Kenaston began as Bonnington Springs, in the District of Assiniboia in the North-West Territories, and most people simply called it Bonnington. The railroad reached the spot in late 1889, but there is no record of any permanent residents until 1902. That year the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company was formed by wealthy men from the United States, with Colonel Andrew Duncan Davidson as president and F. E. Kenaston as vice-president.
The company bought 839,000 acres from the railway and another 250,000 acres from the Dominion Government. Using unorthodox advertising and dozens of land agents, it filled the open country between Regina and Saskatoon with hundreds of settlers between 1902 and 1910. When Saskatchewan became a province in late 1905, the settlement was renamed Kenaston in honour of F. E. Kenaston.
As settlers arrived, businesses followed. The first store went up in 1903, and the post office and hotel opened in 1904. The school welcomed its first fourteen pupils in August 1905, and the first grain elevator, built by the Canadian Elevator Company, followed in 1906. The first telephone was installed in 1909. Kenaston incorporated as a village on July 18, 1910, the same year CNR built a 40,000-gallon water tower beside the train station.
Today Kenaston calls itself the Blizzard capital of Saskatchewan, a nickname honoured by an 18-foot roadside snowman near the restored historic water tower. The village also hosts the Super Draft at Kenaston Place, and its campground still carries the name Bonnington Springs.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Kenaston, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.