McNab Park – a Ghost Town within Saskatoon: Photo Essay

Local airport-area neighbourhood deteriorating as city apparently booms

Growing up in Saskatoon’s west side was scary at times, but the kids who came from McNab Park AKA McStab Park were some next level shit. The area was considered a ghetto even by the standards of the inner city thugs I went to high school with at Bedford Road – the McNab crew were ‘unfuckwithable’.

When I was 14-years-old I was introduced to McNab Park, an old military housing area, via a girlfriend, who also introduced me to cigarettes and sneaking into hotel pools. Retrospectively, I was probably as afraid of her as I was her neighbourhood, which was only half slummy back in the ’90s.

On weeknights there were children running through the playground while pick-up trucks stirred up gravel with a rude snort. Located between an airport, an industrial sector and open fields, it was pretty much boring as shit to be a teenager there. I remember smoking copious amounts of cigarettes and swearing a lot but mostly hoping that nobody wanted to fight or spray paint something out of pure ennui. Thankfully, tensions would always ease up when someone would invariably sneak into the Saskatoon Inn to go for a dip in the hot tub. I think the hotel staff were as scared as I was of the crew.

Nowadays McNab Park is a literal urban ghost town located within our city’s boundaries. In many ways the neighbourhood actually resembles the towns Ominocity photo documented in past posts on rural ghost towns. A few residents still remain in the area, and, I suspect, there are those who are squatting in the boarded up houses

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