March 28, 2024

Saskatchewan: Celebrating the Beauty of Canada’s Most Underrated Province

A Celebration of the Old Against the New. Perhaps, like me, you have observed the gentle way that clouds touch the earth with shadowed hands, or noticed how a ripple of water undulates the reflected blue of the sky.

Maybe you have marveled at how a crack in a rock invites the growth of a tree, or have seen the extraordinary colours changing throughout the seasons. It is a gift of wonder, and rural Saskatchewan offers no end of glorious material for the senses.

Prairie landscapes give an unfettered view of the greatest skies, but to fully appreciate their unsurpassed beauty, one must be still and observe the continual change. Though I was a landscape painter after finishing university, my passions soon shifted to the freedom and creativity of a camera and a darkroom, and I began to express my love for the Saskatchewan Prairie through photography.

I took up the challenge to capture the “eureka” moments in nature. As a full-time art teacher, I would spend the summer breaks travelling and taking photographs as far as I could wander, my wife and children in tow. I was always looking for the momentary event in nature, when the light would be just right, the subject touched me, and the science of the camera could capture an outstanding image.

Seemingly lost in the centre of this vast nation, Saskatchewan seems too far west to be noticed by many Canadians and too far east to be anything but Trans-Canada flatlands to our western counterparts. But the geologic and cultural diversity within this four-sided postage stamp of a province is constantly surprising and ever delightful.

Rural Saskatchewan is a celebration of the old against the new – cowboys to computerized combines; remnants and relics of barnyards to cutting-edge farm construction; old machinery buried in centuries of growth to innovative vehicles traversing the back roads in a daily commute.

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