Boars and Muskox and Bears, oh my!

When I was small, we lived in Northern Saskatchewan in a town called La Ronge. My mum and dad, teachers by trade, cashed out and bought a fishing lodge located at the top of Nistowiak Falls where Rapid River meets Lac La Ronge. In winter we lived in town and in the summer we lived on the island, where dad and the guides took parties out on fishing expeditions and mum and the girls made meals for all the guests and staff without the benefit of refrigeration! My job was to fall off the end of the dock and end up with waterlogged diapers and my 7-year old sister, Heather's, job was to make sure I didn't!

Even though it's been 30 years since we lived there permanently and 15 or 20 years since we stopped spending summers there, the family went back to La Ronge this week so that Heather could get married there.

It was a nice little vacation for me in the middle of a busy spell at work and the distraction was great. I suppose other people might be inclined to buy postcards or hoodies as a souvenir. Not me. I bought meat. Where else in the world can you walk into a supermarket/outfitters/furtrading post and buy frozen ground muskox meat? I'd venture to guess nowhere. But that's exactly what I did.

My mother still regales us with stories of living in the far north in the early seventies when fresh food was hard to come by and expensive when you did find it. The price of beef was so astronomical due the remoteness of the location, that we primarily ate what dad hunted: bear, caribou, deer, muskox...To this day my mum doesn't really like venison.

On Tuesday afternoon, I wandered into Robertson's Trading Post. I remember Robertson's from my childhood - it was a fixture in town long before many of the other stores. When we lived there, and later when we still had a cottage, there were only 3 stores in town to speak of: Robertson's, the Hudsons Bay Store and the Co-op. Now there are many more.

Robertson's was started 40 years ago by a former fur buyer for the Hudson's Bay Company. It's been an integral part of town life since then. The trappers buy their supplies from Robertson's and Robertson's buys their furs. He knows everyone in the community and when a trapper's a little low on cash, Robertson's provides supplies for the season on credit against the furs that will come later - in this way it is very much both a modern store and a living testament to the traditional ways of the North. It is a treasure.

If you wander around to the back of the store, there are beautiful arctic fox, wolf, badger, lynx, beaver and bear pelts hanging from the ceiling for purchase. There are also beautifully beaded deer hide moccasins, coats, vests and purses.

In addition to the groceries and furs, Robertson's also has a full time butcher or two on staff, working behind a glass wall so you can watch them ply their trade. On the wall, next to the photos of generations of Northern Saskatchewan hunters and trappers are many, perhaps 30 or so, certificates, ribbons and awards for their home cured bacon, sausages and deli roast beef. Not what you'd expect from an unassuming small town butcher nestled in the back of an outfitters, but clearly the awards are deserved! We cooked the packet of caribou and wild boar smokies for supper tonight and they were out of this world, juicy without being fatty and just the perfect amount of spice!

If you get the chance to visit La Ronge stop into Robertsons for some award winning sausages or some of the other unusual and fantastic meat products: wild boar and dried blueberry sausages, muskox burgers, wild boar and muskox mince, muskox braising ribs, sausages with wild rice and cranberry...Don't forget to pick up some wild rice - it's indiginous to Northern Saskatchewan and La Ronge produces most of it!

There's plenty to do in La Ronge: rent a houseboat and tour the enormous 1600 square kilometre lake, catch some fabulous fresh fish such as Walleye, Sauger, Northern Pike, Lake Trout, Whitefish and Burbot or Rainbow Trout, and pan fry them right out of the lake, sunbathe, canoe, waterski, go for stunning walks or mountain bike rides, visit one of the 1300 islands, have an ice cream down at the dock, or just lay back with a beer and enjoy the sunset.

Comments

[Ellie]

I love the way you described the town, and the photos (including the sausages!) are breath-taking! What a sunset...

[Tanna]

Gorgeous. I've collected all the sunset pictures that we've taken over the years and put them into a folder and turned it into a slide show. Sometimes I let it run when I'm falling asleep. Sounds like a perfect memory for a family wedding.

[Rosa]

Wow, that must be a great place! I'd love to go there...

Those sausages look very fine and the sunset pictures are beautiful!

Thanks for the interesting post!

[mireille]

what a great description of another world ... I think of Seattle/the Cascades as being far north, but this is an entirely different dimension. And Mazel Tov to your sister! xoxo

[jenjen]

hello, what a beautiful corner of the world!! that sunset is just absolutely stunning.

[Corey]

Thanks for comin' up Lyn...the wedding cake was marvelous as well!
Corey

[Michael Kirkpatrick]

I really enjoyed your mouthwatering site. I was the HBC manager in La Ronge back in the late 50s(for a summer-and used to operate the Co-op store in Stanley Mission in the 60s. I knew Alex Robertson when he was the manager of the Fur Depot in PA.
Brings back many good memories-fresh pickerel,pike cooked "ponask" style over a wood fire-moose=stew and bannock. Yummy!

[Tara Zieminek]

The Unheardof Restuarant in Edmonton (www.unhearof.com) does a Tenderloin of Caribou that's pretty amazing, if anyone out here has a hankering...

[kyle Kuffner]

Hey I just moved to Sasktoon from La Ronge in the summer. Its an awesome town and i lived there for only 3 years and its getting really big now. the last summer they built like 5 new stores and over 75 houses