Tucked into the southern corner of Saskatchewan near the North Dakota border, Torquay sits at the junction of Highway 350 and Highway 18, within the Rural Municipality of Cambria No. 6 and Census Division No. 2. The village’s name traces back to 1912, when land was sold to the Canadian Pacific Railway for $2,400. A railroad superintendent’s wife suggested naming the settlement after Torquay in Devon, England, drawing a parallel between the two places based on their shared abundance of water. Torquay formally incorporated as a village on December 11, 1923, with its first council meeting taking place on January 9, 1924.
One of the village’s most enduring features is the Ambrose-Torquay Border Crossing, which has linked Torquay to the North Dakota village of Ambrose since it opened in 1915 and continues to operate daily. Politician Elmer Knutson, who went on to found the Confederation of Regions Party, was born on a family farm here in 1914. In May 2018, the Canadian government announced plans to build the country’s first geothermal power plant in the area, with the long-term goal of supplying renewable energy to hundreds of thousands of Saskatchewan homes. The village covers a land area of 1.35 km², and its population stood at 215 in the 2021 census, down from 255 in 2016, giving it a population density of roughly 159 people per square kilometre.