Turnor Lake
human settlement in Saskatchewan, Canada
Turnor Lake (Woods Cree: ᒥᓂᐢᑎᑯ ᓵᑲᐦᐃᑲᓂᕽ, romanized: ministiko-sâkahikanihk) is a community on the southern shore of Turnor Lake in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. From Highway 155 it is accessible by Highway 909. The community includes the Northern Hamlet of Turnor Lake and Turnor Lake 193B of the Birch Narrows First Nation.
The combined population was 598 in the 2011 Canada Census. Turnor Lake had 179 people and Birch Narrows (Turnor Lake 193B) had 419 people.
History
The lake was once called Island Lake (Lac des Isles). In 1895, Birch Narrows had five families or 25 people in residence. Father Penard of La Loche mentions in his letter of 1911 that there were six or seven families living at "le Detroit du Bouleau" (Birch Narrows) 35 miles east of La Loche.
In 1938, Father Ducharme had a chapel built in the community.
In 1966, the people of Clear Lake were relocated to Turnor Lake.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Turnor Lake” is human settlement in Saskatchewan, Canada. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Turnor, Lake and human, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 7, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7856075. Authority coordinates are 56.473, -108.706. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 1895, 1911 and 1938.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Turnor Lake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.