Sandy Bay is a northern village in the boreal forest on the shore of Wasawakasik Lake, part of the Churchill River. It grew up around the hydroelectric power station built in the late 1920s to supply power to the smelters and mines in Flin Flon, Manitoba. The community had originally been further downstream on the Churchill River, but residents were encouraged to move near the proposed site of the Island Falls Hydroelectric Station so they could provide labour for its construction.
The generating station changed traditional ways of life as the community grew around it. Sandy Bay became a Local Community Authority in 1965. The following year, the Island Falls station switched to an automatic system and most of the jobs were lost. An all-weather road reached the community in 1967, and other services followed. In the 1980s Sandy Bay was designated a northern village.
Today the dam is run by SaskPower and is fully automated, and tourism is the major industry in the area. The community includes the Wapaskokimaw 202 reserve of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation. It has a K-12 school, Hector Thiboutot Community School, and in the summer of 2011 residents came together to build the Sandy Bay Memorial Beach, a safe place for children to swim in memory of children who have drowned in the Churchill River.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Sandy Bay, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.