Wilkie's story begins in 1907, when a post office opened on February 2 under the name Glenlogan. On October 1, 1908, it was renamed Wilkie, after Daniel Robert Wilkie, president of the Imperial Bank of Canada from 1906 to 1914, a backer of the Canadian Pacific Railway and a member of the Canadian Art Club. He and his family lived at a Toronto heritage property called Seven Oaks.
The railway is still part of the town. Wilkie is a station on the Canadian Pacific line running from Portage la Prairie through Saskatoon to Edmonton, and it is where the Reford Branch to Kerrobert began, as did the former Kelfield Branch. An abandoned aerodrome, Wilkie Airport, sits next to town.
Wilkie was once home to a roadside attraction billed as The World's Largest Grasshopper, which stood in front of the town rink and hall. Wilkie Regional Park was established in 1970 on town-owned land, and the community centre, with its ice and curling rinks, was damaged by fire in 2015. After Wilkie was a Kraft Hockeyville finalist in 2019, a new ice plant was installed and running by September 2021. The town was also the site of the 1993 death of Tracy Latimer, a case that led to two Supreme Court of Canada decisions and a national debate.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Wilkie, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.