RM of Willowdale’s story
The Rural Municipality of Willowdale No. 153 was incorporated as a rural municipality on January 1, 1913. It lies in the southeast of Saskatchewan and surrounds the town of Whitewood, where the RM's office is found.
The RM is home to New Finland, a Finnish-speaking block settlement. Its St. John's New Finland Lutheran Church, still an active congregation, was built in 1907. In 1934 the community moved it by steam engine to its present site, five miles south of where it was first built. The church had to be sawn in half to make the move possible. It was declared a municipal heritage property on May 4, 2007.
Another heritage property is the RM's municipal office at 711 Lalonde Street in Whitewood. It was built in 1935 by the federal government as a make-work project during the Depression, and it originally housed Whitewood's post office. Today the area is also home to the endangered burrowing owl, and conservationists monitor monarch butterflies here.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Rural Municipality of Willowdale No. 153” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.
