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“No beach-blanket bingo going on there this summer,” Saskatoon city Councilor Darren Hill says. “It is not being closed, per se, the riverbank is still public property, and the citizens of Saskatoon are allowed to use that if they so choose.

“But it is some of the behaviour that goes with that that is illegal.”

He means the fun stuff. The stuff that people typically do at the beach on a hot and sunny day. For example: swim. In addition to barring swimming, there are to be no libations containing alcohol, no convenient parking and no portable toilets planted nearby for public use — an array of strikes against the giant sandbar that led one local wag to lament the city was willfully ignoring an urban “treasure” that, on summer days, resembles “a postcard from the French Riviera.”

Before their beach appeared, Saskatonians eager to enjoy the water could join the local canoe or kayak club, hike or bike or walk along the network of trails that run along the river or gaze down into its flowing waters from one of the city bridges spanning its reach.

Sand lovers, meanwhile, were forced to migrate further afield to one of two rural beaches, beyond the city limits. Cranberry Flats and Paradise Beach — a.k.a. Bare-Ass Beach — a clothing-optional stretch that attracts up to 300 sunbathers a day during the summer months.

“It’s a great place to just relax and be uninhibited,” one unnamed nudist told a reporter a few years back. “You can come down here, take your clothes off, eat your dinner and have a coffee.