Avonlea became an incorporated village on February 10, 1912. It took its name from the fictional town of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, in Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel Anne of Green Gables, the book that also inspired the television series Road to Avonlea.
The village sits along Avonlea Creek, and in 1963 and 1964 a dam was built on the creek about five kilometres to the south-east, creating the Reg Watson Reservoir, which is now the village's only water source. In 1967, Dunnet Regional Park, named after a local medical doctor, opened on the reservoir's west side, with camping, fishing, boating, a swimming pool and eight baseball diamonds.
Today the old train station houses the Avonlea Heritage Museum, with local artifacts, an indoor Main Street, agricultural displays and murals by local artist Paul Geraghty. The museum also offers guided tours of the Avonlea Badlands, a few kilometres west on private land. Locals cheer on the Avonlea Arrows of the senior men's Highway Hockey League, and the Southern Rails Cooperative keeps its head office in the village.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Avonlea, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.