Usually towns that rest upon a border are distinct entities. They may have the appearance of a single contiguous municipality but often that’s deceiving. Two separate local governments actually administer the two separate portions. Kansas City along the Missouri/Kansas border comes to mind: one metropolitan area; same name; different municipal governments.
However there are two cities in Canada where this is not the case and coincidentally they both involve Saskatchewan. In both cases the cities cross provincial borders but have a single municipal government.
Lloydminster
Lloydminster straddles the border between Saskatchewan and Alberta, with the split taking place in a longitudinal line down 50th Avenue (map). As the story goes, officials placed the town intentionally along the Fourth Meridian of the Dominion Land Survey.
However, the founders did not know that this particular meridian was under consideration as the possible dividing line between two Provinces. When Saskatchewan and Alberta came into existence in 1905, both carved from the Northwest Territories, the line split cleanly through the middle of Lloydminster. The two provincial governments consented to a common municipal government for Lloydminster in 1930 and it remains that way for it’s 24,000 residents today.
I’m sure that Lloydminster is a lovely city but Twelve Mile Circle is about oddities. I’ll spend a little more time talking about a place with even greater peculiarities.
Flin Flon
On a Border
There’s a similar situation in Flin Flon on the opposite side of Saskatchewan on its border with Manitoba (map) although it happened more organically. It simply arose as a means for the Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company to house workers for nearby copper and zinc mines. It’s also much less evenly split. Less than 300 of its 6,000 residents live in Saskatchewan.
On a Correction Line
There’s another unusual geographic feature here. Flin Flon sits astride one of the correction lines on the border between the two provinces (see the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan – Boundary Surveys). One doesn’t normally think of Saskatchewan as south of Manitoba and generally that’s a safe bet. Usually it’s west. However, travel south down Main Street in Flin Flon and a visitor will experience this anomaly.
And a Weird Name
Additionally, there is a third oddity in Flin Flon that you’ve probably already noticed: the city’s name. It’s based on a fictional character from a 1905 pulp-fiction novel by J. E. Preston Muddock, “The Sunless City: From the Papers and Diaries of the Late Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin.” Flintabbatey and Flonatin were shortened to Flin Flon. Really. I’m not making this stuff up! Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, the fictional character, took a submarine ride into a bottomless lake in the Rocky Mountains where he passed through a tunnel of gold into a strange, subterranean land ruled by women. Then he escaped by climbing up through the crater of an extinct volcano.
Tom Creighton, a prospector, found a copy of the book in the wilderness and read it. Apparently it happened to be on his mind when he uncovered the huge deposit of ore. So he equated his discovery to the hole of gold from the novel and named the mine Flin Flon. The town came later, taking the same name.
Anyone up for a road trip? We could drive between both places in about eight hours.
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