Lumsden sits in the Qu'Appelle Valley, about 31 kilometres northwest of Regina. Settlers first arrived in 1881, and the area was commonly known as Happy Hollow. When the Qu'Appelle, Long Lake and Saskatchewan Railway came through in 1889, the community was renamed Lumsden after Hugh Lumsden, a senior engineer with the railway.
Living beside the river has meant repeated floods, with major events in 1892, 1904, 1916, 1948 and 1969. The highest water levels in the town's history came in 1974, when volunteers from Regina and surrounding communities helped with sandbagging. Afterward the town straightened the Qu'Appelle River's channel and built dikes. When record snowfall threatened another flood in 2011, the town stayed dry.
Lumsden celebrated its town centennial in March 2005. In May of that year it hosted Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at the Lumsden Sports Centre, as part of the town and province's centenary celebrations. It was the Queen's only engagement outside the urban centres on that Saskatchewan visit. Harrowsmith Magazine had named Lumsden the province's "prettiest" town in 2002.
Today it is both a farming community and an unofficial suburb of Regina, with an active community of writers, painters and sculptors. Each year brings the Lumsden Duck Derby, a rubber-duck race on the river that has raised money for the sports centre since 1987, and a Scarecrow Festival in September.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Lumsden, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.