‘Should have a snorkel’: Residents in northern Sask. getting through flood with kayaks, quads and berms

Despite significant flooding in northern Saskatchewan, residents are keeping a sense of humour and focusing on getting through the floodwaters safely.

Austyn Adamko, a councillor in the Rural Municipality of Garden River, said his community has seen a “massive” amount of water causing critical damage to the area’s infrastructure and roads.

“Our first response was to declare a state of emergency,” he stated. The community is now working closely with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency to receive assistance and government subsidies while facing the flood.

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Adamko said the most important task has been helping stranded rate payers affected by the water.

“We do have some people that they are down to a one way in, one way out kind of situation due to this flooding,” he explained. “Our primary concern is obviously dealing with these people, ensuring that they can get out and that emergency services can be reached to them.”

Secondary to that, Adamko said infrastructure will need to be fixed quickly. He estimated three to four bridges in the RM will need inspections, including the Meath Park bridge and grid road, a singular access point to the south part of the RM’s Division Two area and a Division Three bridge near Adamko’s home.

He said Garden River water levels have been rising rapidly.

Flooding in the Rural Municipality of Garden River, Sask. on May 6, 2026. (Marija Robinson/650 CKOM)

“It’s not a good situation right now. And I think there’s a lot of other RMs that are feeling the stress and the pressure of this situation,” Adamko shared.

“We’re seeing some relief on the south side of the RM right now, whereas before … it was bad and we had a lot of people kind of stranded down there.”

He said the roads in the area are still poor, though passable.

“We’re constantly reevaluating every situation, every hour, amongst counselor and divisions, doing their due diligence of patrolling their roads,” Adamko said, noting that the direction of the water flow can change quickly.

Even having seen drought for the past few years and calling himself a “younger counsellor,” Adamko said this is some of the worst flooding he’s witnessed.

“I have never seen water like this in my lifetime,” he said, noting that the level of damage to community infrastructure is also beyond what the community has experienced before.

“It doesn’t take much for this water to be able to flood out past the roads or beyond the roads into somebody’s property and cause flood damage to property,” she said.

Adamko said Garden River has used a “large quantity” of its resources, but has not yet depleted its stores of equipment to mark roads. The municipality is working diligently, he said, to mark roads as appropriately as possible for drivers and residents to navigate.

The deputy reeve put some portion of blame for the flooding on the most recent snowfall in Saskatchewan just weeks ago, when their municipality saw another eight to 10 inches (20-25 centimetres) of snow added to the pack.

“That late snowfall we got, our snow was already starting to melt with some water coming but that extra dump that we got really added to the amount of flooding coming in,” he said. “And then the extreme changes in in weather and temperature have also been a huge contributing factor to the situation.”

Northern Sask. residents face worst flooding in years

Staring at a cat on the roof of an abandoned church it the RM of Garden River, resident Bill Russell said it will learn to swim if it wants to get down.

He said the past few days of flooding feel as though they’ve made his hair recede.

“This is the worst,” Russell said of flooding he’s experienced. “My place is underwater.

“I have a big trout pond in my front yard, and it was about two thirds empty because of the low water table from last year,” Russell explained. “Four hours later, it was completely overfilled.”

Seeing flooding in his friend, Pauline Bear’s basement, Russell estimated about seven feet of water has hit some parts of the his area.

He said they’re on a third trip to retrieve valuables from her home before the floodwaters claim them.

Travelling to Paddockwood on Tuesday, Russell said that area is experiencing “devastation.

“Water’s pouring over the asphalt but you got to start going down rural routes to get to where you wanted to go,” he explained. “I bet you 80 per cent of roads over there are closed.

Karen Benoit said the flooding in her area left her stranded earlier this week. She lives in the Meath Park area, on an acreage.

“We walked through it, and it was like pretty much crotch height to get through from the highway to get home,” Benoit described on Wednesday.

She said the water had subsided to about ankle height on the roads by late Tuesday.

The flooding is nothing new to Benoit.

“It is what it is,” Benoit said. “There isn’t much you can do about it.”

Benoit said their house and yard are safe and their basement was spared with just an inch or two of water in the sump hole. Despite worries that floodwaters would impact their septic system, that has not happened.

She recalled flooding in their area began in 2011, when they had a couple of years with high water levels. The flooding in 2013 in the Meath Park area, she said, was close to what her community has been experiencing this year.

“This year is more extreme, because it’s like the whole RM and north central Saskatchewan, really,” Benoit said, explaining that the flood levels are very dependent on rain and snowfall. “It’s usually every spring that we get water over the road and flooding in the yard. It’s just the way the creeks are, and beaver dams and culverts froze, whatever, but once they break, it subsides and drains away.”

Benoit said she her husband went through the water on a quad, with water up to its headlights, though she said he likely could have made it through in their truck.

“I have video of him going sideways, and really, yeah, it was up to the headlights of the quad,” Benoit described. “Should have a snorkel, but we didn’t.

“Our neighbor came with a kayak … but it was pretty much very close to the same level. But again, day or two, it was down to where you could drive out.”

Benoit wasn’t fearful of being stranded. She said they’d stocked up on most necessities, and she had just completed a trip into town. In case of an emergency, she said they keep a dinghy.

Flooding in the Meath Park area on the mornings of Sun, May 3, 2026 (left) and Mon, May 4, 2026 (right), illustrating rising spring floodwater levels in northern Saskatchewan. (Karen Benoit/Submitted)

“When you live out in the country, you kind of keep extras of everything,” she explained. “I never really had to worry much about getting out.

“What are you gonna do? It’s Mother Nature,” Benoit said.

Justin Deschambeault, also in the Meath Park area, said the water is higher than he’s seen in more than three decades.

“I’ve been here 35 years now, and it’s never been like this,” Deschambeault said.

“(I) had to build a berm around my shop and had a pump running on that since Saturday,” he explained, saying he’s been staying afloat so far – his house his dry, he said, though the water is a bit higher in his shop.

“I shouldn’t have built it where I did, I guess,” he said, nothing the waters came within about a half an inch of flooding that space.

A box scraper of his is presently underwater. He estimated about a half-metre of water in his backyard. The mud berm he built, Deschambeault shared, has been “getting him by.”

He said he’s never seen the Garden River so high under the bridge, with only about a foot of clearance.

“I’ve been here since I was born. And, like, we’ve never had water in this ditch here, like the culvert right there,” Deschambeault said. “It’s been kind of the running joke that, ‘Oh yeah, your culvert is clear water.’ Will never see that.

“She’s wet this year.”

– with files from 650 CKOM’s Marija Robinson