Lashburn

Town, pop 783, located 32 km SE of Lloydminster on Hwy 16. Settlement of the Lashburn area began in the spring of 1903 when a number of the Barr colonists (see Barr Colony) took up land. Additional settlers from eastern Canada arrived in 1904; in 1905, when the Canadian Northern Railway came through, the location for the townsite of Lashburn was chosen. The name is a combination of the word “Lash” (honouring a railway company solicitor, Z.A. Lash) and “burn,” a Scottish word for a small stream. Lashburn grew steadily as additional settlers continued to pour into the region; they included a significant number of Mennonite families and, in the 1930s, people from the dried-out regions of southern Saskatchewan. By the mid-1960s, the community’s population passed the 500 mark, and in 1979 Lashburn attained town status. The major industries in the area are oil and agriculture: more than 1,600 oil wells dot the district’s rich agricultural lands. Today, Lashburn residents benefit greatly from the community’s proximity to Lloydminster, a city of 21,000 people which provides Lashburn residents with employment opportunities, amenities, and services not locally available. The Lashburn Bluebirds dominated women’s softball at both the provincial and national levels in the late 1970s. One exceptional player to come out of Lashburn was Brenda Staniforth. An inductee into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame and Softball Canada’s Hall of Fame, Staniforth has played and coached Canadian women’s softball at the international level. Another Lashburn resident was Augustus Kenderdine, who arrived there to farm in 1907 and went on to become perhaps the most significant painter in Saskatchewan before 1950.

David McLennan