About Yorkton

Yorkton is a city located in east-central Saskatchewan, Canada, near the Manitoba border. Founded and incorporated in 1882 by a group of settlers from Ontario, it has grown to a population of 17,000, and is Saskatchewan's fifth-largest city. It serves a trading area of about 200,000 people in eastern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba.

History

A group of settlers from York County, Ontario, established the York City settlement in 1882. They had been recruited by the York Farmers Colonization Company, and originally founded York Colony about three miles (five km) north of the site of today's Yorkton, on the banks of the small Whitesand river. York City remained here until 1893, when it moved to its present location alongside the new railway.

The York Farmers Colonization Company, with Ontario Member of Parliament N. Clark Wallace as president, and a capital shareholders' investment of $300,000 was incorporated May 12, 1882. Earlier in the year, a group of Toronto businessmen had met to discuss a plan to invest in the opening of lands for homesteading in Western Canada, specifically in the newly created territory of Assiniboia, North West Territories.

Geography

The Aspen Parkland ecoregion describes the types of flora and fauna found naturally here. Yorkton is located in the forested area of Saskatchewan where there are White Spruce (Picea glauca) and Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta), however the terrain is mainly one of agriculture and there is no forestry industry.

It is also in an area of black calcareous chernozemic soils. The Yorkton area was located on the edge of an area of a maximum glacial lake. The quaternary geology has left the area as a moraine plain consisting of glacial deposits. The bedrock geology is the pembina member of Vermillion River Formation and Riding Mountain Formation. Yorkton is located in the physiographic region of the Quill Lake-Yorkton Plain region of the Saskatchewan Plains Region.

Climate

Yorkton has a continental climate, with extreme seasonal temperatures. It has warm summers and cold winters, with the average daily temperatures ranging from -17.9 degrees C (-0.2 F) in January to 17.8 C (64.0 F) in July. Annually, temperatures exceed 30 C (86 F) on an average in late July. Typically, summer lasts from late June until late August, and the humidity is seldom uncomfortably high. Winter lasts from November to March, and varies greatly in length and severity. Spring and autumn are both short and highly variable.

Sources: Wikipedia and local data.