Information Sources

The information sources for this history include two local histories. The first entitled West Plains Oxarat deals primarily with the pre-railway era. The most recent entitled Our Side of the Hill deals primarily with the post railway history of the area. The annual reports of the Department of the Interior and the PFRA give details of the work carried out in the area before and after 1935. Original documentation on the first licenses and the development of the various projects is located at the Ottawa Office of the International Joint Commission and the National Archives of Canada. The former has the records of the first licenses on Lodge and Battle Creeks and the Frenchman River and its tributaries. It also has documentation on the negotiation of the treaty and the reports prepared by the Commission to the Governments of Canada and the United States following the ratification of the treaty. The National Archives of Canada in RG 89 has the license records for James McKinnon, Nash and Stirling. The development of the Adams Lake and Cypress Lake Reservoirs is documented in the records of the Department of Agriculture in RG 17.

Documentation on the issuing of licenses on Battle, Lodge and the Frenchman River after 1907 is unavailable in either the Library Archives of Canada or the Saskatchewan Archives in Regina or Saskatoon. The Saskatchewan Water Scarcity Agency currently administers the licensing system, but it does not have any historical records on the period prior its creation.