Cupar ( ) is a town northeast of Regina in the

Canadian province Canada has ten provinces and three territories that are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of Canada, Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North Amer ...

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

. Cupar is settled on the flat plains north of the scenic

Qu'Appelle Valley The Qu'Appelle River is a river in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba that flows east from Lake Diefenbaker in south-western Saskatchewan to join the Assiniboine River in Manitoba, just south of Lake of the Prairies, near t ...

. Known for its remarkable hockey history, it is often called the ''Home of

Eddie Shore Edward William Shore (November 25, 1902 – March 16, 1985) was a Canadian professional ice hockey defenceman, principally for the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League, and the longtime owner of the Springfield Indians of the American Hocke ...

'', as the legendary

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

defenceman was raised there. Cupar is the home of artist Jacqueline Berting. The Berting Glass studio is located north of town. One of her best known works is ''The Glass Wheatfield'', encompassing 1,400 waist-high glass wheat stalks, each piece individually hand cut and lamp worked. Berting calls her work "a salute to the Canadian farmer". The town hosts the Cupar Gopher Drop, a unique

lottery A lottery (or lotto) is a form of gambling that involves the drawing of numbers at random for a prize. Some governments outlaw lotteries, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find som ...

held every summer. Stuffed toy gophers (

Richardson's ground squirrel Richardson's ground squirrel (''Urocitellus richardsonii''), also known as the dakrat or flickertail, is a North American ground squirrel in the genus ''Urocitellus''. Like a number of other ground squirrels, they are sometimes called prairie dog ...

s) labelled with numbers are dropped from a

hot-air balloon A hot air balloon is a lighter-than-air aircraft consisting of a bag, called an envelope, which contains heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket (in some long-distance or high-altitude balloons, a capsule), which carries ...

along with numbered gopher holes. The "owner" of the gopher that lands nearest Hole 1 wins first prize, and so on.

History

Cupar became a village in 1905. It was named by a

Canadian Pacific Railway The Canadian Pacific Railway () , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadian Pacific Kansas City, Canadian Pacific Ka ...

official after the town of

Cupar Cupar ( ; ) is a town, former royal burgh and parish in Fife, Scotland. It lies between Dundee and Glenrothes. According to a 2011 population estimate, Cupar had a population around 9,000, making it the ninth-largest settlement in Fife, and the ...

Fife Fife ( , ; ; ) is a council areas of Scotland, council area and lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area in Scotland. A peninsula, it is bordered by the Firth of Tay to the north, the North Sea to the east, the Firth of Forth to the s ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

. The town celebrated its centennial in 2005.

Sports

Cupar has a swimming pool,

ice rink An ice rink (or ice skating rink) is a frozen body of water or an artificial sheet of ice where people can ice skate or play winter sports. Ice rinks are also used for exhibitions, contests and ice shows. The growth and increasing popularity of ...

curling Curling is a sport in which players slide #Curling stone, stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area that is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take t ...

, rink, ball diamonds, and golf. The Cupar Canucks of the senior men's Highway Hockey League play here.

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; ), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. It is headquartered in ...

, Cupar had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Climate

Notable people

Glen Hart Glen Philip Hart (born July 31, 1946) is a Canadian provincial politician. He was a Saskatchewan Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan and represented the constituency of Last Mountain-Touchwood from 1999 to 2020. Politica ...

, former member of the

Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan The Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan () is the legislative chamber of the Saskatchewan Legislature in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. Bills passed by the assembly are given royal assent by the lieutenant governor of Saskatchewan, in the ...

, ice hockey defenceman * Rob Tudor, ice hockey centre * Arnold Tusa, former member and speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan

References

External links

* {{Authority control Towns in Saskatchewan Cupar No. 218, Saskatchewan Division No. 6, Saskatchewan