Garson Lake sits on the eastern shore of its lake, close to the Alberta border. The lake has carried a few names over the years. It was once called Swan Lake, then Whitefish Lake (Lac Poisson Blanc in French). In 1911 it was renamed Garson Lake, after a Hudson's Bay Company post manager at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan.
People were living here well before the road came. In 1880, Mgr. Grandin wrote that about 200 people lived at La Loche Lake and Whitefish Lake, and in 1895 Father Penard of the La Loche Mission reported a settlement of 50 people at Whitefish Lake. On August 4, 1899, the Dene residents of Garson Lake signed an adhesion to Treaty 8 at Fort McMurray. Their descendants became known as the Portage La Loche Band, and today they form the Clearwater River Dene Nation.
The Piercy Report of 1944 listed the settlement as Garson Lake or Whitefish Lake, with 17 families and 50 children under 18. It had no services and no road access. That changed in 1999, when the 44-kilometre Garson Lake Road was completed from Highway 155. Today Garson Lake is a northern settlement, and in winter a winter road links it to Fort McMurray.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Garson Lake, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.