In the 1990s Saskatchewan was in almost as dire a position as it had been during the Great Depression. The province was on the verge of bankruptcy, people were leaving in droves, the PC party was collapsing under the weight of the fraud scandal, the Liberals were in freefall, and the NDP, led by Roy Romanow, was slashing services to the bone. The collapse of the PCs and Liberals, coupled with the NDP’s hard right turn away from everything it had ever claimed to stand for created the conditions for the rise of the party we live under today. First in a three-part series on the Saskatchewan Party.