One year after wildfire shut down Narrow Hills Provincial Park for an entire season, visitors are returning to a place that is at once familiar and changed.
The lakes are still there, the fishing is still good. The scenic drive is open. Beaches and picnic areas are accessible again. But for people who knew the park before the Shoe Fire, the first thing they are likely to notice this summer is how much more open the landscape looks.
“There’s lots of burnt trees, and some areas we had to clear the trees away, so it’s open where you wouldn’t have seen it previously,” said park manager Laurie Shymanski. “That would be the biggest change I would say.”
For a Rural Roots reader, that may be the real story at Narrow Hills this year. It is not simply that the park is open or closed. It is that one of Saskatchewan’s most loved northern landscapes is now in that strange period after disaster, when loss is still visible but recovery has already begun.
Shymanksi said the park is currently open. Businesses and cottages are operating as usual, more than 60 percent of campsites are open, and lakes and fishing areas across the park are accessible. The scenic drive is open as well. The main exception is the Gem Lakes hiking trail, which remains under construction but is expected to reopen soon.
The damage from last year’s fire was significant. Shymanksi said some campgrounds were badly affected, along with park buildings. The park lost a maintenance building and two yurts at Lower Fishing Lake campground. Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency buildings on its local base were also damaged.
The fire itself moved fast.
Shymanski said two wildfires were burning near the park in early May 2025. The Shoe fire started northwest of the park, while the Camp fire started to the southeast. Under hot, windy and dry conditions, the Shoe fire burned through the Gem Lakes area and Summit Lake very quickly. Cottage owners had to be evacuated, highways were closed, and park staff were sent home. There were few campers in the park at the time because it was still early in the season and the park was not officially open yet.
Eventually the two fires joined and continued under the shoe fire name.
Submitted Photo/Matthew Siemens, Sasklakes.ca
An aerial view of Lower Fishing Lake in Narrow Hills Provincial Park shows the shoreline and surrounding areas affected by last year’s Shoe fire.
By the time the danger passed. Narrow Hills had lost an entire tourism season.
A great deal of work had to happen before visitors could safely return. Shymanski said crews carried out extensive removal of burned trees along roads, campgrounds, snowmobile trails, and hiking trails. That cleanup was completed by March of this year. Since then, staff and contractors have also been busy rebuilding toilet buildings, installing boat docks, and planning replacement work for damaged facilities.
Some of the rebuilding is practical and mostly invisible to visitors. A sewage lagoon upgrade is underway. A new carpenter shop is planned. Two new yurts are also expected at some point this year.
Other work is far more visible.
Shymanski said the park recently completed a large transplant project, moving nearly 1,000 larger trees from highway right-of-ways into campgrounds that were heavily damaged by the fire. Another 80,000 seedlings are to be planted in areas that need more help this year.
That comes on top of the 73,080 trees that were planted in the park last summer, mostly in an area around Pine Lake along the highway.
Still, even with active planting and restoration, recovery in a northern forest is not quick.
Asked how long it might take before some parts of Narrow Hill look close to what visitors remember, Shymanski did not hesitate.
“Forty years,” she said.
That long view is part of what makes this season unusual. Visitors are not arriving at the end of the story. They are arriving at the beginning of it.
Nature, though, has already started moving.
There is also a different kind of appeal to Narrow Hills this season. Shymanski said the fire opened up views that were once hidden by dense forest, allowing visitors to see more of the hills and elevations that give the park its name. With lakes still drawing anglers and swimmers, wildlife already returning to new growth and fresh green regeneration pushing through burned ground, she said this is a rare chance to watch the landscape rebuild itself in real time.
Aaron Bell, a University of British Columbia researcher who studies wildfire and biodiversity, said in a previous Daily Herald interview published in April that fire is a natural part of the boreal forest, but larger and more severe burns can change what grows back over time and put older habitats at risk.
Shymanski said much of the park is regenerating naturally, helped by good winter moisture and a wet spring. Aspen is among the first vegetation coming back strongly. Small trees and shurbs are already pushing up in burned areas, with some new growth already a couple of feet high.
Wildlife is returning too. She said staff have plenty of signs of moose, which are coming into the park to browse on the fresh new growth, along with a strong presence of birds and waterfowl around the park’s many lakes and wetlands.
For all the visible fire damage, Shymanski said there is also beauty in the current landscape.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “All the lakes are still beautiful, they don’t change, you know, they still look the same, but surrounding areas look a little different.”
That may be part of what draws people back this summer. Not just nostalgia for the Narrow Hills they remember, but curiosity and beauty about what recovery looks like in real time.
Shymanski said people planning to camp should check photos on the park website before booking, since some campsites now look very different from what regular visitors may expect. Day users, anglers, and families coming for a swim or picnic are likely to find many areas still welcoming and usable. Her advice is simple: call ahead, make sure the facilities or trails you want are available, and come with open eyes.
For those willing to do that, this is a rare chance to watch a northern landscape remake itself.
“I just hope they take away just the how resilient nature is after such a devastating fire,” Shymanski said. “This is a different landscape, and it’s gonna come back pretty quickly. So, hopefully, they can see things improving.”
Visitors who want more information before heading to Narrow Hills Provincial Park can check the park website at parks.saskatchewan.ca, call the main office at 306-426-2622, or email narrow.hills@gov.sk.ca.
arjun.pillai@paherald.sk.ca
