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"You'd marry anyone to get out of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan", Susan Sarandon tells Burt Lancaster in Louis Malle's film Atlantic City , and the whole province is regarded with similar disdain by many Canadians. It's certainly not one of the country's glamour regions, remaining as dependent on agriculture as it was when the province was established in 1905, and today producing 42 percent of Canada's wheat, 39 percent of its canola, 35 percent of its rye and 20 percent of its barley. Saskatchewan's farmers often struggle to make ends meet when international prices fall, and consequently they have formed various Wheat Pools , which attempt to control freight charges and sell the grain at the best possible time. The political spin-off has been the evolution of a strong socialist tradition, built on the farmers' mistrust of the market. For many years Saskatchewan was a stronghold of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) , the forerunner of the New Democratic Party (NDP), and in 1944 the CCF formed the country's first leftist provincial government, pushing through bills to set up state-run medical and social security schemes. However underprivileged Saskatchewan might have been in the past, its image as a featureless zone is grossly unfair. Even the dreariest part of the province, to the south of the Yellowhead Highway, has some splendid diversions, notably Regina 's intriguing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Museum, and the coulees and buttes of the Grasslands National Park . On the Yellowhead itself, Saskatoon , Saskatchewan's largest city, has an attractive riverside setting and boasts good restaurants, plus a complex devoted to the culture of the Northern Plains Indians. Further west, Battleford has a splendidly restored Mountie stockade, while to the north Batoche National Historic Park , occupying a fine location beside the South Saskatchewan River, commemorates the Metis rebellion of 1885. Not far away from Batoche, Prince Albert National Park marks the geographical centre of the province, where the aspen parkland of the south meets the boreal forests and lakes of the north. There are some wonderful walks and canoe routes here, even though the park's tourist village, Waskesiu Lake , is rather commercialized. North of Prince Albert Park, the desolate wilderness of the Canadian Shield is mostly inaccessible except by float plane; the main exception is the town of La Ronge , which is on the edge of the canoe routes and good fishing waters of Lac La Ronge Provincial Park and the Churchill River . By comparison, the area bordering eastern Alberta has less to offer, though the desultory prairie landscape that makes up its south and centre does incorporate some of the hills, forests and ravines of the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park . The region's public transport system is limited, but there are regular scheduled bus services between most of the major towns, and a useful, once-daily summertime bus from the town of Prince Albert to Waskesiu Lake, in Prince Albert Park, and La Ronge.
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