Regina

About Regina

Regina ( rih-JY-nə) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province, after Saskatoon, and is a commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. As of the 2021 census, Regina had a city population of 226,404 and a metropolitan area population of 249,217. It is governed by Regina City Council. The city is surrounded by the Rural Municipality of Sherwood No. 159.

Regina was the seat of government of the North-West Territories, which contained the District of Assiniboia, where Regina was located, and the current provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. The site had been called Wascana (from Cree: ᐅᐢᑲᓇ, romanized: Oskana "Buffalo Bones"), but was renamed to Regina (Latin for "Queen") in 1882 in honour of Queen Victoria. The name was proposed by Queen Victoria's daughter, Princess Louise, who was the wife of the Governor General of Canada, the Marquess of Lorne.

Due to its location on a treeless flat plain, Regina has few topographical features other than the small spring run-off, Wascana Creek. Early planners took advantage of such opportunity by damming the creek to create a decorative lake to the south of the central business district with a dam a block and a half west of the later elaborate 260-metre-long (850 ft) Albert Street Bridge across the new lake. Regina's importance was further secured when the federal government designated Regina as the seat of government for the new province of Saskatchewan in 1905. Wascana Centre, created around the focal point of Wascana Lake, remains one of Regina's attractions and contains the Provincial Legislative Building, both campuses of the University of Regina, the First Nations University of Canada, the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, the Regina Conservatory (in the original Regina College buildings), the Saskatchewan Science Centre, the MacKenzie Art Gallery and the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts.

Residential neighbourhoods include precincts beyond the historic city centre which are historically or socially noteworthy neighbourhoods – namely Lakeview and The Crescents, both of which lie directly south of downtown. Immediately to the north of the central business district is the old warehouse district, increasingly the focus of shopping, nightclubs and residential development; as in other western cities of North America, the periphery contains shopping malls and big box stores.

In 1912, the Regina Cyclone destroyed much of the town; and in the 1930s, the Regina Riot brought further attention during the 1930s drought and Great Depression, which hit the Canadian Prairies particularly hard with their economic focus on dry land grain farming. The CCF (now the NDP, a major left-wing political party in Canada), formulated its foundational Regina Manifesto of 1933 in Regina. Regina became known as a centre of political activism and experimentation as its people adjusted to new, reduced economic realities by ascribing to the co-operative movement and public healthcare. This included Tommy Douglas leading the CCF to victory in 1944 and wielding power in Regina's capital buildings. In 2007 Saskatchewan's agricultural and mineral resources came into demand again, and Saskatchewan was described as entering a new period of strong economic growth.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.