A brief history of Saskatchewan's attempts to possess an official groundhog
A brief history of Saskatchewan's attempts to possess an official groundhog
Groundhog Club handler A.J. Dereume holds Punxsutawney Phil, the weather prognosticating groundhog, during the 136th celebration of Groundhog Day on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa., Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. Phil's handlers said that the groundhog has forecast six more weeks of winter. (AP Photo/Barry Reeger)
The annual spectacle of Groundhog Day is here. However, in Saskatchewan, the prophesying event is without its central figure, an official groundhog.
A total of five provinces across Canada have an official marmot for the occasion. From Shubenacadie Sam in Nova Scotia to Van Isle Violet in B.C.
However, in place of an official groundhog, the land of living skies has seen an abundance of forecasting from some peculiar and notable sources.
'SNEWSIE': MOOSE JAW’S PROPHESYING GOPHER
“Snewsie” was the brainchild of Warren Michelson, who came up with the idea while working as an ad executive at the Moose Jaw Times Herald.
Snewsie was the annual weather predictor for Canada’s “Most Notorious City” for a number of years in the mid 2000’s.
“We got our own Snewsie, predicting the weather for all of western Canada and its right here in Moose Jaw,” Michelson told CTV News Regina in 2008.
“We needed something that would be more localized and we thought well, the gopher being the cousin of the groundhog would be a practical thing. Its native to this area and it could tell us what the future is going to be as far as weather.”
Snewsie was of course not an actual gopher, but an anonymous Moose Jaw resident that dressed as the symbol of the prairies while delivering the forecast for the coming spring season.
GAINER THE GOPHER: A MASCOT AND FORECASTER
The mascot of the Saskatchewan Roughriders stood in for the proverbial fortune-telling rodent at an event in Dundurn in February of 2012.
CTV News Saskatoon reported from the event that Gainer emerged and did not see his shadow, indicating an early spring that year.
As it turns out, Gainer was actually correct in his assumption and the above seasonal winter led to an early spring in 2012.
WHELAN WOODY: THE UNOFFICIAL PROGNOSTICATOR
As it turns out, Saskatchewan did have an unofficial groundhog from 2014 to 2018.
Woody the Woodchuck, or Whelan Woody as he was best known as, actively made predictions about the coming spring and what laid ahead for his favourite football team, the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Woody was rescued by Richard and Shanno Burton in 2014, when they reportedly spotted a “tiny ball of fluff” on the side of the road near their home in Whelan Bay, in northern Saskatchewan.
The couple took Woody home and began caring for him, and the rest is history.
FORECASTING BY PIG SPLEEN – JEFF WOODWARD
Not all unorthodox forecasts involve living animals, according to Jeff Woodward.
Woodward inherited the odd skill from his uncle, Gus Wickstrom, a legendary reader of pig spleens from Tompkins, Sask.
Wickstrom passed away in 2007, after using his swine related forecasting tactics for over 40 years.
Since then, Woodward has been providing annual forecasts using Gus’s signature technique.
CTV News Regina caught up with Woodward in 2011, where he explained his unusual methods of predicting the weather.
“It wasn’t one of my career ambitions, no. But it seems like a natural fit now,” he chuckled while speaking CTV’s Dan McIntosh.
As it turns out, the practice has its roots amongst Swedish immigrants to the Canadian prairies. The logic of the process is that as pigs prepare for winter, they will accumulate fat on their spleens.
“In general, the fatty deposits mean snow or precipitation,” Woodward explained.
“With my uncle, people would phone him and say ‘I’m getting married on such and such a day, what’s the weather going to be like?’ And he’d say windy or cloudy or whatever. He’d be really accurate.”
While Woodward admitted he’s not particularly skilled, he did claim to beat out several forecasters and accurately predicted Saskatchewan’s major flooding in 2010.
THE GROUNDHOG: A SYMBOL OF HOPE
The question remains; does the spectacle of the groundhog predict the coming seasons?
According to Peter Geiger, an editor of the Farmers’ Almanac, the celebration of the groundhog every February achieves its intended purpose, which isn’t forecasting per say.
“During the darkest times of the year … I think there's always hope and I think if anything, the groundhog offers hope for an early spring,” Geiger told CTV News.
