lake Lenore. This is the only highway into St. Brieux from the south. This road is almost impassable when the weather is perfect. It becomes impassable when it rains. It is 30 KM of broken pavement with pockets of gravel and warning signs. You would swear you’re driving through a minefield. There have been 2 road accidents involving semi trailers that are attributable to road conditions. The road is so soft in places that I have bottomed out with my 4 x 4 Nissan X-Trail. In the areas that don’t have loose gravel, you basically weave using the entire road trying to avoid hitting the large potholes. I have included some photos of the road so you can see its condition for yourself.

Because of the condition of the road, any manufactured products or supplies shipped in and out of St. Brieux have to be routed through Melfort. This is about a 100 KM detour. This is a significant additional cost to everyone including the environment. Any employees who live to the south of St. Brieux have to travel this very dangerous road on a daily basis.
Besides the negative impact to the companies located in St. Brieux, there are a number of individuals who live in this community who do business and receive medical, dental and other services in the town of Humboldt. This has become a nightmare journey for these individuals. Many of these people are elderly.
My late father, Frank Bourgault, founded Bourgault Industries in 1973 and his sons continue his dream. He founded this company, in a time when many people were leaving the farm and the village, largely to create employment for his children and his community. This has lead to a community with a virtual unemployment rate of 0%. Because of the relative prosperity, the social problems in the community are almost non existent.
Over time there has been a concerted effort on the part of the business and community leaders to work with the government on addressing this crisis. This is not something that has just come about. This is a result of years of neglect of the roads in this vital part of the province. I am told that, at one point, the mayor of the town took the provincial Transport Minister for a ride on this road.
The various manufacturing enterprises ( Bourgault Industries Ltd, F.P. Bourgault Tillage Tools Ltd., Dryair 2000 Inc., Assié Industries Ltd., Free Form Plastic Products, and other smaller enterprises) conservatively annually produce between 150 and 175 million dollars of equipment, much of which is exported to the U.S. and overseas. The revenue to all levels of Government from this little community is probably between 70 and 100 million per year.

Bourgault Industries Ltd. offered to help fund the building of a passable road to southern markets. This offer has been met with silence. It would seem to any fair-minded individual that this community has paid for a decent road time and time again.
This Government always talks about creating employment and yet a community that has done such a good job of keeping its young from moving to Alberta is treated with such contempt.
I am reaching out to you to help to inform the public of Saskatchewan and Canada of this very serious problem. I followed your website very closely during the last federal election. I personally believe that you and other like-minded fair rational individuals have had a major impact on the election by overriding the bias of the mainstream media. I am hoping that you would be willing to help our great little town in its fight for a decent road.

My pleasure, Rita.
More Callers to John Gormley Live this morning included one resident who advised that there were 72 red warning flags along a 16 km stretch of this highway last year.

Today the Saskatchewan government launched an ad campaign that will promote tax cuts to out-of-province business called “Think Sask”. They have a website… this is how it looked this morning. It’s a subliminal message, I guess.
(It’s now been changed)

(If anyone has more photos, send them on. Identify the road, send in .jpg format, and not too large, please. If I get enough, I’ll do a followup post next week. My email info is on the sidebar.)

167 Replies to “Hellway 368 “The Calvert Trail””

  1. Typical of NDP gov’ts, waste millions on failed enterprises and neglect their areas of responsibility. The sooner Calvert gets the boot, the sooner people can start to return to Saskatchewan. I hope that your posting this leads to positive results for this community (which seems more like an Alberta community).

  2. I remember getting into an argument with a municipal councillor once over some stupid wateful recreational spending that I thought should be user pay.
    He responded by asking me if I’d like to build and maintain my own roads as well. Then shut up when I reminded him that he made me do exactly that when he approved my new hog barns a couple of years earlier.
    After reading this story I guess I should be grateful they let me even build my own road.

  4. mmmm.Close shop and move it to alberta, or just say you are…that will open eyes!

