Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan

Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan
—  Town  —
1897 Hudson's Bay Company Store in Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan
Location of Fort Qu'Appelle in Saskatchewan
Coordinates: 50.7667°N 103.7833°W / 50.7667; -103.7833
Country	Canada
Province	Saskatchewan
Region	Saskatchewan
Rural Municipality	No. 187
Post office Founded	1880
Incorporated (town)	1951
Government
• Governing body	Fort Qu'Appelle Town Council
• Mayor	Ron Osika
• Administrator	Anna Mae Stainbrook
Area
• Total	5.28 km2 (2.04 sq mi)
Population (2006)
• Total	1,919
• Density	363.2/km2 (941/sq mi)
Time zone	CST
Postal code	S0G 1S0
Area code(s)	306
Waterways	Qu'Appelle River
Website	Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan
National Historic Site of Canada

Fort Qu'Appelle is a town located in the Qu'Appelle Valley in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, originally established as a Hudson's Bay Company trading post in 1864. Fort Qu'Appelle, with its 1,919 residents in 2006 is located between Echo Lake and Mission Lake in the Qu'Appelle Valley, at the junction of Sk Hwy 35, Sk Hwy 10, Sk Hwy 22, Sk Hwy 22, Sk Hwy 35, Sk Hwy 56, and Sk Hwy 215. The 1897 Hudson’s Bay Company store, 1911 Grand Trunk Pacific Railway station, Fort Qu’Appelle Sanatorium (Fort San), and the Treaty 4 Governance Centre in the shape of a "teepee are all landmarks of this community. Additionally, the Noel Pinay sculpture of a man praying commemorates a burial ground, is a life sized statue in a park beside Segwun Avenue.

History

Fort Qu'Appelle cycling club before Hudson's Bay store, 1898

The town of Fort Qu'Appelle (not to be confused with the nearby town of Qu'Appelle) is approximately 65 kilometres north-east of Regina, the provincial capital, between Echo and Mission Lakes, the second and third of the four Fishing Lakes. The name "Qu'Appelle" comes from "is French for 'who calls' and is derived from its Cree name, kah-tep-was ('river that calls'). There are several versions of the origin of this name, but the most popular suggests it refers to a Cree legend of two ill-fated lovers." "Fort Qu’Appelle was the crossroads of a number of historic trails that traversed the North-West Territories." The town is immediately adjacent to the site of the original Fort Qu'Appelle Hudson's Bay Company trading post, whose "factory" is maintained as a historical site and museum. The Hudson's Bay trading post was built in 1864 when the Company's activity was still largely confined to the fur trade with indigenous residents, but after ethnic European settlement by farmers had become established in the 1880s the original Hudson's Bay Company activity was replaced by its department store on Broadway Street in 1897. By this time the fur trade had lapsed but the town community and farmers travelling into town for shopping had substantially increased in number. The store building remains though long disused by the Bay.

There was once certain ambiguity as to entitlement to the town-name between the present town and the once-significant regional centre bearing the name "Qu'Appelle"; the matter ceased to be an issue in 1911 when the two communities agreed to deem the then-CPR station site as Qu'Appelle and the town in the valley as Fort Qu'Appelle.

Demographics

These figures do not include the substantial population living along the shores of the Fishing Lakes.

Origins

Fort Qu'Appelle from the northwest, circa 1905

The current site is the third Fort Qu'Appelle. The first was a North West Company trading post (1801–05), also in the valley but near what is now the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border. The Hudson's Bay Company itself (after the unification of the HBC and the North West Company) first used the name for a post north of present-day Whitewood (some 174 kilometres east of Regina on Number 1 Highway) from 1813 to 1819.

Hudson's Bay post pre-1914 when closed somewhat earlier, though today a museum.

Prior to the mid-19th century establishment of the more lengthily surviving fur-trading post at the ultimate site of the town, it "was the hub of several historic trails that traversed the northwest." It was the site of a Hudson's Bay Company post from 1852 to 1854 (when an Anglican mission was established and which still survives as the town's St. John the Evangelist Anglican parish church) and again from 1864 to 1911. With the signing of Treaty 4 by Cree and Salteaux aboriginal peoples at Fort Qu'Appelle the North-West Mounted Police, now the RCMP, arrived and have maintained a continuous presence in the town ever since.

Substantial transformation of Fort Qu'Appelle occurred when farm development began in the 1880s and farmers required a nearby urban centre for selling their grain and other products, purchasing agricultural and domestic supplies and for social gathering beyond rural churches.

Development

Fort Qu'Appelle's Broadway circa 1948. The Fort Hotel, once a significant social gathering place, is at the east end of Broadway.

