AT A GLANCE
Why go?
On Moody Drive in the lakeside hamlet of Denare Beach, Saskatchewan, the Northern Gateway Museum packs a surprising amount of northern history into one small, friendly room. Its free collection threads together three stories that define this corner of the Canadian Shield: the area's First Nations heritage, the fur trade era, and the boom-and-bust mining towns that once clustered around Amisk Lake. Run by knowledgeable volunteers, it is the kind of place locals point visitors toward to make sense of the region before paddling out onto the same water the voyageurs used.↗↗↗
Indigenous artistry and the fur trade
The museum's First Nations holdings go well beyond a few display cases of trade goods. You'll find leather wear, embroidery, beadwork and tools that speak to generations of Cree life in the area, alongside the delicate art of birch bark bitings—patterns pressed into the outer bark of a birch so that, once the bark is peeled and burned away, an intricate design remains impressed on the inner layer. The museum features bitings by Angelique Merasty, a celebrated artist from the nearby Fouberty Lake area, whose work helped bring this quiet northern art form to wider attention.
