It doesn’t make much sense, but Canada has the same royal family as Great Britain. In the not too distant past, the British interfered with everything Canada did. In fact, Canada did not achieve formal independence until March 29, 1982 when the Canada Act was passed by the British parliament and granted Royal Assent by Queen Elizabeth II, while the Constitution Act was passed by the Canadian parliament and granted Royal Assent by the Queen on April 17, thus patriating the Constitution of Canada. You would think that once Canada formalized its independence they would get rid of all of the British stuff that has haunted them for the past couple hundred years. Nope, not in Canada. There are still all sorts of things named after the royal family, including Prince Albert National Park (PANP) where I went this past Sunday.
Kari is one of my officemates and decided to make a visit to the park because this would likely be one of the last weekends at a reasonable temperature. Lizzie and I and my other officemate Rebecca tagged along for the adventure, despite the impending assignments. PANP is a slice of southern boreal plains and plateau. The trails wind through white, flaky stands of aspen and birch, trudge through spruce bogs, and hug already freezing lakes and streams. We saw a few coyotes, a red fox, bald eagles, ravens, woodpeckers. It was a much-needed escape from Saskatoon, if only for the day. 
A highlight of the trip was seeing the red fox. We had just finished our first hike down to the shore of a lake and back. Lizzie, Rebecca, and I were in the car and Kari was rummaging through the trunk. Suddenly, she screamed, “Guys, fox!” All we heard was a bunch of yelled gibberish from Kari, which isn’t exactly abnormal. When none of us responded she yelled, “Guys, get out of the car!” She had our attention. I opened my door and a red fox skittered passed only a few feet away. I got out and looked at a handsome red fox that had parked himself within ten feet. He was not shy, and it wasn’t until Rebecca yelled some obscenity in Mongolian (she studies wolverines in Mongolia) that it ran away a bit, but only a bit. It kept circling us, coming within five feet at some points. It wanted food and had clearly been fed by park visitors in the past. He continued his investigation for another couple of minutes until he determined we were not the wildlife feeding types, and slunk away. 