All that’s done for fun in the sun St. Malo’s summer hot spot relies on a dedicated community of professionals, entrepreneurs and devotees to make sure park-goers can kick back and relax One Day
By: Melissa Martin Posted: 6:00 AM CDT Friday, Sep. 4, 2026

Our ‘One Day’ feature is just as it sounds: Each month, we spend one day documenting the everyday work that helps keep our communities going. If you know an organization, program or person you think readers would be fascinated to follow, drop writer Melissa Martin a line.

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August 21, 10:10 a.m.

There’s nobody on the beach at St. Malo Provincial Park yet, though there’s certain to be plenty of visitors later. It’s shaping up to be a hot late-August Friday in southern Manitoba; the forecast warns of a thunderstorm in the late afternoon, but that won’t stop Manitobans from flocking to savour one of the last great beach days of the summer.

On a typical such weekend, this park, situated just an hour’s drive southeast of Winnipeg, can squeeze up to 2,000 guests onto the sandy crescent of its expansive main beach, and about 600 more on its other bathing-ready shore, which is nestled near the campground and thus long called Camper Beach.

For now, though, the scene around the lake is quiet and picture-perfect. The morning sun sparkles on the lake’s placid grey surface. A gaggle of Canada geese swim lazily, honking at each other. As park manager Bill Prevost pulls up on the beach in a golf cart, he nods at the birds with a wink.

“Did we tell you about the rule?” Prevost quips. “If you come here, you have to take four geese back with you.”

Regretfully, we have to decline this kind offer — Winnipeg has plenty enough geese already, thanks — but one empathizes with Prevost’s position. The geese are a problem, for the obvious reason: they poop everywhere. So every morning, before visitors arrive, park staff comb the sand and grass around the lake, cleaning up as much as they can.

People often don’t see that work, Prevost says, but it takes a lot of labour just to get the beach ready for daily guests. As we speak, a park staffer is driving a front-end loader in slow half-circles over the beach, smoothing the sand where construction of the previous day’s sandcastles left it pitted.

So right now, with most of the grooming done but visitors not yet arrived, the beach looks pristine. Still, the geese have left lingering traces of their presence in other ways.

At the edge of the beach, Tylo Chadney sets a cooler on a low table, then pulls on a pair of hip waders. She selects two empty plastic bottles from inside the cooler, then slowly walks into the water until it reaches her waist. She fills one bottle from the lake, walks a short distance, then fills the other. Fresh samples in hand, she returns to her cooler of equipment.

Chadney is a beach-monitoring specialist with the province’s Environment and Climate Change Department, working on a team that tests the water quality at 57 Manitoba beaches. The schedule for each varies according to the results: usually, St. Malo is tested on a monthly basis.

But since E. coli levels in the lake exceeded provincial guidelines in early August, specialists have come to sample the water at least once per week, sometimes more. The exceedances have not been severe; enough to post signs advising of the raised levels, and let the public decide if they want to swim or not.

Is it all the birds’ fault?

“It’s hard to say 100 per cent, but that is definitely a contributing factor for St. Malo, specifically,” Chadney says.

Chadney has been working in water quality with the province since 2020; she’s been in this role since early July. She loves the field work, getting out into the parks, and it’s been really interesting dealing with the public, she says. People often ask what the beach testers are doing; it gives them a chance to spread the word about provincial resources.

“A lot of people are concerned about the quality of their water,” she says. “This is the first job I’ve had where I feel like I’m actually making impactful work here.”

She packs today’s samples inside the cooler. She’ll drop them off at the lab later; they have to incubate for at least 12 hours before it’s time to test them. The data will be ready the next day, and the results posted on the provincial beach-monitoring website soon after that.

Then Chadney is off, bound for her next stop at the Plum Coulee Reservoir, about an hour’s drive west.

10:40 a.m.

As the sun climbs a little closer to its midday peak, visitors start to trickle in to St. Malo Beach.

On the sand, two families are setting up a prime spot under shady umbrellas. A short distance away, on a small promontory bordered by low bushes, Cyrus Funk, 15, and his 13-year-old brother Jack stand casting fishing lines into the water. Nearby, their mother Robynne watches from a picnic table.

St. Malo is not a natural lake, but it is a thriving one. It was established in 1958, when water shortages in the area spurred a decision to dam the nearby Rat River, creating a reservoir for agricultural and community use. Locals quickly flocked to the lake to swim. Three years later, the pretty area was designated under the fresh Provincial Parks Act.

Today, the lake is well-stocked with fish, including pike, walleye, perch, bullhead and freshwater drum. Motorized boats aren’t allowed on the water, which also reduces fishing pressure. There are a few popular fishing spots dotted around the shore, with one closer to the campground tending to have better luck, park staff say.

So far this morning, not much is biting for the Funk brothers. Jack reels in his line and pulls up a fistful of water plants, sighing as he starts to untangle it from the lure. No worries. They fish all the time, on this lake or others, and their mom enjoys the chance to get out as a family and unwind amid green woods and fresh air.