“I also think it's more of a statement, ‘God is winter going to end sooner or later?’ That's what people really want to know and I think that's kind of a charming tradition.”
For his weather forecasting needs, Geiger said he’ll put his trust in the Almanac’s work.
Marking its 206th year of operation in 2023, the Farmers’ Almanac claims to accurately forecast within the 80 per cent range.
The publication’s methods are based off sunspot activity and a central mathematical formula, according to Geiger.
“So in our case, our first editor, his name was David Young, and he was a mathematician, a calculator and an astronomer. So he put together a mathematical formula that is applied to sunspot activity, planet positions and the effects that we would have on the Earth. All of those plus the mathematical formula allows us to do our weather two years in advance,” he explained.
“And that seems to work very well for us.”
As for this year’s forecast, the Farmers’ Almanac is calling for a “lion-like” end to March with a wide variety of beligerent weather ranging from snow to heavy rain across western Canada.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the vote later today on the Conservative motion calling for a new study into foreign interference will not be a confidence vote.
While the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the issues surrounding Credit Suisse have shaken investor confidence, a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis appears to be unlikely, one analyst says.
Gwyneth Paltrow is scheduled to stand trial on Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by a retired optometrist who said that the actress-turned-lifestyle influencer violently crashed into him in 2016 while skiing in Utah at one of the most upscale ski resorts in the United States.
March 21 is World Down Syndrome Day and to mark the occasion a Canadian organization launched a campaign showcasing older people living with the condition.
A 31-year-old neuroscientist is believed to be among the six people missing after a massive fire in Old Montreal last week. An Wu was staying at the heritage building on Place d'Youville to attend a conference, according to friends and family.
Students and community members will gather in protest outside the Calgary Board of Education Centre Tuesday morning, calling for the removal of the Sir John A. Macdonald name from a northwest junior high school.
A Wheatland County sanctuary that cares for abandoned and surrendered farm animals faces an uncertain future after having a permit application to keep operating denied.
A woman who lives across from the apartment where a 16-year-old shot and killed two Edmonton police constables has multiple bullet holes in her door, with a couple piercing her doorframe.
A member of the city of Ottawa's board of health is speaking out about body shaming after receiving a letter that said she shouldn't serve on the board because of her weight.
After a large fire spread from tents to a shuttered theatre on the city’s Downtown Eastside, Vancouver’s fire chief told reporters she was “incredibly frustrated” that more isn’t being done to prevent daily fires breaking out in the area.
Vancouver council will soon vote on a policy that could slow development in the Broadway Plan, one of the most significant long-term projects underway in the city.
A 31-year-old neuroscientist is believed to be among the six people missing after a massive fire in Old Montreal last week. An Wu was staying at the heritage building on Place d'Youville to attend a conference, according to friends and family.
Rescuers have yet to recover any additional bodies from the wreck of a fire in Old Montreal last week. As of Tuesday morning, there were still six people missing. The body of one victim, a woman, was extracted on Sunday.
Mayor Valerie Plante said Monday she requested a meeting with an Airbnb executive after a building in Old Montreal — a short-term rental hot spot — was destroyed by a fire that has left six people missing.
Doctors, patients and advocates are uniting for a reminder to older British Columbians to request a free colon cancer screening test – as we mark National Colon Cancer Awareness month.
Two staff members and a student -- who is also the suspect -- have been injured in a stabbing at a high school in Bedford, N.S., according to the Halifax Regional Centre for Education (HRCE).
New Brunswick's finance minister is scheduled to table a provincial budget Tuesday as the government grapples with problems in health care and housing and the effects of a population surge.
Front-line nurses who are working for publicly-funded employers in Nova Scotia will receive a bonus of up to $10,000, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston announced Monday.
Elliot Lake has cancelled the Northern Shore Drag Race, which has been going on for the past two decades and typically draws hundreds of vehicles and a thousand people.
Several parents are questioning the filtering process of eBooks available to students at the Waterloo Regional District School Board (WRDSB) after they say their children were able to access eBooks that are not age appropriate.
Groundhog Club handler A.J. Dereume holds Punxsutawney Phil, the weather prognosticating groundhog, during the 136th celebration of Groundhog Day on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa., Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. Phil's handlers said that the groundhog has forecast six more weeks of winter. (AP Photo/Barry Reeger)
