Regina is the capital of Saskatchewan, Canada. The city is the second largest in the province (after Saskatoon), and is a cultural and commercial metropole for both southern Saskatchewan and adjacent areas in the neighbouring American states of North Dakota and Montana. It attracts visitors for the vitality of its commerce, theatre, concerts and restaurants and to its summer agricultural exhibition (originally established in 1884 as the Assiniboia Agricultural Association and since the mid-1960s styled "Buffalo Days"). It is governed by Regina City Council. Regina is the cathedral city of the Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox Dioceses of Regina and the Anglican Diocese of Qu'Appelle. Citizens of Regina are referred to as Reginans.
Regina was previously the headquarters of the North-West Territories, of which today's provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta originally formed part, and of the District of Assiniboia. Regina was named in 1882 after Queen Victoria, i.e. Victoria Regina, by her daughter Princess Louise, wife of the then-Governor General the Marquess of Lorne.
Unlike other planned cities in the Canadian West, on its treeless flat plain Regina was a tabula rasa, without 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 and constructing the elaborate 850-foot (260 m) long Albert Street Bridge across the new lake. Regina's importance was further secured when the new province of Saskatchewan designated the city its capital in 1906. Wascana Centre, created around the artificial focal point of Wascana Lake, remains Regina's signal attraction and contains the Provincial Legislative Building, both campuses of the University of Regina, the provincial museum of natural history, the Regina Conservatory (in the original Regina College buildings), the Saskatchewan Science Centre, the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery and the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts. |
