For as long as anyone can remember, Saskatchewan has been known as “Next Year Country.”

During its 103 years of existence, the province has had more than its fair share of misery and misfortune. For instance, during the Great Depression and the “Dirty Thirties,” the province lost tens of thousands of people to other provinces due to drought, massive crop failures, depressed grain prices and biblical plagues of grasshoppers. In the post-war period, while neighbouring provinces thrived on manufacturing (Manitoba) and oil and gas (Alberta), poor old Saskatchewan slogged on as the wheat province.

Even as late as the 1980s and 1990s, Saskatchewan seemed destined to play the poor cousin to her more attractive Prairie sisters. But over the past number of years, Sas-katchewan has emerged from the shadow of Alberta and Manitoba. Since 2002, the province has outperformed the national average in GDP growth in every year but one.

Buoyed by strong demand for its mineral and agricultural commodities, Saskatchewan’s economy has been riding high on the global resources boom. Record-high prices for potash, uranium, oil, grains and oilseeds have pushed the province to the top of the heap.

Saskatchewan is a world leader in the production of potash (with one-third of the world’s supply of the compound) and uranium (with 30% of world production). It is also Canada’s second-largest oil producer and third-largest producer of natural gas and coal.

In renewable energy, the province boasts one-third of Canada’s total installed wind-power capacity. And with the completion this spring of the 150-million-litre-a-year ethanol plant at Belle Plaine, the province will produce about 300 million litres of biofuel annually.

People are beginning to take notice, especially some of the estimated half-million Saskatchewanians who left the province for greener pastures in the past 30 years.

Saskatchewan’s population is increasing, thanks to migration from Alberta, and Saskatchewan recently passed the one-million mark for the first time since the 1980s.

More and more people are discovering the Saskatchewan advantage. Ex-pats and other Canadians are finding that house prices are $100,000 less than the national average, commutes are 10 minutes and vacation properties within an hour’s drive of Regina are affordable.

With the booming economy, jobs are more plentiful than people — and the boom shows no signs of fading any time soon. Although Alberta is forecast to see a 31% drop in oil and gas drilling this year, Saskatchewan is expected to see drilling increase by 6% to 3,600 wells in 2008, according to the Petroleum Services Association of Canada.

Part of the reason is that Saskatchewan’s fossil fuel resources are heavily weighted toward oil; Alberta, in comparison, is predominantly a natural gas province. Another reason is because of a major resources play in the Bakken geological formation that runs throughout the Williston Basin, which lies beneath parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

This Bakken play has generated record land sales revenue and record prices for oil and gas drilling rights. The hope is that the Bakken will generate billions of barrels of light sweet crude oil for decades.

The new Saskatchewan Party government under Premier Brad Wall is anxious to keep the momentum going. Wall has reassured the Calgary oilpatch that his new government has no intention of raising royalty rates. Unlike Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, Wall seems content to sit back and let the money roll in.

Of course, every boom has its dark side. Housing is becoming less affordable, and soon there will be complaints about traffic jams and the scarcity of Roughrider tickets .

I guess we’ll just have to get used to being a “have province” — now that next year has finally arrived. IE