The Lake Question, Mostly Settled

Every family in this city has a lake argument, and it usually happens in a truck at about 8:40 on a Saturday morning, with the cooler already packed and nobody willing to commit. Someone wants sand. Someone wants fish. Someone wants to be home by four. These are not compatible goals, and no single lake around here will satisfy all three. Pretending otherwise is how you end up eating sandwiches in a parking lot.

So, opinions.

Start with Saskatoon Lake, because it's close and because everyone starts there anyway. Saskatoon Island Provincial Park sits just past Wembley, near enough that you can decide at lunch and still get a full afternoon. The trumpeter swans are the real draw. They nest in the area, and watching one lift off the water is the closest this region gets to a cathedral. Swimming is another matter. The lake is shallow and warms fast, which sounds like a virtue in June and becomes a liability by August, when the water turns the colour of split-pea soup and the weeds start reaching for your ankles. Go early in the season. Go for the birds and the saskatoon berries. Bring the kids to splash, not to swim laps.

Bear Lake, north of the city, has the same shallow-water problem and fewer of the amenities. Lovely for looking at. Less lovely for getting into.

Sturgeon Lake is the honest answer for a real lake day, and it's worth the hour east on Highway 43. It's big, which changes everything: wind, waves, the feeling that the far shore is a rumour. Williamson Provincial Park, on the south side near Valleyview, has the beach and the campground. Young's Point, on the north shore, is quieter and better for pulling a boat out and pretending you have nowhere to be. The fishing is the reason half the trucks on the highway are towing something. Walleye, pike and perch, depending on how patient you are and how much you believe the guy at the next site. The drive is a slog with tired children. It is worth it anyway.

Moonshine Lake, out past Spirit River, is the sleeper. Small, tidy, stocked with rainbow trout, and blessedly free of the speedboat crowd. It is the lake for people who own a canoe and a thermos and do not need to talk to anyone. The swimming is fine. The fishing is the point. The name does most of the marketing work, and the lake mostly lives up to it.

Musreau Lake, south on Highway 40 toward Grande Cache, is for people who want the trees closer and the cell signal weaker. Pike fishing, rougher campsites, and that particular foothills quiet where you can hear a loon from very far off. Not a beach day. A get-away-from-the-beach day.

A word for September, which nobody listens to. The water at Sturgeon holds its summer warmth longer than the air does, the campgrounds empty out the moment school starts, and the poplars along the shore go yellow all at once, like someone flipped a breaker. The swimming is brief and bracing. The fishing gets better. The truck argument mostly goes away, because there's nobody left at the lake to compete with.

If you only go once this summer, make it Sturgeon, make it a weekday, and leave before the 8:40 argument can start.