“Saskatchewan is very much like Texas — except it’s more friendly to the United States” is often attributed to American politician Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965), who made the remark at a Women’s National Press Club dinner in 1962. Stevenson wasn’t the first to use the line.
 
Thomas Clement “Tommy” Douglas (1904-1986), the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, said in September 1955: “Saskatchewan is very like Texas—except that we are more friendly to the United States.” When Douglas was asked to describe his Canadian province of Saskatchewan again in 1961, Douglas remarked: “Saskatchewan is very much like Texas, about the same area, a quarter of a million square miles, we produce wheat and cattle and oil, we are like Texas in almost every respect, except that we are more friendly to the United States.”
 
 
Wikiquote: Texas
Texas is the second-largest U.S. state in both area and population, and the largest state in the contiguous United States.
(...)
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Saskatchewan is much like Texas — except it’s more friendly to the United States.
. Attributed to Adlai Stevenson. This was attributed to Stevenson without reference in 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About Texas (2006) by Donna Ingham, p. 92. It was also attributed without reference in “Reporters’ Notebook”, The Buffalo News, September 24, 1992. No closer connection to Stevenson has been found.
 
Wikipedia: Tommy Douglas
Thomas Clement “Tommy” Douglas, PC, CC, SOM (20 October 1904 – 24 February 1986) was a Scottish-born Baptist minister who became a prominent Canadian social democratic politician. As leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1942 and the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, he led the first socialist government in North America and introduced universal public healthcare to Canada. When the CCF united with the Canadian Labour Congress to form the New Democratic Party, he was elected as its first federal leader and served in that post from 1961 to 1971. He is warmly remembered for his folksy wit and oratory with which he expressed his determined idealism, exemplified by his fable of Mouseland.
 
Google News Archive
17 September 1955, Leader-Post (Regina, Saskatchewan), pg. 14, col. 6:
West future “unlimited”
Douglas tells visitors
—Like Texas, but friendlier to U.S.
By KEN FRASER
Visitors attending No. 7 district annual convention of Gyro International heard Premier T. C. Douglas outline the background an potentialities of the province at a luncheon Friday in Hotel Saskatchewan.
 
Addressing his remarks to people from outside the province and especially American visitors, the premier said, “Saskatchewan is very like Texas—except that we are more friendly to the United States.”
   
Google Books
Proceedings [of] the Constitutional Convention
Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union
1961
Pg. 76:
“Well,” I said, “Mr. Secretary, it’s very difficult to describe Saskatchewan in a few sentences, but I will put it this way: Saskatchewan is very much like Texas, about the same area, a quarter of a million square miles, we produce wheat and cattle and oil, we are like Texas in almost every respect, except that we are more friendly to the United States.”
(Spoken by T. C. Douglas—ed.)
 
Google News Archive
2 March 1962, Gadsden (AL) Times, “Stockpile Investigation Focuses Attention On The Humphrey Firm” by Drew Pearson, pg. 4, col. 4:
ADLAI STEVENSON’S WIT
Here are some of the latest Adlai Stevenson witticisms, fired at the recent Women’s National Press Club dinner: “The shortest cut to the White House is to go right to Harvard and then turn left.”...“The right-wing would rather be right than be president.”...“Saskatchewan is very much like Texas—except it’s more friendly to the United States.”
 
Google Books
The Harper Book of Quotations
By Robert I. Fitzhenry
New York, NY: HarperPerennial
1993
Pg. 78:
Saskatchewan is much like Texas - except it’s more friendly to the United States.
Adlai Stevenson
   
Google Books
1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About Texas
By Donna Ingham
Guilford, CT; Lyons Press
2006
Pg. 92:
Saskatchewan is much like Texas — except it’s more friendly to the United States. — Adlai Stevenson