Savouring Grasslands National Park:
Canada's Only Virgin Prairie

by Habeeb Salloum

As we drove westward from Regina, a city of some 200,000 and the province of Saskatchewan's capital, my thoughts went back to my youth - the time I grew up in this part of Canada. At that time, during the Depression years, it was a landscape of drifting sands and blowing winds driving Russian thistle and tumbleweeds to float across the arid countryside. It was a harsh world in which one had to truly struggle to survive.

Our goal this day was the Grasslands National Park, a piece of Saskatchewan where the prairie land had been returned to its original state - before farmers and their ploughs had destroyed the work of nature, turning the countryside into a prairie desert. I wanted to see what had been achieved with the land that our family had a hand in destroying when they like other immigrants as homesteaders ploughed the virgin prairie soil.

Now some three quarter century later, as I looked around, the countryside looked much different than the days of my childhood. Rich looking cultivated fields stretched as far as the eye could see. People driving by looked prosperous and the countryside oozed hints of affluence. Paved highways criss-crossed the flat plains and modern machinery could be seen everywhere. As if by magic, my harsh vision of the landscape during the Depression years had evaporated as if it had never been.

Passing Ponteix , noted for its fine church, we came to where the town of Governeur once stood. It was the village my parents first came to as immigrants in the early 1920s but during the Depression it slowly faded away and now only a plaque stands to remind the passer-by that here the town of Governeur once stood.

Turning southward on Highway 4 at the town of Cadillac we drove for some 15 minutes when I turned to my colleague, “ Three miles south of here was the land on which our family homesteaded.  It’s like a dream thinking back to those harsh days! Our ploughing the soil and picking the rocks all came to naught. Look! It’s all now pastureland.”

Driving for half an hour more, we reached Val Marie, which acts as the gate to the Grassland National Park - Canada's only virgin prairie, encompassing pre-historic badlands, lush coulees, rolling grasslands, weathered cliffs and wide river valleys, stretching to the far horizon. As we entered the small village of 137 inhabitants some 50 km (30 mi) from the US border I had a feeling of remembrance. During my youth it was the huge city of which I would dream of when I thought what was beyond our isolated farm. 

Soon we were at Grasslands National Park Visitor Reception Centre discussing with Colette Schmidt, Communications Services Officer, the history and future of the park. In describing the Park she said that Grasslands National Park was now only about 500 sq km (200 sq mi) in two un-attached sections. The Park will eventually cover 900 sq km (350 sq mi as the federal government purchases the land on a willing-seller/willing buyer basis.

We began our exploration of Grasslands National Park, where Saskatchewan greets Montana, by strolling through a grass landscape covering most parts of the broad Frenchman River Valley. Unlike the vast majority of the prairie lands today, here the rolling terrain with its untouched original grassland flora, emphasized by such plants as cactus flowers, creeping juniper, blue grama grass, lichens, mosses and sage, appears today much like it did when the first settlers trod the land. The Park offers some 40 different types of grasses and innumerable native wildflowers and other plant species.

Commonly seen animals in the park are the mule and the white-tailed deer, and the pronghorn antelope, but more importantly, also to be found in the park is a good number of rare and endangered animal species. Some of these include the Baird’s sparrow, burrowing owl, eastern short-horned lizard, ferruginous hawk, the loggerhead strike, peregrine falcon, sage grouse-burrowing owl and the yellow-bellied blue racer.

Once the Park was the home of thousands of bison but they disappeared when these animals were totally decimated by the white hunters. However, in 2005 bison began to be released in the park and today 111 of them again can be seen roaming the park thriving on the natural grasses and other plants on which their ancestors thrived.

The wind blowing through the wild grasses caressing our bodies carried a pleasant scent giving the pristine prairie land an aroma seemingly of magic allurement. Oozing with contentment I thought to myself, “No wonder this part of the prairies was one of the favourite bison hunting areas of the indigenous peoples.”  From their times there are to be found in the park today many arrowheads and other weapons, bison jump cliffs, medicine wheels, pottery, rubbing stones, sacred sites, 13,000 tepee rings and ancient village ruins. As a culmination to the history of the indigenous peoples in this part of the prairies, Sitting Bull after the battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 took refuge in the area.

Our first stop that afternoon was at a prairie dog colony - one of the 14 huge densely populated towns in the park.  Grassland is the only place on the prairies where the black tailed prairie dogs still live in colonies in their native habitat. A critical species in the natural prairie ecosystem, its existence supports the survival of the coyote, fox, and badger as well as numerous other endangered species. The elimination of these colonies also almost wiped out the animal species that depend on them for survival.

I remember as a child when no one worried about endangered species trapping gophers, brothers to the prairie dogs, for their tails. The farmers were always worrying about gophers destroying their fields with their endless burrows and they would pay us children 1 cent a tail for every gopher we trapped. For us it was the only pocket money we ever earned; but for the prairie dogs and the animals that depended on them for survival it was almost total elimination.

That day we explored a good part of the park glorying in a land that remains as it was, thousands of years ago – some like to call it ‘Land of Living Skies’ while others label it ‘Where Heaven meets the Earth’. It was a fine example of how man cannot only destroy nature but return it to its natural state, that is, if there is a will.