“It’s relaxation for them,” Robynne says, and chuckles. “There are a lot worse things teens could be doing.”

1:20 p.m.

By now, the beach day is in full swing. It’s not as busy as park staff predicted — maybe the fear of thunderstorms kept more visitors away after all — but families still throng the sand and shady picnic area nearby. And as the midday heat reaches its peak, many of those visitors are beginning to crave a cool, sweet treat.

Luckily, they have the perfect spot nearby.

Nestled in the trees a short walk from the beach is a longtime park fixture, The Barefoot Café. The main building is quaint, a white 1960s-era wood structure with walk-up service windows and a distinct hint of modernist design. Next to the café, a bright-red vintage-styled trolley bus rests in the shade, with a menu of ice cream options posted on the side.

From the bus’s order window, Kerri Kosawa greets a customer with a welcoming smile. “Hello, how can I help you today?”

This is the 10th season Kosawa and her husband, Hiroki, have been running the café here. They’re not park employees — they own the business, the bus and the retro café’s building, but they lease the land from the park — though they are very much integrated into the friendly community of workers who keep the park’s daily life going.

To Kosawa, how they ended up at St. Malo still feels a little bit like fate.

She grew up in nearby Morris; her husband is from Japan. They met while she was teaching English there, and settled back in Manitoba together. They started a family, which now includes three young children, and a food-truck business, rolling all over the province to feed people at various festivals and fairs.

One year, when their eldest child was just a baby, they’d set up at the Hanover Agricultural Exhibition in Grunthal. It’s an “awesome fair,” Kosawa says, and laughs: “But they weren’t interested in our food. It was a disaster.” After a day of selling almost nothing, the couple packed up and started to head home, feeling a little defeated.

Then Kosawa remembered going to St. Malo as a kid. They were just a 15-minute drive away; perhaps a beach visit would be the pick-me-up they needed, she thought. As they strolled around the park, cradling their infant, it did lift their spirits — and then they spotted a “For Sale” sign on the café.

“I thought, ‘oh my God, it’s meant to be, we’re going to buy it,’” Kosawa says. “Then we did.”

Since then, the quaint beachside café has become the couple’s main business. They crafted a simple menu of crowd-pleasing beach classics: hot dogs, poutine and burgers — including, as a nod to Japan, a pork katsu burger. In their second year at St. Malo, they bought the red trolley bus from a seller in California, then drove it home and turned it into the ice cream stand.

Running a beach café isn’t always easy. There was a “steep learning curve,” Kosawa says. The original café building needs a lot of maintenance, and that’s their problem, not the park’s. The weather can have an unpredictable effect on both sales and their stock. Get a rainy weekend, and nobody comes. Get a hot one, and you risk running out of ice cream.

But for the Kosawas, the café has offered the perfect balance of work, fun and family. They employ about 15 eager young staff members to help out. Kerri and her husband trade days managing the kitchen while the other gets to stay home with the kids. Above all, they love serving visitors here to help make the same precious memories she herself recalled.

“It’s really nice because most people are here to relax,” she says. “Sometimes, when we would do the food trucks, if we were downtown in the city, people are on a time schedule. They’re on their lunch hour, they’ve got to go. So it’s a bit faster. Here, most people are generally happy. And to work with happy people all day, it just feels good.”

In the bus, Kosawa sets about heaping bubblegum ice cream onto a cone, to hand to a waiting customer.

1:50 p.m.

On the shores of St. Malo Lake, across from the main beach, six new wooden structures sit facing the water. Other than a family of geese (of course) resting on the grass near one of the little buildings, nobody is staying here — yet. In just a few days, these will officially open for business, and provincial officials are excited.

These are the park’s brand-new mini cabins, and this year they’ve brought a lot of buzz to St. Malo. The teensy cabins are a new offering in Manitoba’s provincial parks, building on the same “comfort camping” concept as the wildly popular cabins and yurts elsewhere in the parks system.

The mini cabins were announced earlier this summer, though they’d been in the works for a while. When reservations for the cabins opened just a few days before our visit, all the available dates were snapped up within seconds; even some of the park’s own staff tried to reserve their own stays, to no avail.

Now, just three days before the cabins welcome their first guests, two of the project’s leaders are on-site to make a few final checks. At the first of the cosy cabins, Manitoba Parks facilities development manger Rebecca Lauhn-Jensen and provincial landscape architect Ryan Wakshinski, who designed the sites, invite us to see inside.

The cabins are brand-new. They smell like fresh lumber. Inside each are two bunk beds, which can sleep six, a small kitchen area and a dining table; outside, there’s a shaded metal table for outdoor food prep, a niche set into an outer wall where visitors can store beach toys or kayaks, and wide ramps for wheelchair users to access the spacious deck.