  5. These pictures do not do this highway justice, it is much, much worse than these pictures depict. My wife came to the farm to visit me and litterally got stuck with her Honda Civic, in a pothole where her car got hung up. Luckily some people where following, they couldnt push it out by hand but had to pull it out of the pothole with their truck. Luckily little damage was done.
    On a side note they just paved the highway to Annnaheim(1 1/2 years ago), and that highway is litterally falling apart before our eyes. There are a few spots where the trucks have fallen through and wrecked the membrame of the Highway. Fix these highways right the first time or dont bother.

  6. I have bumper stickers that read: “Free Saskatchewan! End the Socialist Regime!” then there is a picture of the province with a ball and chain around it, and NDP is stamped on the ball.
    I sent some to Kate, and a few other bloggers, but we need them on ever farm truck in the province. The first 1000 went rather well, actually. It is amasing how many people honk and give you the thumbs up when they see them. I haven’t had any vandalism on any of my vehicles, I know that is a concern.
    I am about to order another 1000. Anyone who would like some please e-mail me. I don’t make any money on them, I just want them out there. The cost is about 50 cents per sticker, or less, I have to talk to the printer. I like to sell them in a package of 100. Again, whatever my cost is, that’s what I charge.

  7. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation usually runs a contest for bad roads every year. You should enter your pictures.
    If Bourgault Industries had not been built by “evil” free enterprise and had been on the government tit like Flexicoil, we would probably had a divided highway to their door.
    Credit to the Bourgault family for staying in Saskatchewan and keeping 500 jobs here. I am sure the boys have been tempted and lured to more friendly jurisdictions like Manitoba, the Dakotas and Alberta.

  8. Treent, I was given one of those bumper stickers in Stoon: the fellow refused a twoonie, and I took one: I ahve been wanting a bunch more ever since! I posted it near a Sasktel building, and it lasted about a week!
    About St Brieux, everyone knows that this is not NDP territory, the people are hard-working, self-sufficient and honest, and the dippers are not popular there! I think that explains the poor quality of the Calvert trail!

  9. I’ve lived in rural areas all my life and haven’t met a farmer yet who not only had complaining down to a fine art but an exact science too.
    My solution to bad roads, a 4WD vehicle. I always get to where I’m going and only complain about people who want everything handed to them.

  10. just curious . .. are any of these very successful entrepreneurial businesses unionized ??
    Also just wondering, how do the people of St. Brieux vote ? NDP ??

  12. This road is a disgrace and does not even meet the minimum standard for a Third World country, let alone for an area, in a province, in a country that is as prosperous as we are.
    Fortunately there have not been any fatalities yet, but I believe the clock is ticking on that. Will it take a death or serious injury to get some attention??
    Yes this is not NDP territory, and we definitely are feeling the effects of that.

  13. “This road is a disgrace and does not even meet the minimum standard for a Third World country…”
    Have you ever even seen a third world country road?

  15. DAve, I live and work in St.Brieux and I have just recently bought a 4WD. I bought it to better get around on our winter roads…. not to embrace the off-roading experience of Highway 368. It is really as bad as some claim! This spring, you had to map it out to get through safely… I’m not kidding. I haven’t been on it for a few weeks as I will take back roads if I have to travel south. I feel for the people who live along it or have to travel it very day to get to work! I don’t care what kind of vehicle you are driving, this road will destroy it.
    An interesting note, the 368 was washed out at one location this spring. I had the opportunity to examine the washout cut-away. It’s no wonder this road can’t be maintained! It is composed of;
    – 2″ of asphault
    – 3″ of clay
    – the rest of the base…all the way down, is black dirt scooped out of the ditch and fields I can only assume
    … not a structurally sound Roman road for sure!
    Another note… I was on a tour buss in Cuba this winter & our guide was apologizing to us about the road conditions. A fellow passenger ( a retired school teacher from Regina)proceeded to educate her on the fact that not one of our Saskatchewan roads was nearly as bad as this. I thought that the road was pretty good considering what I was used to. I told this fella “you haven’t been out to our neck of the woods there fella. We’re a long way from Regina”

  18. Very Orwellian of the Sask government to call these roads “highways”. More like a secondary or tertiary with spotty asphalt. It certainly keeps wheel-alignment companies in business.
    They should just give up on these and let the local RM build it up as a grid road.
    Perhaps if the government expropriated Bourgeault (call it SaskFarmMachineryEtc) there would be a sudden improvement to the local highway infrastructure.
    Oh, Kate, regarding more photos, let’s be Web2.0 about this. Let’s start a tag on Flickr, call it “saskatchewanhighway”

  20. First off get rid of the Nissan thingie and get yourself a real vehicle, oh, say like an F-150 or a GMC Sierra

  21. Good post Rita. This road has a 60kmh speed limit. That is about 50kmh too high.
    Note to David Brown: it is not only farmers complaining about the road. I believe it is soft headed fools like yourself who are keeping the NDP in government.

