Île-à-la-Crosse sits at the end of a long peninsula on the western shore of Lac Île-à-la-Crosse, and it is the second oldest community in Saskatchewan. The Cree and Dene peoples, who met and traded in the area, called it Sakitawak, meaning "big opening where the waters meet." Its place on a network of lakes, rivers and portages, near the Methye Portage, made it a natural gathering point for Cree, Dene, Scots, English, French and Métis people.
The fur trade shaped the community. Thomas Frobisher visited in 1775 and built the first trading post in the winter of 1776. The next year, Peter Pond was asked to chart a route from the post to Athabasca. The North West Company formed in 1783 and hired Patrick Small as its first year-round trader at the post in 1784. Other posts followed, including one by Alexander Mackenzie's group in 1785 and a Hudson's Bay Company post in 1791. After the two companies merged in 1821, Île-à-la-Crosse became the administrative centre of the English River District. Families descended from Cree and Dene women and men of the fur trade made it a Métis homeland.
Catholic missionaries came after requests in 1845. Fathers Alexandre-Antonin Taché and Louis-François Richer Laflèche arrived in 1846 and began the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Mission in an abandoned North West Company cabin. It became a base for missions across the North-Western Territory. In 1860 three Grey Nuns arrived and opened a boarding school at Saint Bruno Convent. Fires struck the school several times, and the church-run schools closed in 1972. Today Rossignol Elementary Community School, designed by Douglas Cardinal, and Rossignol High School serve the village.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Île-à-la-Crosse” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.