page_title: Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan
section_title: Early town life and economy
hierarchical_section_title: Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan / History / Early town life and economy
caption_attribution_description: English: Bird's-eye view, Qu'Appelle, Sask. including former Church of England pro-cathedral
context_page_description: Qu'Appelle is a town in Saskatchewan, located on Highway 35 approximately 50 kilometres east of the provincial capital of Regina.
  Qu'Appelle was for a time the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the major distribution centre for what was then the District of Assiniboia in the North-West Territories and is now southern Saskatchewan. The town is situated in a lush rolling parkland, with intermittent coulees containing steady-flowing creeks running into the Qu'Appelle Valley, poplar bluffs and sloughs.
  Qu'Appelle had at one stage been credibly anticipated to be the major metropole of the North-West Territories by both the federal government and the Church of England. It was under serious consideration by the federal government as district headquarters of the District of Assiniboia and territorial headquarters of the North-West Territories. The Church of England had in anticipation of Qu'Appelle's future urban importance designated it the cathedral city for the Diocese of Qu'Appelle, which geographically corresponded precisely to the District of Assiniboia in the North-West Territories.
context_section_description: From 1882, early residents of Qu'Appelle included numerous English remittance men whose cultured backgrounds contributed significantly to the life of the town. Amateur theatricals and musical evenings were a regular feature of winter social life and it was important to early Qu'Appelle residents that there be an "opera house": an auditorium in the town hall.
  "[T]he great influx of settlers into the District of Assiniboia in the early 1900s meant continued growth. The population of the community was 434 in 1901, but by the end of the first decade of the 20th century, it was near 1,000"
  At a time when farmers were vastly greater in number than later: a standard farm was 1/4 section, a section being one square mile, 640 acres. As in Fort Qu'Appelle, town life in many ways resembled that of an Indian hill station during the British Raj. Perhaps improbably in so small a community but indicative of the not always tolerant and inclusive social mores of early settlement in the Canadian west, discrete neighbourhoods of Qu'Appelle were called "Germantown" and "Breedville," the latter in racist early reference to the prairie Anglo-Métis, whom white settlers at the time called "half-breeds," a term now considered disparaging, and generally avoided.
  Relations between the English immigrants of the Anglican pro-cathedral parish and the native-born Canadian Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic settlers from Ontario and Quebec were at times frosty and the Anglican Church was long referred to in some disparagement as "the English Church" by eastern Canadian settlers who perhaps regarded themselves as more authentically Canadian. At one point Bishop Harding, the Church of England (Anglican) bishop, was quoted at a meeting — when he was imprudently unaware that local Canadians were hearing his remarks — as observing that English Anglican migrants might be more attractive settlers than Presbyterian and Methodist Canadians, occasioning considerable adverse notice and animosity against the English in the general community.
  The fine yellow brick town hall and "opera house" remains marginally in use, though its auditorium has long since been closed to public use because it falls short of modern standards of safety and the town cannot bring it up. Its companion building, Qu'Appelle High School, built in similar style in identical yellow brick, closed in 1973 and was demolished in 1975. The Queen's Hotel, built in 1884 (early on with the competitor of Smiths Hotel, far more briefly surviving) continued to operate, latterly largely as a town pub albeit that alcohol was briefly banned for drink in Saskatchewan after World War I, as vastly more lengthily in the USA. After steady commercial decline for many years it was destroyed by fire in 2003.
  The first Qu'Appelle businesses of 1882 were a restaurant operated by J. Stoddard; pool hall by Love & Raymond; livery and feed store by Johnston & Paterson; livery and feed store by Joe Doolittle; and harness shop by John Milliken. An observatory was opened in 1882 by Leslie Gordon and provided morning and evening weather readings for the CPR until 1907, when the observatory was supplemented with anemometer and weather recording devices. The Qu'Appelle Felt and Boot factory opened at the end of 1897 but liquidated in 1900.  A fire in 1883 destroyed much of the new business district but soon there were six stores, three hotels, five implement agencies, two butcher shops, a flour and feed store and a bakery.
  Well into the 20th century there was still a train station, some half-dozen grain elevators, a bank, post office, butcher, two general stores, a hardware store, pharmacy, the hotel — "the Queen’s Hotel, which officially opened in 1884, was lost in an early morning blaze on April 16, 2003" — (and "beverage room," in the terminology of the early 20th-century Canadian West, though closed from 1915 to 1925 under Premier Walter Scott's prohibition and temperance legislation), barber shop, firehall, law office, numerous service stations, several cafés, cinema (later converted to a grocery store) and a cove
caption: St Peter's Church of England Pro-Cathedral, Qu'Appelle with the Terrace, circa 1905
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