  22. Nothing will change!!! everyone who works for the government, crowns, and teachers, their spouses, kids, relatives, vote ndp and they outnumber the rest of us. Only when everthing falls apart, then it will change “you have to destroy the village to save the village”
    Off topic, if our crowns are such a great benefit, such a great asset, why is our population decreasing?

  23. Should more money be devoted to highways in SK? Absolutley, as more money should be devoted to Devine debt repayment as well as a host of other things. But it must be said that this may be possible, were we not tethered to the corpse of agriculture with it’s incessant demands for more and more of the tax dollar.

  24. Great comments Rita. I have to drive this road to work evry day and I’ve been encouraging everyone in the Humboldt region to write to Minister Lautermilch to express their concern about the state of this Hwy.
    Lorne Calverts favorite mantra is “under an NDP government nobody gets left behind”. I think Mr. Calvert should come out and drive on 368 and he would realize that the people out in this part of rural Saskatchewan, the ones who are creating wealth for this province are definitely being left behind.
    Oh, and by the way Peter D., I spent three weeks in Brazil two years ago. I travelled thousands of Kilometers throughout the state of Alagoas which is by far the poorest state in Brazil and not once did I encounter a road that was as bad as 368 is right now.

  25. Note to maryjane. Devine was booted out of office when? 15 years ago. The NDP have had this time to weave their economic magic on this province and where has it got us. You sound like Pat Atkinson. Devine, Devine, Devine scary monster. We are not strictly a farming community. We are an industrial town producing hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy. I guess we are not as smart as preachers, school teachers and other intellectuals who run this once great province.

  26. nobody left behind.
    hard to get left behind with everyone driving so slow on the hatched roads.
    another disconnect – the government will look after you as long as you keep paying them to do so. minus a 25% adminstration fee.

  27. DonF…15 yrs. ago SK was on the verge of bankruptcy, so we’ve come a long way. And I agree with you. We should be investing in the infrastructure that will facilitate successful enterprise, not throwing good money after bad on the squeakiest wheel on the political highway.
    I mean, after all, we’ve poured $ billions into the farm sector over two decades and WHERE HAS IT GOT US?

  28. I rode my motorcycle through Saskatchewan last year and most of the highways seemed pretty bad. I also have some family in that area.
    It seems to me that Bourgault Industries is one of the things keeping that area alive, so it should be on the government to do their part. There seemed to be a lot of empty villages as I drove through….

  29. Most roads in Saskatchewan are the same, … BAD!! Seems if you have “cream” in your coffee before you start your travels, ten miles down the road and it’s “butter”!! Vehicle damage, accidents, even death because of the conditions of Saskatchewan highways! Did you see on TV a couple of years back that a MAJOR highway that truckers use to get to and from the States was ten KM’s of DIRT!!? Yes,a DIRT road running through a farmers field is all that a part of that highway was! They interviewed truckers and the comments were not surprising! The only thing more stupid in this provence than the ndp is the FOOLS that vote them in!! EXCUSES are endless, ACTION is non existant. I’ve visited Ukraine and the roads there are waaay better than Saskatchewan highways. What are the braindead ndp doing with our tax dollars?? Buying useless money losing crown corporations, investing in money losing schemes, paying law suits/penalties for poor business management practises???! ALL of the above?? They’re gonna get knocked off their perch pretty soon and deservedly so!
    The danger and economic hardship caused by the state of our roadways is laughable and people ARE laughing. Thing is, is not funny!!
    TRENT:
    Where oh where can I get my hands on some of those stickers of which you speak?? I’d gladly take twenty, for starters. I live in Moose Jaw. Any suppliers here?
    Rural residents seem to know the ndp for who they are. Urban residents need to be educated so we can do something about this come the next election.

