Qu'Appelle began as a railway town. A post office opened on August 1, 1882, under the name Troy, and the Canadian Pacific Railway arrived in the years that followed. When the railway came the place was renamed Qu'Appelle Station, after the nearby Qu'Appelle Valley, where the Hudson's Bay Company had long traded. The name comes from the French for "Who calls?", tied to a valley legend retold in verse by E. Pauline Johnson. Settlers kept using "Troy" well into the 1900s. In 1902 the name became South Qu'Appelle, and in 1911 it was settled that this town would be Qu'Appelle and the valley town Fort Qu'Appelle. The town was incorporated on February 20, 1903.
In its early years Qu'Appelle was the end of the line and the main distribution centre for the District of Assiniboia. Both the federal government and the Church of England expected great things, and the Anglicans made it the cathedral city of the Diocese of Qu'Appelle. But Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney chose Regina as the territorial capital. In 1885, during the North-West Rebellion, General Middleton used Qu'Appelle as the point where troops arriving by train gathered before marching north, and reporters filed their stories from here. Early residents included English remittance men who kept up amateur theatricals and musical evenings, and the town hall had its own "opera house." By 1910 the population was nearly 1,000.
Its fortunes slipped after the Qu'Appelle, Long Lake and Saskatchewan Railway opened in 1890 and the bishop's seat moved away in the 1890s. St. Peter's lost its pro-cathedral status in 1944. Later the highway was re-routed, the grain elevators closed, and farm families dwindled. The Queen's Hotel, built in 1884, burned in 2003. Today many residents commute to Regina, and James Hamblin School, the town hall library, a Lions Club, a Masons lodge, the Community Players and a Historical Society carry on community life.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.