Vatnabyggð

THINGS TO DO, SEE AND RESEARCH

The Vatnabyggd area stretches along Highway 16 from Dafoe to east of Foam Lake and north around the Quill Lakes, Fishing Lake and Foam Lake (now Foam Lake Marsh.) Vatnabyggd runs about 80 km along Highway 16 and at its widest is about 30 km wide.

* Thorrablót - late March, early April, in Wynyard or Foam Lake
* First Day of Summer dinner and dance- Mozart
* Independence Day picnic - Sunday nearest June 17, in Elfros near the statue
* Icelandic artifacts at Foam Lake and Wynyard museums
* The Icelandic memorial to pioneers, Centennial Park, Elfros

* * Great Icelandic Open Golf Tournament - midJuly - Wynyard Golf Course

* Complete Sagas in English in Wynyard, Wadena, Elfros & Foam Lake libraries

* Icelandic history in Elfros, Foam Lake, Quill Lakes & Wynyard history books
* Wynyard Unitarian Church, a regional heritage site, was originally an Icelandic Lutheran Church built in 1921 for a congregation that had been established in 1906. Services are still conducted at the church, though not on a regular basis.
* Holar Icelandic Cemetery
* The Wynyard museum has a Vilhjalmur Stefansson collection. The famous explorer has a Vatnabyggd connection - his mother, Ingibjorg Johannesdottir lived north of Wynyard and is buried in Grandy cemetery. Vilhjalmur's niece, Malla Josephson Jeroski lives in Elfros.
* The poet, teacher and "fabulist," Johann Magnus Bjarnason is buried in the Elfros cemetery.
* Young Icelanders once sailed across Foam Lake (now Foam Lake Marsh) to school. The marsh is now part of the Quill Lakes Birding Trail. The main marsh trails are named the Vatnabyggd trails and will, when completed, carry the human history of the area. The life of the early Icelanders will be featured by a cairn showing the location of the first school and the history of the young sailors.
* Check out the lakes that gave the area its name:

Vatnabyggd, Lakes Settlement.

Foam Lake was more than five feet deep. By 1902, three of the families from the west side of the lake had to take their children to and from school by sail boat. To go by team meant a trip of seven miles. When the children were older, they sailed on their own.

Wet and dry periods transformed Foam Lake from hay meadow to lake until, in 1985, work began to create the Foam Lake Heritage Marsh, the third major wetland dedicated as part of the Saskatchewan Heritage Marsh Agreement.

The area around Wynyard and the Quills has an interesting history.

In the early days of settlement, Quill Lake was a beach resort with good swimming and several cabins. Icelandic Days celebrations, dances and other parties were held at a pavilion on the beach near Wynyard. The drought and the Great Depression brought an end to this chapter of Quill Lake history.

During World War II, Dafoe, west of Wynyard, became the site of a major Air Force training base and Quill Lake became a bombing range. Highway 6, the main north south artery from the USA to Regina, and Highway 14 (now Highway 16, the Yellowhead), which connected Winnipeg to Edmonton, intersected at Dafoe. Dafoe was, in fact, the half-way point in both directions. An Air Force bombing and gunnery Training School, one of five established in Canada as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, came into official existence on Jan 7, 1941, and opened on May 22. The mission was to prepare and train air crew.

The treeless flat plain on the edge of a large lake was a perfect site for gunnery practice, there were no cities close by, and, by the 1940s, the lake had become too salty for recreational swimming or boating. Local legend has it that Big Quill Lake still contains untold numbers of unexploded bombs.

When the school opened, there were 43 officers, 486 airmen, 126 civilians and 90 airplanes waiting for business. Students worked with 37 Fairey Battles, then Ansons, Bolingbrokes, Lysanders and Harvards. Before the air training plan was disbanded on Jan. 11, 1945, the Dafoe school had expanded into a community of about 1400 people. "Boomtown," an improvised housing site, grew up beside the station.

At the end of the war, the entire station was dismantled and moved away. The runways are falling apart and the former base is a wheat field with one remaining hangar used as a storage shed.

The Quill Lakes are the largest inland body of salt water in North America. They form a RAMSAR site and are a bird watchers' paradise. To be designated a wetlands of international importance, a RAMSAR site (named after Ramsar, the place in Iran where the conference was held), a site has to host more than 1,090,000 shorebirds or 15 percent of a flyway population annually. The Quills are officially recognized as a Western Hemisphere Shoreline Reserve Network Site, part of a chain of 23 reserves in several countries including the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, Surinam, Argentina and Peru. The Reserve covers 40,000 acres including the salt lakes, freshwater marshes, mixed grass prairie and aspen parkland.

The Quill Lakes area is home to 34 species of shorebirds, including the endangered Piping Plover. Other species include the American Avocet, the Marbled Godwit, the Least Sandpiper, the Semi-palmated Sandpiper, the Red-necked Phalarope, the Stilt Sandpiper, and the Hudsonian Godwit. However, this area of Saskatchewan is also a major migratory flyway and the Quill Lakes, Fishing Lake, and the Foam Lake Marsh provide a staging area for 400,000 ducks, 130,000 snow geese, 80,000 Canada geese and 40,000 sandhill cranes. Middle Quill Lake (Mud Lake) has a colony of 400 White Pelicans, and Fishing Lake attracts cormorants as well. The area has the distinction of providing habitat for endangered species, including the whooping crane, Baird's sparrow, the ferruginous hawk, and the peregrine falcon.

The Quills (Big Quill Lake, Mud Lake and Little Quill Lake) cover an area of about 230 square miles, tucked between Highways 35 and 6 east and west and Highways 5 and 16 north and south. Big Quill is roughly 18 miles long north and south and 11 miles across at the widest point. Little Quill is about 15 miles long, running east and west, and six miles wide. Mud Lake bridges the two bigger lakes. The three together form one body of connected water with a common level.

The Quills were formed when the last of the continental ice sheet retreated more than 10,000 years ago. The lakes are at the lowest part of the glacial lake basin so that there is no outflow of water. Some spring water and seasonal run off makes its way into the lake system but evaporation has created a highly saline body of water. As water levels drop, the lakes reveal massive expanses of apparently white sand beaches. In truth, the area is a large mud flat with an alkaline topping, as tough to drive on as slick ice.

In spite of the size, the lakes basin is really a shallow saucer set into the Quill Plain. Reports of water depths vary from about 20 feet to two feet. The bottom shifts, creating sand bars. The water is not particularly navigable and metal parts on a water craft would rust quickly because of the salt.

The old Wynyard Fire Hall, part of the Town Office/Civic Centre complex just off the highway, has been established as the Interpretive Centre for the Quill Lakes/Fishing Lake/Foam Lake Marsh area, covering human history as well as nature information.

Fishing Lake remains a popular recreational lake, with several good beaches. In the early days, Fishing Lake was the site of picnics, of Maypole Dances, and of the Fishing Lake Bachelors' annual dances.

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