Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park is a busy place from the May long weekend to Labour Day. There’s no real way of telling how many people visited the park during those 14 weeks, but park staff do know that there were about 7,500 of what they call “camper nights.
That means campsites rented for one night. So if they averaged three people per camp, it’s 22,500 people. Except some people camp for a week, so it’s the same three people using up 21 camper nights.
But on the other hand, lots of people visit the park without camping. Hundreds stop at Devonshire Beach, for example. And, according to the park’s Visitor Services Specialist Jeff Manchak, some show up for the interpretive programs who are not staying in the park.
“The majority of the participants are from Marten River Campground,” says Manchak, who just completed his first summer on the job. “But there are people from all over.”
The programs Manchak and his seasonal interpreter Samantha Magnus ran had great variety this year and were well attended. As many as 150 people turned up to see ‘Trial by Fire’ a theatrical-type presentation, “all about wildfire,” Manchak says.
Like the historical program ‘From War Trails to Steel Rails’ it was held at the Marten River Campground amphitheatre.
The interpretive duo also did several educational hikes over the course of the summer, showing and teaching participants about the flora and fauna of the area. Magnus led several hikes to Lily Lake, which “she turned into a medicinal plant hike,” Manchak says.
Another hike – about the relationship between insects and plants – was called ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.’
Manchak says program participants are pretty curious generally. The role of the interpreters, he says, is to help them to appreciate the wonders of nature with “some gentle prodding.”
“Kids get what I like to call the ‘Aha!’ moment. From then on they’re hooked. Hopefully we get them to appreciate the value of what we have here.”
One thing we have in the park, Manchak says, is a great variety of birds. That alone makes the park special. Another feature that other boreal parks generally don’t have is two natural regions within park boundaries. There are plants and animals up on Marten Mountain, he says, that are common in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and not in the surrounding lower country.
Then there’s Devonshire Beach.
What you see along the eastern edge of Lesser Slave Lake is more normally associated with oceans, not northern lakes.
“The dunes are pretty much unique,” Manchak says.
The park programming season kicked off on the May long weekend with a bird banding hike which included a presentation by Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory head bander Richard Krikun. During the rest of May and June Manchak and Magnus took environmental education programs into area schools. At the end of June they launched a bear awareness program, visiting every campsite in the park on Friday evenings. Every Saturday through the summer there were hikes or other activities.
“It was a great summer,” says Manchak.
Next summer promises to be even more fun, with the opening of the Boreal Centre for Bird Conservation expected in time for the Lesser Slave Lake Songbird Festival in the first week of June. Located about halfway between Devonshire Beach and Marten River, the BCBC will likely become an alternative staging area for park-organized hikes.
“It will draw people there,” says Manchak.

Copyright © 2000 The Lakeside Leader. All Rights Reserved.
No part may be reproduced without written permission.

View our Privacy Statement.
Send website suggestions to the Webmaster