Europeans first came to the Canora area in the late 19th century, among them Doukhobors, Romanians and Ukrainians. The first ranchers arrived in 1884, and the Dominion government surveyed the land in 1886. In 1897, 150 families from Western Ukraine arrived in the district, forming the first Ukrainian block settlement in Saskatchewan.
The town itself grew out of the railway. In 1904 the Canadian Northern Railway laid tracks through the area, and that April a post office opened, a school district was set up and a town site was surveyed. The name Canora comes from the first two letters of "Canadian Northern Railway." The community was incorporated as a hamlet in 1905 on the site of the train station, became a village in 1908, and by 1910, with about 400 people, was a town. The first Chamber of Commerce followed in 1912. Doukhobors played a key part in this growth, building several communally run enterprises on Second Avenue East between 1907 and 1918 through the Doukhobor Trading Company. Canora's population kept steady through the Great Depression and peaked in 1966 at about 2,734.
Today Canora calls itself the "Heart of Good Spirit Country," thanks to nearby lakes and parks. Its Ukrainian roots show in the 25-foot Lesia statue, unveiled in 1980, and the Ukrainian Heritage Museum. The 1904 station still stands as a museum and visitor centre, and Via Rail passenger trains still stop here on the way to Churchill.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Canora, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.