Editor's Note: What follows is the contents of a plaque being installed to commemorate the location of the North Battleford Powerhouse.
"After months of heightened anticipation, on that momentous evening of April 16, 1910, W.H. Dudley, a manager with the Canadian General Electric Co., assisted by C.A. Cutting, plant superintendent with the Saskatchewan Power Commission, pulled the switch at the new North Battleford Powerhouse instantly illuminating the night sky. Remarkably, electric power had come the Battlefords within a decade of Thomas A. Edison's invention of the incandescent lamp. The power plant, located on the rise behind you was a rather modest enterprise at first but was quickly expanded in size and capacity to meet the demands of a young, growing and vibrant city. The plant began operations with a single 125KVA steam engine driven generator. Within in one year, a larger, steam-driven generating unit was required. By 1912, the "lighting business" had doubled in capacity. The plant's most visible features were the prominent smoke stack (a city landmark for many decades) and the large cooling pond (150 feet in length by 62 feet wide by 2 and feet deep) located at the East side of the structure. The powerhouse also supplied steam heat to residences from 99th street to 107th , and to businesses in the downtown core. The power plant reached the zenith of it's output in the 1940s. It supplied electricity to all of the city of North Battleford and town of Battleford with an output of 2100K until 1947. At this point, the two communities started to tap into the provincial power grid. The powerhouse was permanently closed in 1957. It was used as a storage depot for a number of years until it was abandoned in 1961, and shortly thereafter, it was demolished. Thus the storied powerhouse came to a sudden and dramatic end, and with it, a historic and romantic era when North Battleford was powered by steam."
