Bellegarde is a French-speaking hamlet in the Rural Municipality of Storthoaks, just south of the Red Coat Trail and about 10 kilometres west of the Manitoba border. The community dates its founding to 1898, though its story starts a few years earlier with settlers from the French parish of Grande-Clairière in Manitoba. Under the guidance of Father Jean-Isidoire Gaire, they took homesteads at a spot they called La Quatrième Coulée, or the Fourth Creek.
A first attempt in 1892 to clear farmland ended with the settlers returning to Grande-Clairière discouraged. Cyrille Sylvestre, however, had taken four homesteads there and meant to stay with his family, and more settlers soon came and judged the land worth farming. The Jean-Baptiste Moreau family became the first to spend a winter in the area, in 1893. Others joined them the next year, and by 1897–1898 some 110 settlers were working the land around St. Maurice de Bellegarde. Four families from Chicago arrived in 1900.
Schooling began in 1903 with Mr. Jobin as teacher, in the rectory, with French the only language taught at first. The Sisters of the Cross arrived in 1905 to run the boarding facilities and teach French and Catholic education to boys and girls. A first convent was built soon after, and a larger one was finished in 1919. The Sisters taught in Bellegarde until 1961.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Bellegarde, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.