Frustrations over Highway #32 channeled into action
By Jordi Wieler
Southwest Booster
June 1, 2006
Anyone traveling Highway 32, the main highway between Swift Current and Leader, has experienced the disintegrating condition of the road. Now, a group of people, headed by Gordon Stueck, a pharmacist in Leader, are making sure the provincial government hears their complaints.
The newly launched website: www.highway32.ca includes photos, edited comments from anyone who needs a venue to vent their frustration, and directions on how to order bumper stickers reading “I survived Sask Hwy #32!” The proceeds of the bumper stickers sales will go towards repairing a Leader ambulance which has suffered significant damage on account of having to transverse the notoriously poor highway.
All of the comments on the site will be forwarded to the Minister of Highways. In addition, Highway #32 postcards will be provided to tourists, with the Minister of Highways’ address on the back so that people have merely to fill them out and drop them in the mail.
“We’ve had tourists come down, make it as far as the Esso service station here and request directions for the quickest way out of the province back to Alberta because they just absolutely vowed not to go any further on a Saskatchewan highway. They are so angry. Its just unbelievable,” Stueck said during a phone interview on Monday.
Stueck hopes the website will create a place where they can collect peoples’ frustrations into one spot and make the provincial government take notice. They’ve posted signs on the highway, notifying people of the website and soon they’ll have video footage online of someone driving the highway in both wet and dry conditions.
“We just feel like we’re kind of neglected out here, we’re kind of forgotten,” Stueck explained. “There’s not even a promise or a hint or a sniff, there’s just a threat that, well, we’ll turn it back to gravel. I don’t like that. Like I take that as a threat...We pay significant amounts of taxes, we have a terrific amount of oil and gas out here…all those royalties from oil and gas go to Saskatchewan. I don’t see a lot of it coming back out here to keep the roads in good repair.”
He notes the poor road conditions are preventing the Leader ambulance from making trips to the Regional Hospital in Swift Current.
“Heart attack patients or trauma patients have to be transported the shortest possible distance to the nearest base hospital and in this case Medicine Hat becomes closer because if we have to send our patients around through Maple Creek to Swift Current it’s too far,” said Stueck. “Our base hospital, which our municipalities, both urban and rural have contributed a significant amount of money to have built, is our base hospital and we can hardly ever send anybody there.”
He added, “It gets kind of bad when you have a transfer for a CT scan the patient requests that the ambulance go around through Maple Creek, which is about another half an hour longer because it’s so rough.”
Stueck wants to make it clear that Highway 32 isn’t important only to people living in the Leader area. It’s used also by travelers, tourists, and many, many others.
“Businesses from Swift Current should be up in arms about the state of this highway too,” he said. “You would like that 100 mile radius which is the prime radius for any city…but with that highway you get nobody from this area, absolutely nothing. So you can basically write off the northwest of Swift Current because they don’t have access or they don’t want access on that road.”
The public can show their support for Stueck’s Highway 32 initiative by visiting his website and posting their own comments. Stueck is certain these actions will cause the Minister of Highways to respond.
“He’ll respond somehow. I’m hoping that we’re going to have a positive response. I think he has to understand how frustrated people are out here. We’ve got people that live here say, look, just give me a choice, I’ll go to Alberta, not because of the sales tax, not because of this, not because of that, but I am not going to go down that road. And that’s quite common to hear that now. So we already lose everything to Alberta and this literally forces it that way.”
“The Department of Highways has put up a sign, it’s 70 km/h in places for nine or 12 kilometres. That’s a highway? That’s not a highway. That’s a construction zone. If it’s a construction zone, where’s the machinery? If the machinery’s not there, when are they going to be there?”
Reprinted with permission of the Southwest Booster.
< More Feature Stories
