As moulting Canada geese arrive in late summer, the Canadian Wildlife Service designated the area as a Key Migratory Bird Terrestrial Habitat site.

[4] Garry Lake was historically home to Inuit who refer to themselves as Hanningajurmiut or Hanningaruqmiut or Hanningajulinmiut, meaning "the people of the place that lies across".

[8] A Roman Catholic mission post was established on an island in Garry Lake in 1949, staffed by Father Joseph Buliard, who disappeared in 1956.

[9][10] Suffering from famine in 1958 as the annual caribou migration bypassed their territorial hunting grounds, 58 Garry Lake inhabitants died.

In 1981, Kidd Creek Minerals discovered 19 uraniferous boulders in a train formation, extending approximately 1.5 km (0.93 mi) along Garry Lake's north shore.