Those decks are the clearly the mini cabins’ star features. Each of the structures was designed and angled to facilitate a beautiful view over the water. It’s a very intentional integration with the environment; though the cabins are set in a more grassy and open part of St. Malo’s campground, their orientation makes them feel private.

That was a lesson designers had taken from other similar initiatives.

“Some of the yurt sites early on, they would just put them on regular campground sites,” Wakshinski says. “It wasn’t as special. So we worked to put (the cabins) in special locations that are waterfront as much as possible.”

There will be more mini cabins coming to Manitoba; the next set has already been announced for Camp Morton. So as the project reps walk around the site, they’re already making notes on what to improve in the future. For instance, Wakshinski points at the shelves beside the beds; he’s heard feedback suggesting they should be positioned closer to the electrical outlets.

“From our perspective, we’re always looking for the problems,” Lauhn-Jensen says, with a chuckle.

But overall, they’re pleased with how it turned out, and excited to see if guests feel the same.

“I like how bright they are inside,” Wakshinski says. “These will be nice and airy and spacious.”

2:10 p.m.

The rain is just starting to drizzle as park manager Bill Prevost guides his golf cart down tree-lined paths into the park’s campground. It’s still early for the big Friday-afternoon check-in rush; many of the campground’s 412 sites are unoccupied. That won’t last: most of the spots are booked for the weekend, although there are still 52 available for the night.

In some ways, the campground is a community unto itself. Campground staff get to know many of their regulars, and even their preference of spots. Those who come here often scout out favourite locations. Bay 11, Site 29 is a prime one — it backs out close to the water — and in Bay 6, there are two sites that are closest to access points for kayaks and canoes.

For those who don’t already know where they want to go, campground staff are happy to help match them with the right spot. Autumn Ewen, who works in the campground office, prides herself on helping first-time visitors navigate the park.

“When we have people coming in and they’ve never been here before, we typically ask if they want a campsite that’s more open, or if they want more privacy,” Ewen says. “We can narrow it down on our end, and figure out what they want. That’s cool to be able to work on that for them.”

Then, most familiar of all, are the seasonal campers, who each spring jostle to snap up one of a limited number of sites available to rent for an entire summer, co-ordinating with other regulars to get spots close to each other. Some of the seasonals have been coming to St. Malo for 30 years or more, and Prevost knows many by name.

Even more gratifying for campground staff is when campers manage to snag a summer-long spot for their first time.

“It’s also nice to get people who have never had a seasonal before, because you get to see how excited they are, and all the questions they have,” Ewen says.

Now, under drips of rain, Prevost turns the golf cart past the seasonal campsites. Many of the campers have decorated their spots with lights, flags or even jaunty signs bearing their names. Tucked in one site sits a bright-blue Bluebird camper bus; the woman inside pokes her head out of the window to chat about her experience spending the summer here.

“It’s awesome,” she starts to say.

At that moment, the dark clouds over St. Malo open up and a torrential wall of rain begins to pour on the campground. In the distance, lightning flashes. There’s a severe thunderstorm warning in effect. The seasonal campers are cosy and dry in their trailers, but the same can’t be said for two Free Press reporters in golf carts.

We planned to spend one day here; it’s been slightly interrupted. That’s how things go, in the life of a provincial park.

August 25, 3:20 p.m.

Four days after that storm, the skies over St. Malo are clear, the campground is dry — and also, remarkably peaceful. There aren’t many campers here on a Tuesday afternoon. The bulk of the weekend crowd is gone. The seasonal campsites are also quiet, waiting for their working owners to return at the end of the week.

So as Darren LeBlanc and his wife, Lisa, relax in the shade of their season-long campsite, beside their sleek trailer, it almost feels as if they have the whole campground to themselves. That’s one of the things they cherish about spending the entire summer here. It’s so close to Winnipeg, yet out amid the trees and the quiet, everything is at peace.

It’s exactly the experience they hoped for. In 2024, after LeBlanc retired from a long career with Boeing, the couple bought their trailer and scored one of the prized seasonal sites at St. Malo. It was a “great transition,” LeBlanc says, an ideal way to enter retirement life by just getting out of the city, and getting away from it all.

“You know how some people retire, and they don’t know what to do with themselves?” LeBlanc says, and gestures at the idyllic greenery that envelops their campsite. “Well, I already had a plan.”

Now, after their second full season here — they spent last summer in Northern Ontario, where LeBlanc grew up — they’ve come to know the park well. It’s bigger than some visitors might think, LeBlanc says. When they take their bikes for a ride around the trails, they can be gone for well over an hour. If they kayak the whole lake, it’s at least an hour and a half.

The one thing they’d like to see change is the length of the season: the St. Malo Campground closes in mid-September, but they’d stay until October if they could. Otherwise, they have a guest tent sent up. The birds are chirping in the trees. They have a firepit grill, and fresh air, and shade.

That’s all you need to make a day in one of Manitoba’s parks pretty darn good.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca