Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look back at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week's list ...
Biggar knows what decline looks like.
Like hundreds of small towns across Saskatchewan, its downtown slowly emptied out over the years. Stores closed. Buildings aged. People stopped lingering on Main Street the way they once did. What had once been the centre of community life became quieter, year by year.
Read more Saskatchewan Stories from Brittany Caffet:
- Meet the athlete running 1,600 km across Saskatchewan in 30 days
- The legend of Doc Shadd: A Black folk hero who shaped Saskatchewan
- The Shell Lake Massacre, a Rawlco Radio podcast
Biggar’s revitalization project was about more than fresh coat of paint and new sidewalks. It was a community deciding its future was still worth fighting for. (Submitted)
Wayne Brownlee remembers when it was different.
“When I was a kid, Main Street on a Saturday evening was full of people,” he reflected.
Farmers brought their families into town for the weekend. They shopped, filled restaurants and spent evenings walking up and down the street together.
“It was so vibrant,” Brownlee recalled.
He said he remembers crowds gathering outside Mooney Hardware after colour televisions first arrived, watching Maple Leafs and Canadiens games through the store window.
“Everybody was out in town,” he said. “Walking around and enjoying themselves. It was a community.”
Listen to the story on Behind the Headlines:
That version of small-town Saskatchewan feels almost mythical now. Rural depopulation, economic pressure and the pull of larger cities have hollowed out many prairie communities.
Across the province, people often talk about small towns in the past tense — as places that used to matter.
But Biggar decided not to accept that fate.
The Biggar Revitalization Project began in 2021. The work included upgrading sidewalks, new lighting and signage, a replica train station, a permanent concert stage and a farmer’s market. (Submitted)
Brownlee said he and his wife Ina Lou spent years thinking about what they could do for the town that shaped both of them. Biggar was home. Brownlee’s grandfather had served as mayor in the 1930s. His father was born there. So were Ina Lou’s parents.
And as their retirement approached, the couple decided they wanted to give something back.
“We really should do something for Biggar,” Brownlee recalled his wife saying.
What followed was an idea so ambitious many people initially dismissed it outright.
The Brownlees offered to contribute $2.5 million toward revitalizing Main Street and transforming the Canadian National Railway grounds into a park.
There was only one condition, but it was a big one. The community needed to raise another $2.5 million itself.
For a town of just 2,133 people, according to the 2021 Census, it sounded unrealistic.
“Nobody really took them seriously at first,” Mayor Jim Rickwood said. “They just thought it was somebody that was trying to sell a bag of magic beans.”
But the offer was real, and so was the challenge. So the people of Biggar did what small-town Saskatchewan residents do best. They got to work.
On June 13, the community will host the Biggar Country Music Festival, a free, all-ages concert to celebrate the completion of the revitalization project. (Submitted)
Over three years, volunteers organized fundraisers, attended planning meetings and pushed through their disagreements and setbacks. Residents bought into a vision bigger of revitalization than landscaping or fresh paint. They bought into the idea that their town was still worth fighting for.
And they succeeded.
Today, Biggar’s downtown looks a lot different. Main Street has been rebuilt with new sidewalks, lighting, storefront improvements and public gathering spaces. The park at the end of the street has also been transformed.
But the physical changes are only part of the story.
“As rewarding as it is seeing the changes that have come to Main Street, I think the energy that it put back into the town… in some ways that’s the real gift,” Brownlee said.
That energy matters, because rural Saskatchewan is constantly told what it cannot do.
It cannot attract investment.
It cannot keep young families.
It cannot compete.
It cannot grow.
Biggar challenged that narrative.
The town is known for its slogan “New York is big, but this is Biggar.” (Submitted)
“We’ve had so many people move here from Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta within the last four years,” Rickwood said proudly. “It’s really solidified the fact that we look damn good. And it didn’t happen by accident.”
That outlook cuts deeper than civic pride. It speaks to something many rural communities are searching for right now: proof that renewal is still possible.
Not every town will receive a multi-million-dollar donation, but Biggar’s success did not come from money alone. What happened in Biggar required people to believe in the place again, and then do the exhausting work of rebuilding it together.
On June 13, the community will celebrate with the Biggar Country Music Festival, a free concert marking the completion of the revitalization project.
Main Street will fill with people again. And for Brownlee, it will feel quite familiar. Decades after standing outside Mooney Hardware and watching hockey through a storefront window, he will once again see crowds gathered downtown in the community he never stopped believing in.
The people won’t just be celebrating what Biggar was. They’ll be celebrating what it has become again.
Wayne Brownlee (left) and Biggar Mayor Jim Rickwood agreed that the revitalization project was a true community effort. It was no easy feat for a town of just over 2,000 people to raise $2.5 million. (Brittany Caffet/650 CKOM)
