- elevation 550 m (1,804 ft) Basin area 51,000 km² | - elevation 400 m (1,312 ft) Length 430 km Country Canada | |
- location near St. Lazare, Manitoba. | ||
The Qu'Appelle River /kəˈpɛl/ is a Canadian river that flows 430 kilometres (270 mi) east from Lake Diefenbaker in southwestern Saskatchewan to join the Assiniboine River in Manitoba, just south of Lake of the Prairies, near the village of St. Lazare.
Contents
- Map of QuAppelle River Ellice MB Canada
- DescriptionEdit
- HistoryEdit
- FishEdit
- Notable residentsEdit
- References
Map of Qu'Appelle River, Ellice, MB, Canada
With the construction of the Qu'Appelle River Dam and Gardiner Dam upstream water flow was significantly increased and regulated. Most of the Qu'Appelle's present flow is actually water diverted from the South Saskatchewan River.
DescriptionEdit
The river flows into several lakes in southeast Saskatchewan, including:
The river also passes four provincial parks: Buffalo Pound Provincial Park, Echo Valley Provincial Park, Katepwa Point Provincial Park and Crooked Lake Provincial Park.
Assorted tributary coulees drain into the Qu'Appelle Valley at various junctures along its course, notably Echo Creek immediately upriver from Fort Qu'Appelle, and Last Oak Creek, north of Grenfell and Broadview, in the past the locus of an extremely successful aboriginal-managed ski resort. The other tributaries include the Moose Jaw River, Wascana Creek, Loon Creek, Jumping Deer Creek, Pheasant Creek, Kaposvar Creek and Lanigan Creek.
Last Mountain Lake, also known as Long Lake, the largest natural lake in southern Saskatchewan (Lake Diefenbaker is larger but is a reservoir behind the Gardiner and Qu'Appelle River Dams), drains into the Qu'Appelle near the town of Craven, through Lanigan Creek.
HistoryEdit
In 1787, the North West Company established a fur trading post at Fort Espérance on the lower river. After it was abandoned in 1819, the Hudson's Bay Company established a post at Fort Qu'Appelle in 1852 immediately adjacent to the site of what became the town of the same name.
The Qu'Appelle River and Valley derive their name from a Cree legend of a spirit that travels up and down it. The aboriginal people told the North West Company trader Daniel Harmon in 1804 that they often heard the voice of a human being calling, "Kâ-têpwêt?", meaning "Who is calling?" ("Qui appelle?" in French). They would respond, and the call would echo back (there is a strong echo phenomenon at Lebret). Pauline Johnson, the half-Mohawk poet, whose "work was well received by critics and was popular with the public during her lifetime, but faded into obscurity after her death," and who made speaking tours of Canada, the United States, and England between 1892 and 1909, learned of the legend and elaborated upon it with Victorian sentiment. In her version, a young Cree swain heard his name while crossing one of the lakes and replied, "Who calls?" Only his echo could be heard (hence Echo Lake), and he realized it had been his bride-to-be calling out his name at the instant of her death. Despite its evidently fictional nature, it is the trumped-up romantic version that holds sway today. In recent years, there has been some local civic-booster agitation to rename the Fishing Lakes as the Calling Lakes, so as further to emphasize E. Pauline Johnson's "legend of the Qu'Appelle Valley"; as yet this has not taken any authentic hold.
In addition to the popularity of its lakes as summer recreational locales, the valley also contains popular venues for winter sports including the following:
FishEdit
Fish species include: walleye, sauger, yellow perch, northern pike, lake whitefish, cisco, mooneye, white sucker, shorthead redhorse, bigmouth buffalo, common carp, channel catfish, black bullhead, brown bullhead, burbot and rock bass. Rock bass are Saskatchewan's only native bass.