Raymore is a town in the

Canadian province Canada has ten provinces and three territories that are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of Canada, Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North Amer ...

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

, about north of Regina. Raymore is the administrative headquarters of the Kawacatoose

Cree The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...

First Nation

band government In Canada, an Indian band (), First Nation band () or simply band, is the basic unit of government for those peoples subject to the ''Indian Act'' (i.e. status Indians or First Nations). Bands are typically small groups of people: the largest in ...

History

Prior to the white settlement of the areas that surround and include Raymore, the Touchwood peoples, or ''pusakawatciwiyiniwak'', lived in the area and consisted of four bands, "under the leadership of Kawacatoose (Poorman or Lean Man), Kaneonuskatew (One that walks on four claws or George Gordon), Muscowequan (Hard Quill), and Kisecawchuck (Daystar)." The Raymore Pioneer Museum ( 1910-1911) is a Municipal Heritage Property on the Canadian Register of Historic Places.

Name

According to a collectively-researched 1968 publication on Saskatchewan place name origins, Raymore's modern-day name originates with surveyors working for the

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway running from Fort William, Ontario (now Thunder Bay) to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, a Pacific coast port. East of Winnipeg the line continued as the National ...

who named towns and stops along their newly-constructed rail lines in an alphabetic manner. The town is said to be named after, "an employee of the railroad who was working on the construction crew."

Settlers

Among the earliest

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

settlers in the first years of the twentieth century were: Richard Watt, Headley and Charles Frost, Wilfred Jones, and Archibald MacLean.

Business histories

Archibald "Archie" MacLean is credited with operation of the first store in Raymore in the early years of the twentieth century, opening on May 15, 1908, however a store is documented as operating on the

Poorman 88 Poorman 88 is an Indian reserve of the Kawacatoose First Nation in Saskatchewan. It is about north-west of Fort Qu'Appelle. In the 2016 Canadian Census, it recorded a population of 729 living in 172 of its 196 total private dwellings. In th ...

Indian reserve during 1874. Harold E. Martin was Raymore's first druggist. Both Archibald MacLean and Harold Martin arrived at the town site in 1908 to start their respective businesses. James Tate and Harry Golden were some of the town's earliest settler merchants. ;Raymore Hotel Originally three-stories tall, the Raymore Hotel was completed in 1911 by Archibald G. MacLean. By 1916, according to the Canadian Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, Americans William Baker (age 55) and his wife Ida (age 48) were proprietors of the Raymore Hotel. William "Bill" Baker, a cigar-smoker, ran the Raymore Hotel, "with the help of two Chinese cooks, a waitress and a porter." In 1920, William Baker sold the Raymore Hotel to Mah Yuen and Sam Ping who ran the business for over a decade. In 1922, the Raymore Hotel was advertised as "the best hotel between Winnipeg and Saskatoon", and was the site of the "Raymore Moving Picture Show" on Friday and Saturday nights. When, in 1935, the sale of beer became legal "by the glass in hotel bars", Mah Yuen and Sam Ping were unable to obtain the required licence because—as Chinese—they were not enfranchised to vote. In August 1936, John C. "Jack" and Violet "Vi" Morrow purchased the hotel from Mah Yuen and Company and ran it until Jack's death in October 1957, and Vi's sale of the hotel in 1967. Brian Dionne, a past president of the Hotels Association of Saskatchewan, purchased the Raymore Hotel in 1985 and ran it until as recently as 2005. A fire on February 21, 1956, caused an estimated $40,000 of damage, "gutted the top floor" of the hotel, and resulted in its third storey being demolished.

MacLean's Funeral Home

As a merchant Archibald MacLean began selling funerary caskets as early as 1911 and, upon recognising demand therefore, subsequently obtained his funeral directing and embalming licence. In May 1963, MacLean sold the Raymore funeral home to R. B. Kirkby. R. B. Kirkby renamed the business the Kirkby Funeral Home and operated it until November 1978, when it became a branch of the Regina-based Helmsing-Forsberg Funeral Chapel.

Sports and recreation

The town of Raymore has an

ice rink An ice rink (or ice skating rink) is a frozen body of water or an artificial sheet of ice where people can ice skate or play winter sports. Ice rinks are also used for exhibitions, contests and ice shows. The growth and increasing popularity of ...

curling Curling is a sport in which players slide #Curling stone, stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area that is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take t ...

rink, a swimming pool, golf, and baseball diamonds. Raymore is also home to senior men's hockey as the Raymore Rockets of the Highway Hockey League play there.

Demographics

In the

2021 Census of Population The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sli ...

conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; ), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. It is headquartered in ...

, Raymore had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Climate

References

{{Coord, 51.242, N, 104.314, W, display=title, type:city_region:CA_source:GNS-enwiki Mount Hope No. 279, Saskatchewan Towns in Saskatchewan Division No. 10, Saskatchewan