Gravelbourg sits just west of the Wood River in south-central Saskatchewan. Long before the town existed, the region served as a path for First Nations peoples, and it later became part of the Redcoat Trail of the 19th century.
The town was settled in the early 1900s as one of the French block settlements of the Gravelbourg-Lafleche-Meyronne area. It carries the name of its founder, Abbé Louis-Pierre Gravel, who was named a Person of National Historic Significance in 1956. A monument built in his honour in 1958 recalls that between 1906 and 1926 more than ten thousand Canadians, many of them then living in the United States, answered his call to make their homes on the Saskatchewan plains, where they built towns and established French-speaking cultural institutions.
In 1930 Gravelbourg became the cathedral city of the Roman Catholic diocese of Gravelbourg, a role it held until 1998, when the diocese was suppressed and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption became a co-cathedral of the Archdiocese of Regina. The cathedral, the former Convent of Jesus and Mary and the former Bishop's Residence were together designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1995.
Today the town is known for its French-language heritage and for College Mathieu, a francophone boarding school that has drawn students from across southern Saskatchewan, other parts of Canada and overseas. Gravelbourg celebrates its many cultures at its annual Summer Solstice Festival d'été, and it even turns up in the fourth verse of the song "I've Been Everywhere."
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Gravelbourg” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.