Things to do in Saskatoon

Landmark · Opimihaw Creek valley, just north of the city

A National Historic Site holding around 6,000 years of Northern Plains Indigenous history — tipi rings, a medicine wheel, bison jumps and pounds — with a herd of plains bison returned to the land in 2019 for the first time in over a century.

Local tip: This is the most important place in the region and most visitors to Saskatoon never hear of it. Go with time, take a guided walk rather than reading the panels alone, and go in the shoulder season when the valley is quiet. It is a candidate for UNESCO World Heritage listing and the case for it becomes obvious about twenty minutes into the walk.

Nature · Both banks of the South Saskatchewan River, the whole length of the city

Around 100 km of riverside path connecting the university, downtown, Broadway and the northern reaches — the spine of how people here get around on foot and by bike, and the reason a prairie city feels green.

Local tip: Do the loop across the Broadway and University bridges at dusk in summer for the best free view in the city, and understand that the trail is a winter facility too: it is cleared, people ski and fat-bike it, and the river ices over. If you are choosing where to live, proximity to the Meewasin is worth more than proximity to almost anything else.

Neighborhood · East bank, immediately across the Broadway Bridge from downtown

The city's independent high street — the Broadway Theatre, bookshops, coffee roasters, restaurants and the oldest residential neighbourhood in Saskatoon behind it.

Local tip: The Fringe Festival takes the whole strip over in early August and is the best week of the year here. The rest of the time, the value is in the housing behind the street: Nutana's character stock, walkability and the Meewasin at the bottom of the hill are why it holds the price premium it does.

Culture · River Landing, on the downtown riverbank

A contemporary art museum on the river holding the world's most complete collection of Picasso linocuts — over 400 of them — alongside a serious programme of contemporary and Indigenous art.

Local tip: The Picasso collection is not a footnote; it is the largest such holding anywhere and the reason art people fly here. Go on a free-admission evening if there is one on, and take the river-facing café whatever you do — it is the best view of the South Saskatchewan from indoors, which in February is a meaningful qualification.

Food · 20th Street West and the Riversdale district

The city's farmers' market alongside the most changed neighbourhood in Saskatoon — breweries, restaurants and coffee roasters along 20th Street, in and among the community that was there first.

Local tip: Come on a Saturday morning for the market and stay for lunch on the strip. It is also the clearest place to see the city's honest tensions: Riversdale's redevelopment sits directly alongside its poverty, and pretending otherwise is a tourist's mistake. Prairie berries — saskatoons themselves, the fruit the city is named after — are the thing to buy in July.

Nature · South of the city, and the north-east edge

Two fragments of what the region looked like before the plough: a conservation area on the river bluffs south of town, and a stretch of native prairie in an ancient glacial meltwater channel on the city's northern edge.

Local tip: Native prairie is one of the most endangered ecosystems on the continent and almost nobody thinks to look for it because it does not announce itself the way a forest does. Walk the Swale in June when it is in flower, and go to Beaver Creek in autumn for the bluffs. Both are free, both are twenty minutes out, and neither is ever busy.