The town's substantial growth beyond its status as a Hudson's Bay Company "factory" first occurred in the 1880s and 1890s when European settlement began in the region as the Canadian Pacific Railway moved westwards: a post office opened in 1880. This coincided with the first development of British India after the seizing of control of India from the East India Company by the Crown after the 1857 Indian Mutiny, and the town of Fort Qu'Appelle's striking similarity to the Indian hill stations of the early Raj has been widely commented upon by anyone who has seen both. Older residences and commercial premises together with the town's Anglican and United (formerly Presbyterian) churches are quintessentially of the 19th century hinterland British Empire, a matter which local civic boosters and cultivators of tourism appear not yet to have capitalised upon.

Fort Hotel in the 1920s; destroyed by fire in the 1960s

The ample commercial shops were substantially busier than merely for town residents, being grocery and supply centres for the ample number of farms; the Fort Hotel of the early 20th century through the 1960s had a well-attended pub with its parking lot full late Friday afternoons through evenings. A large drive-in movie theatre stood on Bay Avenue south of the railway track just before the entry into the coulee on Highway 36 to leave the valley; it had lively attendance by townspeople, cottagers and farmers until the 1960s when home television significantly improved and the drive-in closed.

Despite the accelerating decline of rural Saskatchewanian population in the post-World War II years as farms needed to be larger and therefore fewer in number for economic viability, the town grew through most of the 1950s and 1960s as a cottage community serving the Qu'Appelle Lakes summer-cottage country in the valley up- and down-river from the town. Cottagers from Regina and other southern Saskatchewan communities used Fort Qu'Appelle as a base from which to explore the scenic and historic river valley, purchase hardware and groceries and contract services; the town also benefited urban drift as farms and other towns steadily depopulated.

This process was precipitately accelerated in the early 1960s. Highway 35 had reached Fort Qu'Appelle by branching off the Trans-Canada Highway at the once-significant town Qu'Appelle and somewhat laboriously proceeding into the Qu'Appelle Valley by winding through an un-occupied coulee. The old highway was supplemented and effectively replaced by Highway 10, leaving the Trans-Canada at Balgonie and taking a straight route from the plain into the valley. This vastly eased access from the southwest and increased Fort Qu'Appelle's attraction over other market-places for farmers. And in 1963 the rural school districts were abolished and farm primary and high school children were thereafter bused to town schools. Rural churches having largely closed in the 1950s, the collapse of rural farming communities was now assured, to the benefit of minor metro-poles such as Fort Qu'Appelle though arguably to the impoverishment of the community as a whole.

The former Indian Hospital, Fort Qu'Appelle

A tuberculosis sanatorium operated by the provincial department of public health under the direction of Dr. R.G. Ferguson opened in 1917 at nearby Fort San; when tuberculosis ceased to be a public health problem the facility was turned into a fine arts complex where a substantial summer program was operated 1967-91 when the provincial government terminated its funding: latterly it has become a resort village housing the Echo Valley Conference Centre. In addition to the ample summer lake cottages -- in later years many occupied throughout the year -- and the successive uses of the former Fort San tuberculosis, for many years the Regina YMCA operated a summer camp on the north shore of Echo Lake just west of Fort San; the Anglican Church continues to maintain a similar summer camp on the south shore of Mission Lake the other, east side of the town.

The former Fort Qu'Appelle Indian Hospital was replaced in 2004 by the All Nations Healing Hospital. The hospital is one of the first health care facilities in Canada owned and operated by First Nation governments. There are sixteen in total, five from Touchwood Agency Tribal Council and eleven from File Hills Qu'Appelle Tribal Council. The surrounding area both north and south but also to minor extent within the valley is site of grain and cattle farms, nowadays larger in size and smaller in number and population than in past years, small rural communities and sixteen Indian reserves. The town itself is today "a shopping, service, and institutional centre serving the surrounding [f]arming community, neighbouring resort villages, cottagers and summer vacationers." Many traditional lake summer cottages have become year-round residences, together with winter skiing further expanding demand for the town's shopping facilities.

Tourism

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway station, ceasing use as a station in 1978 but maintained as a visitor sight.

Fort Qu'Appelle is a notable tourist destination both in summer and winter. The lakes afford swimming, boating and other water related activities in summer and cross-country skiing, snowmobiling and ice fishing in winter. There is also Echo Valley Provincial Park located between Echo Lake and Pasqua Lake. The park provides an RV park, camping, swimming, boating and fishing. The long-closed railway station was originally of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, "incorporated in 1903 as a subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway" and "[b]y 1923, [with] the Grand Trunk Railway, and the National Transcontinental merged with the Canadian Northern Railway to form the new Canadian National Railway." "[M]any prairie branch lines closed after 1945; the passenger service was terminated in 1978."

B-Say-Tah Point on Echo Lake in the Qu'Appelle Valley immediately to the west of Fort Qu'Appelle, approximately halfway along the south shore of Echo Lake and a popular holiday resort and commuter community since the 1880s.

The most notable tourist event is Treaty 4 Gathering, is a week long event celebrating the signing of Treaty #4. The event is held in September, during the week of the 15th. Pow-wows are held daily during the week.

