No one was hurt when a truck crashed into the gate office around 10:30 p.m. on May 3 at the Goodsoil Gate entrance of Meadow Lake Provincial Park. (Facebook/Kimball Lake Store)

By Nick Nielsen

Closing permanently

Accident at Meadow Lake Provincial Park closes Goodsoil Park Gate

May 16, 2025 | 4:25 PM

After what can be described as a spectacular looking accident occurred on May 3 saw a truck pulling a trailing end up on top of the cement guard rail and crash into the building of the Goodsoil Park Gate, that gate is set to be closed not only for the year, but permanently.

That means if you’re a camper planning to head to Meadow Lake Provincial Park for the May Long weekend, you can still enter the park through the Goodsoil Park Gate, but you won’t be able to purchase your park pass according to Robin Van Koughnett, the Regional Director for the Ministry of Parks, Culture, and Sport for the Northwest Region.

“It is going to be down for the foreseeable future. We did have plans on closing the gate. We are closing some of our park entry gates throughout the province and just switching to online bookings. It seems to be the way that most of the people like getting their park passes and they don’t really want to be stopped at the entry to the park when they’re coming for their vacation. So it gives them the opportunity to buy it online now and we are going away from the gates. Because that one was damage severely, we are probably not going to be putting any dollars into it to repair it. We will probably in the future tear it down.”

So people can still enter the park through the Goodsoil Park Gate if they already have their park passes ready to go, and that has been the trend for campers in Saskatchewan. More and more campers are showing up to their campsites already having purchased their passes, and as a result, the province is looking at closing down more gates at Provincial Parks in the future.

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“Basically, people are really leaning towards booking online. They’re going away from buying their passes at the gate, and they usually already have them. So we want to just make that a little easier for everybody, and then we don’t want to waste dollars on a structure that really we don’t need.”

If you are having trouble getting online to get your camping pass, you can still do so at other gates in Meadow Lake Provincial Park.

“They can still go through that gate, we’re not closing the road off. You can still access the park through that same road, but there’s also an entrance over on Highway 4 just north of Dorintosh, and there’s an entrance to the Lac des Îles south area, just north of Goodsoil as well, and then there are entrances north of Pierceland as well.”

In Meadow Lake Provincial Park, they’re also placing QR codes in some of the day use areas of the park for patrons to get their camping passes that way.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com