Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park & Zoo

Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park & Zoo: A Photographic History, by Sara Williams, Friends of the Forestry Farm House, 2014

What we know as the Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park & Zoo began life as a federal tree nursery just over a century ago. During its working life, it distributed over 147 million trees to prairie farmers, transforming the treeless prairies into the landscape of shelter belts we know today. As iconic to Saskatoon residents as our riverbank or the Bessborough, the Forestry Farm has been a scene of many a family picnic and hosted such famous visitors as Neville Chamberlain, later prime minister of England.

The Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park & Zoo: A Photographic History tells the stories of the people who worked at the Sutherland nursery station, how trees were produced there, the evolution from a nursery with a lone porcupine into a city park and an accredited zoo.

Amazing archival and contemporary photos are combined with insightful vignettes from the forest nursery station's beginning on a stubble field in Sutherland, through two World Wars and the Depression, to its transfer to the City of Saskatoon and subsequent development as a park for picnics and the home of the Saskatoon zoo.