The cozy hamlet of Anzac rests on the sparkling eastern shore of Willow Lake (known as Gregoire Lake).
Within the hamlet is Anzac Recreation centre , state of the art designed with an indoor track, field house, fitness centre and an indoor and outdoor ice rink with a natural ice surface which draws residents and visitors.
Willow Lake is one of the municipality’s largest recreational areas, and is accessed from Highway 881, which leads further south to the hamlets of Janvier and Conklin. A Canadian National (CN) rail line, which serves as a freight line connecting north to Fort McMurray and south to Edmonton, runs along the eastern side of the Hamlet. Anzac is predominantly a residential community.
Institutional uses are concentrated within a central area off Stony Mountain Road. The small sustainable business centre represents a balance of restaurant, fast food, service station, convenience store, liquor stores, office space, and other mixed commercial and industrial uses with direct access to Highway 881.
Anzac allows for commercial development in the Community Core and along Highway 881. These parcels are zoned HC – Hamlet Commercial. Industrial development is allowed in one parcel zoned BI – Business Industrial.
Anzac has two schools, a fire department, and a truck fill station. Commercial uses in Anzac are limited with a few activities along Stony Mountain Road in the central area, and Gilmore Drive and Willow Lake Road.
Anzac was established in 1917 as a stopping point on the Alberta Great Waterways Railway Line and was named after the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps that surveyed the area during World War I for construction of the rail line to Waterways Originally named after Willow Lake, the previous name of Gregoire Lake, the community were mostly non-status or non-treaty Cree Indians whose forefathers had migrated to the Athabasca Basin area from what was to become northern Manitoba; mostly displacing the original Beaver and Chipewyan occupants of the area. During World War II a road was built from the rail siding to service and construct an American army base on Stoney Mountain.
