The camp gazebo at night, lit by string lights and a fire, beneath the Camp Cowanbunga sign

Est. on an old farm · Near Big River, Saskatchewan

Camp Cowanbunga

A tradition built around friendship, wilderness, and the people who came before us.

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Why this site exists

Every summer, for more than a decade, the same group of friends has loaded trailers in suburban driveways and pointed them north, past the last gas station, past the last bar of cell service, down a muddy trail to a hundred acres of waterfront in northern Saskatchewan.

This site isn't about a campsite. It's a record of how the camp started, who came before, what was built season by season, and why a week in the bush with the right people has come to mean so much. It exists so that the next generation, whoever they turn out to be, can pick up the thread and understand what they're holding.

Sometimes the best check-in doesn't look like a check-in. It looks like a camp chair, a fishing rod, and the right people around you.

The Film

Camp Cowanbunga Documentary

A short film about an annual tradition.

Best watched the way camp works: unhurried.

"We're thankful for the people who came before us."


The Robinson family, who cleared this shoreline by hand. The friends who hauled the first trailers down the trail. Everyone who left it a little better than they found it.

The routed wooden Camp Cowanbunga sign mounted above the pole-barn gazebo
The Archive

Chapters of the Tradition