| Ardath | |
| Settlement Type: | Unincorporated community |
| Pushpin Map: | Saskatchewan#Canada |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | Canada |
| Subdivision Type1: | Province |
| Subdivision Name1: | Saskatchewan |
| Subdivision Type2: | Region |
| Subdivision Name2: | Southwest Saskatchewan |
| Subdivision Type3: | Census division |
| Subdivision Name3: | 12 |
| Subdivision Type4: | Rural Municipality |
| Subdivision Name4: | Fertile Valley |
| Leader Title: | Administrator |
| Leader Title1: | Governing body |
| Leader Name1: | Fertile Valley No. 285 |
| Established Title: | Established |
| Established Title2: | Incorporated (Village) |
| Established Title3: | Restructured[1] (Unincorporated community) |
| Established Date3: | December 31, 1972 |
| Population As Of: | 2006 |
| Population Blank1 Title: | National Population Rank (Out of 5,008) |
| Timezone: | Central Standard Time (CST) |
| Coordinates: | 51.618°N -107.228°W |
| Elevation M: | 57.91 |
| Elevation Ft: | 190 |
| Postal Code Type: | Postal code |
| Postal Code: | S0L 0B0 |
| Area Code: | 306 |
| Blank Name: | Highways |
| Blank Info: | Highway 654 |
| Blank1 Name: | Waterways |
Ardath is an unincorporated community in the west-central region of Saskatchewan located on Highway 654, along the Canadian National Railway, Delisle-Tichfield Junction stub. The community is located approximately north of Conquest and is about 20km (10miles) north west of Outlook. Its most notable buildings are a curling rink and a brick United Church.
Prior to December 31, 1972, Ardath was a village, but it was restructured as an unincorporated community on that date. Ardath took its name from the British novel Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self by Marie Corelli . Both the Ardath United Church and the town hall were built in 1912. Ardath's decline began after a series of bizarre events, starting in 1919 when a train crashed through one of the village's grain elevators killing three people.
"But at 10:15 a.m. on March 24, 1919 things began to go horribly wrong at Ardath. A southbound passenger train took to the switch track at high speed and slammed through the first of four grain elevators at Ardath. The elevator agent had just left the office, and was at the station to put his mail on the train. All that remained of his office was his chair. When the train came to a crashing halt it was buried in grain.Three people were killed in the accident; the locomotive fireman, the engineer, and a passenger."[2]
A few years later, a fire destroyed most of main street resulting in a large scale exodus from the community of many of the community's 150 residents. In 1931, a man murdered another man believing him to be someone else and then burned down a house, the culminating event that contributed to Ardath's eventual decline.
A Canadian naval ship,, a is the first Canadian naval vessel ever named after a woman - Margaret Brooke, a nursing sister who grew up on a farm near Ardath, Saskatchewan. Margaret was singled out for the honour due to the bravery that she exhibited on the night of October 13, 1942 in a wartime naval incident involving the sinking of the ferry by a German U-boat during the Battle of the St. Lawrence during the Second World War.[3]
Agriculture[4] is the top employment field with many surrounding farms and ranches.
Ardath no longer has a school, but those who live in Ardath are sent to the neighboring town of Outlook which has a school that covers Kindergarten to Grade 12 serving students.