Saskatoons Waterfront

Today I was walking along the paths of the South Saskatchewan River, seeing the picturesque areas that I have heard of from people who enjoy Saskatoon. As I was looking at the nice river with its strangely perfect banks and groomed parks, I wondered, what gender is this space? How do we categorize a space as masculine or feminine, and how does a well kept city park flanking a Prairie river justify a gender categorization in any way?
The park itself was extremely man made, with groomed paths, hand planted park trees, pavilions and boat ramps leading to the water. Sandwiched between Broadway Bridge and University Bridge, I question how natural the banks of the river are, I am sure they were built up and altered for support and structure of the roadways and the parks topography seemed altered to support pedestrian movement rather than the hillier roads and riverside. But this man made alteration to nature does not speak of a gender. While constructed within a patriarchal development, I wouldn’t say that masculinizes the space itself in how it used in everyday life. The space becomes an urban greenspace, but the gender it carried did not lean towards masculine, but perhaps towards feminine due to the romantical nature of the paths at dusk.

Due to the romantic time of day, I noticed almost immediately that the space was heterosexual. The park was full of heterosexual couples going for walks down the green spring spaces. Walking for a similar reason with my girlfriend, I felt as a minority within the public space. While the space seemed to be accepting of all kinds of people from couples to families, male and female identities, the homosexual demographic seemed to be missing. Another option Lisa and I had considered for the night was to go to the gay bar, where we would have found a dominant homosexual crowd, but instead chose the park and encountered a very heteronormative demographic.

I will return to this park at another time of day to evaluate its gender in different context. Without the setting sun and the emerging streetlights, this space would lend itself to a very different crowd. The use of the space influences the perceived gender of the space, so I will return to get photographs of the space, but also to observe the use of the space at a different time of day.