A broken record: Sask. towns lose temperature honours to B.C. village

Yellow Grass and Midale once shared the record for the highest temperature in Canada, but now it’s toast.

The Saskatchewan towns set the mark July 5, 1937 with a temperature of 45 C, or 113 F. But after the recent heat wave on the west coast, the title now belongs to the village of Lytton, B.C., which reached 46.1 C (or 114.98 F) on Sunday.

“It’s disappointing that we would lose that distinction,” Midale Mayor Allan Hauglum said Monday. “But you know, records are made to be beaten, so we gracefully handed that over.”

Hauglum explained he is trying to contact the new titleholders to congratulate them officially.

Since 1937, the two Saskatchewan towns have proudly held the record. Yellow Grass even made a giant sign to commemorate the historical moment.

“We held (the record) for 84 years,” Hauglum said. “I mean, that’s quite a title in its own, holding the record for that long, right?

(Mickey Quigley/Facebook)

“We never put up a sign (like Yellow Grass). My one friend of mine texted me last night and told me we lost and I said, ‘At least that’s one thing — we don’t have to take our sign down.’ ”

Midale is accepting of the defeat.

“(The record) was just part of the community,” Hauglum said. “It’s important to the community and everybody. I have one gentleman on Facebook and he said whenever anybody asks where he’s from, he always says the hottest place in Canada.”

With the heat continuing to sizzle, Hauglum thinks the town still may be in the running to get the record back.

“We don’t need that kind of heat right now,” he said. “You always want to have a record, and if it comes back, we’ll gratefully take it back.”

— With files from 980 CJME’s Logan Stein