Prince Albert National Park sits in the centre of Saskatchewan, a 3,875 square kilometre block of boreal and aspen parkland forest that represents the transition zone between the agricultural south and the boreal north. It's the province's only national park, and it's consistently one of the most underrated parks in the Parks Canada system. The lake country in the northern section — dozens of interconnected lakes with wilderness canoe routes threading between them — is outstanding. The wildlife is excellent. And the village of Waskesiu, right inside the park boundary, is one of the more pleasant small resort communities in the west.
Waskesiu Village
The village of Waskesiu is built on the south shore of Waskesiu Lake and has a character that feels preserved from the 1950s in the best possible way — a beach with a gradual sandy slope, a main street with a general store and small restaurants, rental outfitters for canoes and kayaks, and a golf course designed by the legendary Stanley Thompson that has been played since 1936. The atmosphere is relaxed and unhurried in a way that increasingly rare resort communities achieve.
The beach on Waskesiu Lake is excellent — wide and sandy with clear water, a dock with a diving platform, and views across the lake to the forested far shore. On a hot July day it functions as the kind of community gathering space that Canadian parks once provided and that urban growth has largely displaced. Families camp nearby and walk to the beach daily. It is very pleasant.
Wildlife
Prince Albert National Park is one of the best places in Canada to see plains bison. A herd of approximately 400 free-ranging bison occupies the park's Sturgeon River Plains in the west section — the descendants of a herd introduced in 1969 from Elk Island National Park. The bison are accessible via the Boundary Bog Trail and the Sturgeon River Plains Road. Seeing a bison herd grazing in their natural habitat, with the boreal forest behind them, is a powerful experience — these were the animals that once covered the Great Plains in numbers that defied counting, and the surviving population in this park is a tangible piece of that history.
The park also has wolves, black bears, elk, moose, beaver, osprey, bald eagles, and the colony of white pelicans at Lavallee Lake — one of only a handful of inland white pelican nesting colonies in North America, with several thousand birds. Accessing Lavallee Lake requires a boat or canoe, but the approach through the wilderness lake system is itself rewarding.
Canoeing
The park's canoe route network connects lakes through a series of portages ranging from 100 metres to several kilometres. The Boundary Waters Canoe Route to the east of Waskesiu includes Lakes Crean, Kingsmere, and Lavallée, with campsites accessible only by water. The park rents canoes through the Friends of Prince Albert National Park outfitter in Waskesiu. A three-day canoe trip through the eastern lake system is the definitive Prince Albert National Park experience — quiet wilderness, good fishing, and the kind of silence that's genuinely hard to find elsewhere.
Getting There
Prince Albert National Park is about 90 kilometres north of the city of Prince Albert, which is about 140 kilometres north of Saskatoon. The drive from Saskatoon takes about two and a half hours. There is no public transit; a car is required. The park is open year-round, though visitor services are concentrated in the summer season from mid-May to Labour Day.
Prince Albert National Park is exactly what Saskatchewan's reputation — flat, empty, agricultural — does not suggest. The boreal north of the province, where the agriculture stops and the forest takes over, is big and quiet and genuinely wild, and the park is its best representative.
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