Growing up in the tiniest of Saskatchewan towns, I developed an unfortunate geographic self-image that might be summed up as: “Nice place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit.” Almost four decades later, it seems my teenage self was strangely wrong. The place I couldn’t wait to escape is the kind of place I’d now like to escape to.

That place is Borden, a half-hour’s drive northwest of Saskatoon, fetchingly tucked into rolling parkland on the edge of the broad valley of the North Saskatchewan River. Attractions nearby include fishing and canoeing on the river; old-fashioned $5-a-day golf at the dune-strewn sand-greens nine-hole track; the pelican nesting grounds at Redberry Lake Biosphere Reserve; the Doukhobor Settlement Caves, which hearty settlers briefly inhabited at the turn of the 20th century; and the corkscrew-shaped Crooked Trees, with all their attendant myths and superstitions. Yet much more important than any of these gems is the presence of my extended family and friends, because it is they who have turned Borden into the place it has become.

Borden’s Main Street has that wind-blown and gap-toothed feel of most small towns these days, but it also has Foster’s General Store, maybe the last true general store in the province and certainly the most authentic looking. Stan Foster took it over from his parents, Ted and Winnie, who bought it from my great uncle, who bought it himself in 1907. Stan looks awfully young for a guy pushing 80, and he’s found ways to keep the store both open and interesting, filling the shelves with artifacts of various kinds as the market for staples like lye soap and binder twine declined. I like his decades-spanning collection of point-of-purchase marketing paraphernalia, in which Santa Claus, the Royal Family and marshmallow roasts are common themes, although never in combination.

Foster’s could easily double as a quirkily curated museum, except that Borden doesn’t really need another one of those, not when there are people like my mom around. She and my much-missed dad were among the driving forces behind the creation of the village’s replica Main Street, which currently runs to two old-school storefronts (Bill’s Barber and Munro’s Meats) and a genuine old school of the one-room variety, home to Borden’s official museum, which is so stuffed with relics that they overflow into the old Masonic Lodge down the street. Between them is yet another replica, this one of the Diefenbaker shack, erected in honour of the country’s 13th prime minister and Borden’s most famous son, after the real building was errantly removed to Regina, which promptly boarded it up.

A few minutes southwest of town, Laura Unrah operates one of the province’s busiest dude ranches. Laura and her mother launched a kids’ summer riding camp way back in 1967, but in recent years she and her own daughters have increasingly geared Sargent’s Holiday Farm to adults, even though, as she confides, “they do require more supervision” (something to do with an excess of self-confidence). Visitors can stay in her bunkhouses or drive out from the city for a day’s ride down through the sand hills to the river and back, followed by steaks and beer in the saloon, a country church converted to more entertaining use.

Then again, a pardner could opt for genuinely indulgent lodgings. A lot of people thought my old buddy Earl Golding and his wife, Marion, both teachers, had been brewing a little too much of the local barley when they started to build a sprawling home-as-castle (complete with something that looks suspiciously like a turret) not far from Sargent’s. When word got out that they were converting it to a luxury inn, Bordenites really began to whisper. Well, no longer. In the three years since it opened, SandCastle Resort has blossomed into what might be Saskatchewan’s most luxe retreat, replete with designer rooms, fine dining, sparkling pool and massages for those who’ve required too much supervision on the trail ride. Let me recant: Borden’s a nice place to visit.