Everett Baker Award for Saskatchewan Heritage

2023 Winner: Candice Klein

Congratulations to Candice Klein for her tireless work to raise public awareness of several little-known aspects of Saskatchewan's history.

Candice is passionate about community history, especially Saskatoon's boom/bust years from 1890 to 1970. She has devoted many hours of research in the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, combing through criminal files and police dockets in search of hidden histories. She shared these in her viral article "Sex and the City: Saskatoon was a Wide-Open Town" for Folklore magazine, which people still talk about across Saskatchewan communities.

Candice has demonstrated a deep commitment to bringing public attention to little-known aspects of Saskatchewan history through her work with the Neil Richards Collection of Gender and Sexual Diversity at the University of Saskatchewan Archives. Here, we recognize her for her efforts to preserve and highlight the importance of queer history in Saskatchewan and the significant influence early gay activists had on the fight for equality in Canada.

With the untimely passing of Mr. Richards, the vast breadth of his collection of archival, cultural, community, literary and video materials, one of the richest in Canada, has been in danger of being forgotten. Candice has worked with the materials to publicize the diversity, scale and importance of this collection, digitizing and using them for work that she has shared in a variety of venues.

It is of the utmost importance that queer people, especially queer youth, see themselves in history and understand that they have an essential place in Saskatchewan history, which has a rich, long, powerful and largely unknown legacy of pride and gathering and activism. Candice's efforts to bring public attention to this history is community care, and it reflects Neil Richard's beliefs that seeing oneself in a library and archives is an affirmation of self.

The response to her work has been very positive – proof of a strong desire to know more about Saskatchewan's histories and evidence of the innovative, original histories she has unearthed.

Congratulations, Candice, for going above and beyond for your community and Saskatchewan’s heritage.