Qu'Appelle was for a time the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and the major distribution centre for what was then the District of Assiniboia in the North-West Territories and is now southern Saskatchewan.

The town is situated in a lush rolling parkland, with intermittent coulees containing steady-flowing creeks running into the Qu'Appelle Valley, poplar bluffs, and sloughs.

[3] Political events, however, passed Qu'Appelle entirely by when Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney selected the locale of his own landholdings at Pile-O-Bones (then renamed "Regina" by Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria, when her husband John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne was Governor General) as his territorial capital: Qu'Appelle's significance other than in historical terms then largely lapsed.

[5] For a time Qu'Appelle appeared likely to be the administrative headquarters for the District of Assiniboia, which corresponded to the southern portion of the present day province of Saskatchewan.

refers to the once-popular legend of the Qu'Appelle Valley versified by E. Pauline Johnson: I am the one who loved her as my life, Had watched her grow to sweet young womanhood; Won the dear privilege to call her wife, And found the world, because of her, was good.

Until the construction of the Qu’Appelle, Long Lake, and Saskatchewan Railway in 1890 linked the newly established Regina with Saskatoon and Prince Albert, Qu'Appelle was the major debarkation and distribution centre for the North-West Territories.

For some years Qu'Appelle was the centre of national attention as journalists based there reported back home to eastern Canada on developments in the North-West Rebellion.

[15]: [15] [19] From 1882, early residents of Qu'Appelle included numerous English remittance men whose cultured backgrounds contributed significantly to the life of the town.

Amateur theatricals and musical evenings were a regular feature of winter social life and it was important to early Qu'Appelle residents that there be an "opera house": an auditorium in the town hall.

Perhaps improbably in so small a community but indicative of the not always tolerant and inclusive social mores of early settlement in the Canadian west, discrete neighbourhoods of Qu'Appelle were called "Germantown" and "Breedville," the latter in racist early reference to the prairie Anglo-Métis, whom white settlers at the time called "half-breeds," a term now considered disparaging, and generally avoided.

At one point Bishop Harding, the Church of England (Anglican) bishop, was quoted at a meeting — when he was imprudently unaware that local Canadians were hearing his remarks — as observing that English Anglican migrants might be more attractive settlers than Presbyterian and Methodist Canadians, occasioning considerable adverse notice and animosity against the English in the general community.

[24] Its companion building, Qu'Appelle High School, built in similar style in identical yellow brick, closed in 1973 and was demolished in 1975.

[27] Well into the 20th century there was still a train station, some half-dozen grain elevators, a bank, post office, butcher, two general stores, a hardware store, pharmacy, the hotel — "the Queen’s Hotel, which officially opened in 1884, was lost in an early morning blaze on April 16, 2003"[28] — (and "beverage room," in the terminology of the early 20th-century Canadian West, though closed from 1915 to 1925 under Premier Walter Scott's prohibition and temperance legislation[29]), barber shop, firehall, law office, numerous service stations, several cafés, cinema (later converted to a grocery store) and a covered rink.

Town amenities of the early decades of settlement were contingent on the farming hinterland being far more densely populated than today; travel to Regina was accomplished via a train journey and domestic transport mostly by horse-drawn conveyances.

[15]: [96]  As a comparison to these large farms, the average homesteader on his single quarter section of land could barely afford a team of oxen which in 1882 cost around $250.

The previously mentioned Queen's Hotel, built in 1884, contained a commercial pub, albeit closed from World War I until the mid-1920s by the brief provincial temperance statute.

In recent years Qu'Appelle has enjoyed a mild resurgence as a result of commuters from Regina discovering it as a bedroom community, but local commerce has never recovered and there are no longer any retail outlets, service stations, banks, barbers or beauty parlours in the town.

According to the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan "about 80% to 90% of the town's workforce drives to and from the city each day"[9] With the resulting dearth of local commerce the once solidly built up main street is now almost entirely lined with vacant lots and abandoned buildings.

The branch continued to operate until the 1960s when reduced commercial activity in Qu'Appelle and declining population in the hinterland made it no longer viable.

[42] Skating rink, baseball diamonds, with a nearby indoor horseback riding arenas, elementary school and RM office.

The "Opera House" — the auditorium in the Town Hall — is long closed and remains unused, having failed to conform to contemporary safety regulations.

"[49] The lakes afford swimming, boating and other water related activities in summer and cross-country skiing, snowmobiling and ice fishing in winter.

[51] The Indian Head Bird Sanctuary, maintained by the Canada Agriculture Experimental Farm Tree Nursery is located 14 km (8.7 mi) east of Qu'Appelle.

[64] The town of Qu'Appelle was incorporated February 20, 1903[15] when, ironically, its halcyon days when anticipation that it would be of significant importance ecclesiastically and possibly in government and commerce were already long behind it.

Its stone rectory next door, built in 1894, is now in private hands,[20] the church (as with the other three denominations) having long since withdrawn any full-time residential clergy from the town.

As Canadian denominational affiliation has become increasingly amorphous, the Church of the Immaculate Conception's Catholicism has largely ceased to have ethnic significance.

[15]: [601] Moving to today's diminished liveliness within the town, the Recreation and Culture Committee oversees the activities at the skating rink, Centennial and Capital Day Parks, Community Hall, tennis court and library.

[83] When the rail arrived in 1882, the Troy (Qu'Appelle)-Prince Albert trail served freight and stagecoach transport to the north-west and onwards to Edmonton.

Highway 35 runs south to Weyburn unpaved and north to Fort Qu'Appelle; while no longer heavily trafficked since the opening of Highway 10 from Balgonie to the Valley, it is still paved on the northward sector, although with the drastically depleted traffic demand with reduced population both in town and on farms, largely eliminated Regina-to-Qu'Appelle Valley traffic and loss of grain elevators, gasoline and vehicle repair stations (into the 1960s there was still one gasoline station in town and one on each side of number 1 highway), retail stores, post office, bank, hospital, high school and movie theatre it is inevitably falling into reduced maintenance of pavement.

Qu'Appelle was home to a North-West Mounted Police barracks established by Major Walsh in 1882[15]: [196]  and until the 1950s there was a resident RCMP town constable.