The Mission Ridge Ski Hill, located just south of the town near the Treaty 4 Grounds, is open during the winter and is patronised by ski-enthusiasts from the valley and environs and from Regina and elsewhere in the region. On the July long weekend Mission Ridge plays host to Rockin' the Ridge, a one day country/rock music festival.

Recently, Fort Qu'Appelle and area were host to the 2007 Keystone Cup during April 12–15. The Keystone Cup is the Junior "B" ice hockey championship and trophy for Western Canada. The home town host, Fort Knox hockey club, placed 2nd and won the silver medal in the event. The town accommodated players, coaches, parents, and fans during the event.

Education

The town has one high school, Bert Fox Community High School, and one elementary school, Fort Qu'Appelle Elementary Community School. Parklands College is located at the Treaty 4 Governance Centre. Schooling in Fort Qu'Appelle radically expanded immediately after the end of academic year 1962-63 when close-by rural schools, which had pupils from kindergarten to grade 12, universally closed and their attendees were thereafter universally driven for school to the Fort. Such element in school pupils and students vastly diminished in subsequent decades, however, as farm population steadily declined. From 1967 through 1991 the former tuberculosis sanatorium at four kilometres up-valley at Fort San held the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts covering dance, music, visual art, writing and theatre. This drew a great many summer visitors to the site in Fort San, the town of Fort Qu'Appelle and Lebret, whose Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church was site for liturgical choral presentations; the School of the Arts closed due to cutting off of provincial government funding.

Places of worship

Pre-World War I photo of St Andrew's Presbyterian (United since 1925) Church with next-door manse on Bay Avenue, immediately across side-street from St. John the Evangelist Anglican, also on Bay Avenue.

Churches with long histories by local standards survive in nearby Lebret’s Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church; St. John the Evangelist Anglican, being today’s heir of the 1854 Church of England mission; and St. Andrew's United Church (Presbyterian until mid-1925). As in many if not most Canadian communities, traditional church attendance has significantly declined, certainly in the Roman Catholic, United, Anglican and Lutheran churches, being the first-through-fourth largest Canadian denominations; but the historic church buildings are nonetheless supplemented by more recently constructed Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic Church, Our Saviour Lutheran Church, and the more recently arrived denominations' Valley Alliance Church and Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witness. Once-thriving rural United Churches survived until the 1950s but closed when farmers' regular access to town increased and more fundamentalist at-home meetings acquired some favour.

Notable people

• Hockey star Eddie Shore was born in Fort Qu'Appelle.
• 1960s folksinger and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie (who wrote the protest song "Universal Soldier," has been a regular performer on the U.S. version of "Sesame Street" and is an Officer of the Order of Canada) was born on the Piapot Cree reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley.
• James Henderson, "Saskatchewan’s pre-eminent first-generation artist" spent much of his career working in Fort Qu'Appelle.
• Nicholas de Grandmaison (1895–1978), the Russian-born Canadian painter, lived for a time in Fort Qu'Appelle, and many of his pictures of aboriginal sitters in traditional dress were done in and around there.
• Dr. Ferguson, Robert George(1883–1964) During his lifetime, Dr. Ferguson guided the province through remarkable achievements in tuberculosis control. Saskatchewan was the first province to provide free treatment of tuberculosis; it was the first to initiate and develop a vaccination program for its sanatorium personnel (nurses) and the Indian population. Known as the BCG inoculation for TB, the #1 health problem in Canada at the time, this treatment was developed by Dr. Ferguson during the late 1930s. Dr. Ferguson headed 'The San' for 31 years until his retirement in 1948.
• Noted Canadian jurist and singer Graeme Mitchell, Q.C., grew up at Fort San and received his high school education in Fort Qu'Appelle. He has appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada on over twenty occasions on major constitutional issues.
• Walter Dieter (Peepeekisis First Nation), the founding chief of the National Indian Brotherhood in 1968, which is today known as the Assembly of First Nations.
• Noel Starblanket (Starblanket First Nation), the third chief of the National Indian Brotherhood.

Media

• The town's community newspaper the Fort Qu'Appelle Times is released every Tuesday.
• The community radio station, "Voice of the Valley," operates at 88.3 FM.
• The town has 3 television re-transmitters. The transmitters are used by CBC (channel 4), Global (channel 6), and CTV (channel 7).

Television and film location

• The movie Skipped Parts had scenes filmed in Fort Qu'Appelle and in nearby towns as well as the city of Regina
• The CBC movie Betrayed was filmed primarily in Fort Qu'Appelle, with notable sites including the old hospital (both in and out).
• The television series Life Without Borders is filmed and produced in the Fort Qu'Appelle area.

Gallery

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  Police parade before Fort main street shop

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  Fort drugstore circa World War I

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  Fort bank circa World War I

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  1904 lakeside horse and wagon riding southeast of Fort

External links

• Community website - History of Fort Qu'Appelle
• University of Saskatchewan Library: postcard views of the Qu'Appelle Valley at the turn of the 20th century
• [2] Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan