Nature Centre

This beautiful log and stone building featuring leaded glass windows was built by relief camp workers during the Depression. 

For many years, it housed the very popular Lund Wildlife exhibit of taxidermied animals.  Although the displays have been renovated several times since, the emphasis remains teaching about the natural world of Prince Albert National Park. 

It serves as the base for the Interpretive Program operated by the Park naturalists. 

During the Depression, the Government of Canada created relief camps to provide employment for desperate, unemployed men. The workers built thirteen known camp sites to live in while they worked for board and wages as low as cents a day.  

In 1933, there were more than 1,000 men living in these camps. Among the projects they accomplished are clearing the Park boundary and road allowances, leveling the campground, storing ice for summer use, building the breakwater and beach houses, constructing the tennis courts and golf course, and building the community buildings in the townsite.  

“The credit for the major changes in the park during the 1930s belongs to hundreds of single, homeless, unemployed relief workers. These are the unknown men of Prince Albert’s past. There is no list of their names. There are no plaques commemorating their deeds. Even the locations of their camps are vague memories. Their legacy lives on though in a number of park structures and facilities – be it the museum, the Narrows road or the golf course.” 

(Information taken from Saskatchewan’s Playground: A History of Prince Albert National Park by Bill Waiser, published by Fifth House Publishers in Saskatoon in 1989, page 73. 

Other information has been sourced from www.canadashistory.ca and www.parkscanadahistory.com