HMCS Saskatoon was a Flower-class corvette that served with the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War.

[3][4][5] The "corvette" designation was created by the French for classes of small warships; the Royal Navy borrowed the term for a period but discontinued its use in 1877.

[6] During the hurried preparations for war in the late 1930s, Winston Churchill reactivated the corvette class, needing a name for smaller ships used in an escort capacity, in this case based on a whaling ship design.

Eventually the Canadian corvettes would be modified to allow them to perform better on the open seas.

She was laid down on 9 August 1940 by Canadian Vickers Ltd. at Montreal and launched on 7 November later that year.

The ship was sold for mercantile conversion and entered service as Rio Norte in 1946.

On 16 May 1953 the vessel collided with Jaguar 3 nautical miles (5.6 km; 3.5 mi) south of Newport Rock in Suez Bay.