  30. We travelled on 368 last summer to go to the Regional Park at St.Brieux.There is no way you would be able to pull a travel trailer over this road with out wrecking it.This is a real disgrace as St. Brieux has a wonderfull Regional Park.

  31. Well, I’m glad to see things haven’t changed in the last half dozen years[sarcasm here].
    I remember heading to Sask for a photo shoot by Leader. I came into Saskatchewan via Alta Hwy 9 and was rather shocked to see a paved secondary highway with paved shoulders suddenly turn into a potholed camel trail called Sask #7 at the border. My second mistake was to head south on #44. Besides a few hundred feet of oiled gravel in front of farm driveways, the “highway” was disgusting. My vehicle aged a dozen years travelling that road not to mention loosening all my dental fillings.
    I lived in Saskatchewan in the early eighties and I believe that was the last time the government put any money into infrastructure. Besides the TransCanada, that most travellers see that is. I honestly don’t understand how, a) everyone hasn’t left that province, or b) why they haven’t tossed out those useless governments that have kept that province in a third world socialist’s dream.
    The only part of Sask that is “have not” is that big building in Regina by the goose pond.

  33. I’ve heard this arguement for so many years now.
    Why not a reclassification of the roads and show this on a map.
    Why call it a highway if it’s not a highway anymore. Maybe more people would take note as to how bad our roads have gotten.

  34. the problem with your method of keeping your topic on top for your site is that it stays on top on the blogroll for bloggingtories.

  35. the problem with your method of keeping your topic on top for your site is that it stays on top on the blogroll for bloggingtories. be a good dear and let it fall through like the rest.

  36. Peter D my husband and I went to Honduras and I will tell you their roads are much better than this.

  37. I had a nice little accident in rural Saskatchewan due to the state of a road near the N.Sask river. Apparently I was driving the wrong way on a one-way road, but the road signs telling me that the road was one-way where overgrown with trees and grass. One of the signs was hand-painted by a local farmer, obviously not a DOT approved sign.
    I took many photos to document the lack of signs. I sent those photos to my insurance agent. The agent figured it was a “slam-dunk” – in other words – I would not be responsible for the accident.
    Well 6 weeks later SGI sent in their own pictures of the road in question. Guess what? Before taking all the pictures, they trimmed all the trees and cut all the grass. The signs where perfectly visible, and that meant that I was responsible for the accident.
    The only means I had to challenge SGI’s finding was to sue them. The damages where not significant enough to make that worth while.
    At the time I had my 1 yr old in the vehicle. Obviously it could have been a pretty serious accident. I complained to the local municipality, etc, but received no assurances that they would continue to trim the trees and cut the grass.
    Pretty pathetic.

  38. I have been reading the comments thus far and just have to get my 2 cents in. Back in the early nineties I was working in Melfort and every couple of weeks made a trip to Humboldt via #368, in those days it wasn’t a bad road.
    In 1993 when the NDP were elected I moved to Alberta…(big difference in the roads here). But in 2001 I had a mental lapse moved back to Saskatchewan. I couldn’t believe that in that short a period of time the road network in that province could go to hell so fast. Highway #41, the road from Tuxford to Central Butte, Hiway #2 from #11 through Watrous just to mention a few, were in terrible shape. After I was back for two years I could understand what had happend and why.
    First, an NDP government (tax and spend, second, an overall crappy attitude all the way from the business men to the citizens (no hope),
    third, an ever decreasing population base, again (no hope). I took a look around and said to hell with this and came running back to Alberta. Believe me I would rather be back home, but the negativity just makes me nuts! I just can’t exist in a socialist climate…it just like living in a boarded up room with no light. I just can’t understand why so many people vote NDP….WHY? The old saying goes “you are known by the company you keep”, so what’s Saskatchewan known for. High taxes, poor business climate, pro-labour, bad roads, broke farmers, cheap real estate, depopulation, dying towns and cities, and an never ending love affair with socialism.
    I can’t see how you expect the capital markets, the people with the money to spend, to ever embrace investment with the reputation your province has earned. In fact if a miracle were to happen and a “free enterprise” government were to be elected and stay in power for let’s say 30 years, it will take a couple of generations for the capital markets to gain enough trust to start investing. You see the people of Saskatchewan have a bad habit of voting socialists back into power and breaking trust with the capital markets over and over again.
    So I can only say it appears “you get what you deserve”…..if you can’t come to your collective senses and boot those NDP Bastards out, you better get good glass insurance coverage, cause you will be driving on a lot more gravel.

