Prince Albert National Park

The park covers around three hundred and ninety thousand hectares where aspen parkland gives way to boreal forest, with a free-ranging plains bison herd, the only one inside its historic range in Canada. Archibald Belaney, an Englishman who reinvented himself as the Indigenous conservationist Grey Owl, lived at a cabin on Ajawaan Lake from 1931 writing books that made him internationally famous for beaver conservation; his English birth was revealed the day after he died in 1938. The cabin, with a beaver lodge built into its wall, is reached by a twenty-kilometre hike or by canoe. Waskesiu is the townsite on the main lake.

History

Tools found in the park span from about 11,000 years ago to historic times, and the Hudson's Bay Company kept a post at Waskesiu Lake from 1886 to 1893. Frank Crean's New Northwest expeditions of 1908-1909 first documented the region, the great forest fire of 1919 ended logging here, and the park was declared on 24 March 1927 and officially opened on 10 August 1928; the Dominion Parks Service hired Grey Owl, Archibald Stanfield Belaney, as its first naturalist, and at Ajawaan Lake he wrote Pilgrims of the Wild and Sajo and the Beaver People, both published in 1935 (Wikipedia, Prince Albert National Park).

The landscape

• Grey Owl's cabin - the Ajawaan Lake cabin with a beaver lodge in the wall.
• The bison herd - free-ranging plains bison in the southwest of the park.
• The boreal lakes - Waskesiu, Kingsmere and canoe routes between them.
• The transition forest - aspen parkland meeting boreal spruce.

When to go

June to September for canoeing, hiking and the townsite; the park runs cross-country skiing in winter with most services shut. Bison viewing needs a back road and patience.

Practical notes

Grey Owl's cabin is a twenty-kilometre hike each way or a paddle, not a drive. Bison are in a remote corner and often not seen. Mosquitoes in June and July are heavy.

Nearby

Prince Albert lies south; Lac La Ronge is north.

Key facts