Some historians said the area in present-day Lafleche was occupied by ‘squatters’, a reference sometimes used when referring to parts of Western Canada before the largely European homesteaders arrived in the late 1800s and 1900s.
Before the homesteading era, the community of Buffalo Head was situated near the cemetery on the south side of Highway 13. The town’s name was changed to Lafleche after Louis-François Laflèche, who’d been a Catholic bishop in Trois-Rivières and an Oblate missionary throughout Western Canada.
Settlers from France, Belgium, Quebec, England, Romania and Scandinavia settled in the village, later to become a town in 1953. The future town shifted to its present location across the road in 1913, when the Canadian Pacific Railway rumbled through Lafleche, Expanse and Assiniboia.
Following the railway, grain elevators and agricultural businesses were constructed in Lafleche.
The first grain elevator in the community was built in 1912 by M.B. Lyttle. In the same year, numerous enterprises were launched in Lafleche, including Beaver Lumber, the Lafleche Cafe, Murphy's Pool Hall and the Metropole Hotel.
A telegraph service was founded in Lafleche on December 1, 1913.
Lafleche’s background is multi-ethnic, yet there’s a distinct French Catholic air about the town, with treed boulevards and a Gothic brick-faced church built in 1922.
St. Radegonde Roman Catholic Church is a listed heritage building. The community’s older church was recycled into the Legion Hall.
The first Catholic church was built in Lafleche in 1913, a year before Father Emile Dubois appeared in the community in 1914.
Dubois is said to have actively helped pioneers establish themselves in the vicinity of Lafleche.
The Sisters of the Holy Cross arrived from 1915-1917. Soon, a convent school for the boys and girls in the community and boarder students was completed.
In modern times, Lafleche Central School operates as a K-12 facility on 324 Second Street West.
The school is on Treaty 4 Territory where the Cree, Ojibwe, Saulteaux, Dakota, Nakota and the Métis Nation lived previous to the homesteaders. This school functions within the Prairie South Division.
Beyond establishing schools, Lafleche’s historical ties with the Catholic Church were noteworthy since the early days of settlement
Father Alphonse Lemieux was the first parish priest to travel through the area, but Reverend L. Royer celebrated the first mass in Lafleche in 1907.
Father Jules Bois, the parish priest of Meyronne, arrived in Lafleche once a month to say mass.
Father Bois dedicated the growing community of Lafleche to Ste. Radegonde, queen of France and the patroness of the diocese of Poitiers in western France.
Situated at the intersection of Highway 58 going north-south and on Highway 13 travelling east-west, Lafleche is a vital shopping area for residents living 44.8 kilometres west of Assiniboia, with a gas bar, a Co-op, a pharmacy and several other businesses, including the Lafleche Credit Union at 105 Main Street.
Lafleche’s connections with the credit union movement began in 1937, when many local business owners and community members founded this financial institution to assist farmers after a series of eight devastating harvests affected by droughts during the so-called Dirty Thirties.
“The name Lafleche has become well known throughout the province for its contribution to the Credit Union Movement. Ed Bilodeau, T.H. Bourassa, Emil Lautermilch, Al Charbonneau and Keith Sproule are names well known throughout Saskatchewan for their service to the provincial Credit Union League and its successor Credit Union Central Saskatchewan.” (From Golden Memories of the Wood River Pioneers, p. 25).
Medical services in Lafleche were first available through resident doctors.
Born in Argyle, Minnesota, but educated in Quebec’s Laval University and the Manitoba Medical College, Dr. Louis-Emile Belcourt served as Lafleche’s doctor from 1916 until 1948.
Doctor Belcourt initiated the first hospital in Lafleche in the former home of T.H. Bourassa in 1941.
In 2020, the Lafleche Health Centre has 16 long-term care beds and a laboratory opened on Mondays and Thursdays from 9-12 p.m.