  39. Regarding the photos,
    OK, I have a tag on flickr. It may take a few hours before they’re made public, so be patient (I put the two pictures above to kick things off)
    To view the photos, surf to http://www.flickr.com and search for one of the following tags:
    saskatchewanhighway
    saskhighways
    The second one is easier to spell for Ontario folks. Ha! just kidding. If anyone else is posting using their own flickr account, use those tags.
    Kate, if you like you can forward any photos you receive to my email.

  40. Not really an excuse but Saskatchewan has far more miles of road per population than Manitoba. And our highways aren’t much better.

  41. “not throwing good money after bad”
    Then explain to me how this debt ridden provincial government has managed to find money under Preacher Calvert to add nearly 5000 new civil service employees to the payroll, as the population they “serve” continues to decrease?

  42. These roads have been paid for several times over with Federal and Provincial fuel tax.
    Transport companies have been lobbying for a long time to have these taxes put directly into transportation infrastructure (for which they were originally intended), instead of being directed to general revenue, where only a small fraction returns to road construction and repair.

  43. It looks like you’d have a smoother ride by abandoning the “highways” and driving in the farmer’s fields. Gopher holes will be smaller than the potholes!

  44. Wow we have unimproved clay roads around here that look like interstates compared to that “highway” of course there are signs that say Unimproved Clay Road Use at own Risk.
    Hard to believe they call 368 a highway.
    To the person that suggested the F-150 or Sierra, my work truck (GMC 2500 HD) has 110,000 KM they just replaced the ball joints , new transfercase housing and bearing . As well as new clutch fingers for four wheeel drive and low and high range as they where pretty well shot.
    Looking at the pictures of 368 they resemble many of the uncharted paths I have to drive on everyday.

  45. The Blogging Tories will have to take a pill. CKOM has been sending listeners here as part of their hourly newscast this morning, so stay at the top it will for now.

  46. Who was it that said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? Hell, under Saskatechewan Calvertism, it isn’t even paved at all.

  47. this is the kind of thing the federal infrastructure money missed while it was consummed with necessary infrastruture projects like refitting the saddledome with new close to the ice boxes.
    Im not making this up, in Canada.

  48. Here’s some advice for Calvert and his crew; A good government is like a good hockey referee. If a referee is doing a good job you shouldn’t even notice him. It is the same with good government , if they stick to what they are suppose to do and simply supply infrastructure to support free enterprise and then let the entreprenuers take care of creating jobs and growing the economy you wouldn’t even notice the government. It seems that our left-leaning NDP can’t stand to quietly stay on the sidelines and let the entreprenuers play the game, instead they insist on spending our tax dollars on direct investment in business. If the money that was spent on business investment was instead spent on infrastructure like re-building 368 then we wouldn’t even know the government was there because they would be doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing and nothing more. We would all be better off and we would have a much better game, not to mention a hell of a lot more players.

  50. I had a nice little accident in rural Saskatchewan due to the state of a road near the N.Sask river. Apparently I was driving the wrong way on a one-way road, but the road signs telling me that the road was one-way where overgrown with trees and grass. One of the signs was hand-painted by a local farmer, obviously not a DOT approved sign.
    I took many photos to document the lack of signs. I sent those photos to my insurance agent. The agent figured it was a “slam-dunk” – in other words – I would not be responsible for the accident.
    Well 6 weeks later SGI sent in their own pictures of the road in question. Guess what? Before taking all the pictures, they trimmed all the trees and cut all the grass. The signs where perfectly visible, and that meant that I was responsible for the accident.
    The only means I had to challenge SGI’s finding was to sue them. The damages where not significant enough to make that worth while.
    At the time I had my 1 yr old in the vehicle. Obviously it could have been a pretty serious accident. I complained to the local municipality, etc, but received no assurances that they would continue to trim the trees and cut the grass.
    Pretty pathetic.

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