Chapter One · Near Big River, Saskatchewan
The Land
One hundred acres of waterfront, a forty-two-kilometre lake, and the family who cleared it by hand.
The Robinson Farm
Long before there was a Camp Cowanbunga, there was the Robinson family farm. Across generations, the Robinsons cleared this waterfront by hand: trees felled, brush hauled, rocks pulled from the ground one at a time. There were no machines doing the heavy lifting; there was a family doing it, season after season, until the shoreline opened up into the meadow that is now the main campsite.
It's impossible to spend a week here and not feel that work underfoot. Every camp chair on that grass sits on ground somebody earned. When we say we're thankful for the people who came before us, the Robinsons are at the front of that line. Their farm gave this tradition a place to take root, and the camp carries their story forward with it.
The property was acquired in 2015. The old farm buildings, past their useful lives, were professionally removed after the acquisition. But the land remembers. Remnants of an early log home still surface from time to time, and on some nights a few weathered timbers from it find their way into the fire, warming another generation around the same shoreline.
Where the Road Ends
The camp sits on roughly one hundred privately owned waterfront acres near Big River, Saskatchewan. The lake out front stretches about forty-two kilometres, long enough that the far end is a rumour, calm enough at dawn that the spruce line doubles itself perfectly in the water.
At the property line, the wilderness doesn't stop. The land borders one of Saskatchewan's large protected forest reserves, and beyond camp lies hundreds of thousands of acres of boreal forest: muskeg and jack pine, moose trails and bear tracks pressed into the mud. No neighbours. No traffic. No cell service.
That last part isn't a hardship. It's the whole idea. When the phones go quiet, the conversations get longer.
Beyond camp lies hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness.
The neighbours are moose, bears, loons, and the occasional curious fox. We try to be good neighbours back.
Holding It in Trust
Owning land like this never felt like ownership in the usual sense. It feels more like a relay. The Robinsons carried it for generations and handed it on; the camp's job is to care for it well and hand it on again with the shoreline intact, the forest standing, and the meadow still soft enough for bare feet and dog paws.
Every year something gets improved, repaired, or quietly put back the way the bush wants it. That story has its own chapter: What We Build.