The Island That Isn't, and Its Swans

Let's get the name out of the way first. Saskatoon Island is not an island. It was, once, when the water sat higher. Then the lakes dropped and the land joined up, and the name stayed because nobody in the Peace Country renames anything once it's printed on a sign. We still call it the Wapiti bridge, the old hospital, the place where the Zellers was. Saskatoon Island fits right in.

What you get, roughly twenty minutes west of the city off Highway 43, past Wembley's turnoff, is a strip of aspen and saskatoon bush pinched between two bodies of water. Saskatoon Lake is the big one, with the beach, the boat launch and the summer weekenders who have backed a trailer into a campsite with the precision of people who have done it every July since 1998. Little Lake is the small one. Little Lake is the reason to go.

The swans nest there. Trumpeters, the big ones, the largest waterfowl on the continent, the ones that put Grande Prairie's nickname on the water tower and the swan statues on half the roundabouts in town. Most of us have looked at the civic version for years without seeing the actual bird. Little Lake fixes that.

Come in spring, after the ice breaks up, and you'll find them already claiming territory with that brassy, honking call, which sounds less like a trumpet and more like a clarinet being stepped on. By early summer there are cygnets, grey and slightly disreputable-looking, trailing behind parents who are very white and very large and do not want you anywhere near the reeds. Bring binoculars. The viewing platform does its job, but swans keep their own distance and a phone camera will turn them into a white smudge every time.

The other seasonal attraction is the saskatoons themselves. The bushes here are thick, and picking is allowed, which makes a July visit a pleasant hour of purple fingers. You will not be alone. Your competition includes older women with ice cream pails who have been working these bushes for decades and will strip a patch while you're still deciding if those berries are ripe. They are. Pick faster.

A word on summer generally. The mosquitoes at Saskatoon Island are serious. These are lake-and-marsh mosquitoes, raised in ideal conditions, and they treat bug spray as seasoning. Late June on the Little Lake trail is a test of character. Most people fail it.

Which is why the honest recommendation is September. The bugs are mostly done, the aspens go yellow, the campground thins out to a few stubborn trailers, and the swans are still on the water, fattening up the young before the long flight south. The light comes in low across Little Lake in the late afternoon, and the whole place gets quiet in a way the July beach never manages. It's the best version of the park, and most of the city misses it because school's back and the boat's already in the garage.

The trails are short and flat. Nobody is getting a workout here, and nobody should try. It's a park for walking slowly, standing still on a platform, and waiting for something big and white to lift off the water.

When it does, you hear it before you see it: wingbeats like someone shaking out a heavy wet sheet, three or four times, and then nothing but the bird, low over the reeds, heading for the far shore.