Virtual Saskatchewan - 2 New Parks

by Dave Yanko

One of Saskatchewan's two, new, proposed provincial parks has a name. Great Blue Heron Provincial Park, named after one of the most breathtakingly beautiful birds in Saskatchewan's fauna, will be officially proclaimed this summer, although it's been in the planning and organization stages for years. And it's not entirely new.

Blue Heron lies in the region of Emma and Anglin lakes, north of Prince Albert. It's just over 11,000 hectares (43 sq. miles) in area and includes some Crown land as well as the large Anglin Lake and smaller Emma Lake recreation sites, which already are popular with many Saskatchewanians—the area contains almost 300 campsites.

Once Blue Heron is officially proclaimed—that's supposed to occur sometime during summer 2013—it will become Saskatchewan's 35th provincial park.

More exciting to me—and “newer’’ to most, I suspect—is a proposed 30,000-hectare park (115 sq. miles) in the Porcupine Hills area of east-central Saskatchewan (map). If and when it proceeds—the government's website says its development is on hold "pending further review and discussion''—it will comprise two blocks of land separated by 40 km of forest located south and east of the Town of Hudson Bay. Under current plans, it would embrace five comparatively tiny recreation sites and more than a dozen diminuitive lakes. It’s a much less popular region than Emma and Anglin, but not for people who live in the area.

“We’re closest to the western block but we’re the closest major community to the east block, too,’’ Dave Ferguson, an economic development officer with the town, said in an interview prior to recent developments. “And (the east block) does get fairly heavily used by people from this area.’’

The Ministry of Tourism, Parks, Culture and Sport (TPCS) proposes consolidating the Woody River, McBride Lake, Pepaw Lake, Parr Hill Lake and Saginas Lake recreation sites, and some adjacent Crown land, to form the new park. The existing recreation areas contain a total of 111 campsites, according to the government’s website.

To learn more about the proposed facilities or to see how you can provide input, visit TPCS’s new parks webpage.