History
The park takes its name form a large island that used to be in the middle of the lake, where Cree natives used to pick saskatoon berries to use in pemmican. The island merged to the adjacent plains when the water level dropped in 1919, and the lake was divided in two sections.
A settlement was established on the north side of the lake. The community of Lake Saskatoon was incorporated as a village in 1912. It was eventually abandoned after 1924, when the Grande Prairie-Grande Cache Railway missed the settlement by 9 kilometers (5.6 mi) when it was constructed on a more southern route through Wembley instead.
A provincial park was created on the spit of land dividing the two parts of the lake. It was established on November 21, 1932.
The area was declared a Federal Migratory Bird Sanctuary in 1948.
Read more about this topic: Saskatoon Island Provincial Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
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dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)