Beauval sits in the valley of the Beaver River in northern Saskatchewan, near Lac Île-à-la-Crosse. Its name is French for "beautiful valley," and in Plains Cree the place is called sîpîsisihk. It was founded in the early 20th century as a Roman Catholic mission and a transportation centre.
The earliest known settler was Philip Yew, who arrived in 1905. By 1907 others had followed, mainly from Dore Lake. In 1910 Alexander Laliberte opened a fur trading store to serve local trappers, and it worked as an outpost. In 1969 the community set up the Beauval Local Community Authority, whose elected council oversees bylaws, collects taxes and maintains law and order. Unlike most northern Saskatchewan communities, Beauval has grown over the years, from about 350 residents at the end of the Second World War to more than 1,000 today, with another 200 in the surrounding area.
Across the river, on La Plonge 192 of the English River Dene Nation, the Beauval Indian Residential School operated from 1895 to 1983. It then became the Meadow Lake Tribal Council's Beauval Indian Education Centre, which closed in 1995, and the building has since been demolished. A fire in 1927 and a flu epidemic in 1936 took the lives of many of the students.
Today Beauval's economy draws on limited commercial fishing, very little trapping, government programs and grants, the mines, local businesses, the school, and tourism and recreation.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Beauval, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.