In-Country Site Visit: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

The view of the South Saskatchewan River from my Hotel Room

During the first week of our exchange, the large group bid farewell to each other in the Toronto Airport and we started to embark on our site-visit journeys which would expose us to a different part of the country for our exchange. My in-country site visit was to the “Paris of the Prairies,” Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Rather than doing lots of research on the area, instead I wanted to go into this experience with no bias of this location and just enjoy the surprises that awaited us as Fellows. The flight was a bit long and a bit bumpy and with most of us feeling deliriously tired from the early morning, we made our way over to our hotel in order to unpack and decompress before heading out.

The streets of Saskatoon are very quiet, and when you are in the immediate downtown area you will see a set of bridges that are quite large going across the South Saskatchewan river. This aids in the cities nickname, “The city of bridges.” The cities slogan is also ‘Saskatoon Shines,’ which is actually due to the prolonged amount of sunlight that the city receives. The city is also known for it’s quite diverse population of people and it seems to still have newcomers coming into the city - which was noted by the large amount of welcome centers scattered all across the city. In the downtown area there were a few parks, flashy restaurants and shops, but overall, Saskatoon has the charm of a quiet town even though it’s considered to be a city.

As a group, we have had a wonderful time exploring and wandering around these quiet streets and overall, while there are not many people out and about in this area, there is certainly some livelihood down here. We have passed by many weddings being held this weekend along the river and have been able to enjoy time getting to know each other more and learning more about the types of schools that we come from.

The view of the downtown area from the other side of the river.

We took a boat cruise on a Sunday Afternoon and well, we had too have a Titanic Moment.