Earlier this summer, the last original shack tent in the townsite of Waskesiu in Prince Albert National Park was removed, marking the end of a tradition that began nearly a century ago. Established in 1927, Prince Albert National Park welcomed its first visitors for the official opening the following year. In the park’s early days, simple one-room shack tents became a defining part of the Waskesiu experience. The temporary cabins first appeared in the late 1920s, with about 400 eventually lining the lakefront before being moved away from the water’s edge to what became known as the Bird Streets. Built simply, they had flip-open windows and the defining canvas tarp roof. The structures were taken down each fall, stored and rebuilt every spring. “They had a wooden floor in two sections, then the four walls and then a canvas tarp. That would be the last thing to go on,” Mona Finlayson, a lifelong seasonal resident and local historian, told CTV News. For generations of families, the shack tents were more than just places to sleep. They created a sense of community, with shared kitchens, close quarters and summers spent together outdoors. Finlayson, a retired Saskatoon math teacher, has spent every summer in Waskesiu since she was a baby. That’s 88 summers in total. She now stays in a family cottage built in 1946, but the memories of shack tent life remain strong. Rainy days spent playing board games indoors since there was no electricity or running water. “If it wasn’t raining, especially, like in the morning, you could hear squirrels or birds, and you can see the shadow of them through the tarped roof,” Finlayson recalled. She said shack tents weren’t really favoured in the early years by administration or others, and this was the only park that had them in this collective way. According to Finlayson, they were used during wartime when fathers would drive the family up to the lake for the summer, often in the one vehicle the household had. Moms and kids would stay during the week, and dad would return for the weekends when he wasn’t tending crops or working. She added that in that time it was an inexpensive summer holiday. The little 12-by-16-foot shack was tied to the community-minded and economical approach of early park leadership. “We were fortunate in that an early 1950s, the park superintendent, B.I.M. Strong; he was from Prince Albert. He was not someone that came from down East or had been at Banff and Jasper. He was a person that knew the community because it was often referred to as the People’s Park,” she said. This Saskatchewan connection led to the sanctioning of shack tents despite the initial opposition. Today, visitors can still experience that history through a full-scale shack tent replica at the Waskesiu Heritage Museum in the main townsite area. Curator Jillian Manchester said the display helps people connect with a way of life that has largely disappeared. “This is not just a model that has been scaled down,” Manchester said. For many visitors seeing it for the first time, the reaction is emotional. “Maybe a little bit of disbelief that an entire family would have spent their time in the building,” she said. One story she recalls had nine family members staying in one of the shack tents. Manchester said those memories often come rushing back for many visitors to the museum. “They walk through the door, you can see the memories flooding back to them, which sparks storytelling. And to me, it’s the people and the stories of Waskesiu that I find fascinating,” she said. While the last original shack tent is now gone, the stories behind it remain. For Finlayson, preserving that history has become a responsibility. “That’s one of the reasons I volunteer at the Shack, to let people know what shack tent life was like and how much fun it was,” she said. Through years of personal diary and guest book entries, photographs and storytelling, Finlayson hopes to ensure the unique legacy of Waskesiu’s shack tents continues for future generations. The Heritage Museum relies on volunteers, donations and annual fundraisers to operate, with many of the artifacts donated by community members.
