Lebret sits on Mission Lake in the Qu'Appelle Valley, and its story begins with the Catholic church. Visitors first drew non-First Nations attention to the site in 1814, when Abbé Provencher came through, and Abbé Picard wintered there with John McDonald in 1841. In 1864 Bishop Taché passed through, and he chose the site for a Catholic mission, which was established in 1866, one of the earliest in what became Saskatchewan in 1905. The mission became the main centre of Catholicism for the Métis and First Nations people of the region and a base for Oblate priests who travelled the southern plains.
The community takes its name from Father Louis Lebret, the parish priest, who was the first postmaster. He held the job only a little more than six months, but when the post office opened in 1886 it was named Lebret, and the name stuck to the community. The Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School, federally funded and run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, began in 1884. The Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions arrived in 1899 and founded Saint Gabriel's Convent in 1906. Lebret incorporated as a village on October 14, 1912.
Sacred Heart Church, built of fieldstone, went up in 1925, and in 1929 the stations of the cross and a small chapel shrine were erected on the hill overlooking the village. Into the later 20th century Lebret remained an important religious and educational centre, with a public school and the Oblates' Sacred Heart Scholasticate as well. The scholasticate closed in the 1960s, the convent in the 1970s and the public school in 1980. The residential school passed to a First Nations school board in 1973 and, later known as White Calf Collegiate, closed in 1998. Today Lebret is also known for the "Garbage House".
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Lebret, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.