Apart from the remaining residential portion of the original town of Regina, Saskatchewan between the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and Wascana Lake to the immediate south of the central business district, Regina's residential areas are typical of western Canadian cities, largely consisting of unremarkable post-World War II single family dwellings on substantial lots. Five neighbourhoods are of any considerable note: (1) the Cathedral Area; (2) the historic and affluent Crescents area, immediately to the north of Wascana Creek west of the Albert Street bridge and dam which creates Wascana Lake); (3) Germantown, originally an impoverished and ill-serviced ghetto of continental Europeans; (4) South Albert Street, adjacent to the provincial Legislative Building and office buildings, a neighbourhood of imposing mansions dating from the before the First World War through the post-War '20s boom; and (5) the latterly notorious North-Central district, an area of low-rent housing characterised by serious problems of crime, drug use and prostitution.

According to the 22 November 2004 report of the Regina Planning Commission to the Mayor and City Council, "The current directions of residential grown for Regina (northwest, southeast and infill in existing areas of development) were essentially established in 1961…and …[i]n the most recent review of the Development Plan undertaken in 2001, it was determined that these directions continue to be the most appropriate for the next 20 years."^[1]

"Cathedral Area" (the West End)

In 1927, the City of Regina passed its first zoning bylaw, setting the patterns for land use in the area. Over time, additional bylaws encouraged the construction of high-density housing, which replaced older housing near Albert Street.

A 235-hectare (581 acres) largely residential area west of downtown Regina, this neighbourhood is defined as the area west of Albert Street, northeast of Wascana Creek and south of the CPR mainline. The area has some commercial properties on the north and east and along the 13th Avenue shopping district, the neighbourhood's main street.

Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Cathedral on 13th Avenue opened in 1912, and it is the source of real estate agents' now popular sobriquet of the "Cathedral Area," it previously having been known as the West End. Immediately to the east of Holy Rosary on 13th Avenue is Westminster United (formerly Presbyterian) Church, also a construction of 1913, and the other major place of worship in the West End. When Holy Rosary found itself without a meeting house after the catastrophic fire of 1976 Westminster gladly provided it with a worship space for the duration.

On the perimeter of the West End on Albert Street is First Presbyterian Church, built in 1926 and founded by non-concurring dissidents from Westminster and Knox United Churches who objected to their several Presbyterian Church congregations' entry into the United Church of Canada — all Regina Presbyterian congregations had entered into the United Church. First Presbyterian, however, is perhaps a church more of the posh South Albert and Lakeview precincts than of the West End, the latter having been amply served by the two existing United Churches of Westminster and Wascana.

By the 1970s, inner-city problems had arisen to some extent — declining and aging population, decreasing quality of housing stock, increasing crime, heavier vehicular traffic and fewer parking places — although, this being said, unlike other older residential areas of town, the population base and indeed the number of young families remained sufficiently high that the now nearly century-old Connaught Public and Holy Rosary Separate Schools remained continuously in use while several other elementary schools were demolished and not replaced.

By the middle of the '70s, area residents organised the Cathedral Area Community Association. Through the work of the associations — as well as joint municipal, provincial and federal social programs — local conditions improved. In addition, the spread on non-residential properties and high-density housing was controlled, and a large number of older homes in the area were renovated extensively.^[2] The Cathedral Area has become Regina's bohemian district, and in recent years it has become a desirable residential neighbourhood by reason of its latter-day atmosphere of rakishness: the old Sacred Heart Academy, formerly a private girls' high school operated by the Western Canada-based Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, immediately adjacent to the Roman Catholic Cathedral on 13th Avenue at Garnet Street, has been redeveloped as tony townhouses; many formerly rundown houses have been expensively renovated. On the other hand, recent cuts to the Cathedral Area Community Association have put many of the community programs and festivals, that created the renewed atmosphere, in jeopardy.^{[citation needed]}

The Crescents

The Crescents, taking its name from Leopold, Angus and Connaught Crescents, the principal residential streets in the precinct, is arguably the historically most desirable residential area of Regina. Originally a property development of the McCallum-Hill property company to the immediate north of Wascana Creek after the Wascana bridge was relocated to the east of its original location, it soon became one of Regina's most attractive and prestigious residential neighbourhoods. Regina's Roman Catholic Archbishop and Anglican Dean live here, as do many of Regina's social elite. It is wholly devoid of any commercial development. The local primary school, Davin Public School, is named for Nicholas Flood Davin. Low-lying areas immediately adjacent to Wascana Creek are less desirable (and contain less impressive residences) owing to their being subject to flooding in particularly wet springs when the creek overflows its banks; a flood in 1915 is pictured; the most severe flood in the city's history occurred in 1971.^[3]

Albert Street South

The McCallum-Hill property development company pounced on the opportunity provided by the new Albert Street bridge, developing an imposing row of still-impressive mansions along south Albert Street and in the immediately adjacent old Lakeview precinct during the years immediately following the establishment of the province of Saskatchewan and designation of Regina as the provincial capital through until the beginning of the depression.^[4] The mansions of Walter Hill (built in 1911),^[5]E.D. McCallum (1912)^[6] and H.M. McCallum (1913), ^[7] the principals of the McCallum-Hill company, remain standing on Albert Street South; the Hill residence is a designated municipal heritage site^[8]; the E.D. McCallum house was owned by the Sisters of the Precious Blood and used by them as an enclosed convent from 1948-59.^[9] Regina's early promise soon failed with the stock market crash of 1929 and the long years of prairie drought which followed; the neighbourhood remains the closest approximation in Regina to Toronto's Forest Hill and Bridle Path.

Germantown

Germantown proper

The area known as Germantown (Broad Street east to Winnipeg Street and beyond — the precise eastern and southern perimeter is somewhat amorphous — and somewhat to the north of College Avenue to the CPR Yards^[10]) was settled by continental Europeans: Germans, Romanians, Hungarians, Serbs, Ukrainians, Poles, essentially anyone neither British Isles, French nor aboriginal in ancestry. In the early-predominant Anglo-Celtic mainstream non-francophone continental Europeans whatever their origin were generally referred to either as "Galicians" (Galicia at the time actually being Austrian Poland) or as "Germans."

Europeans became established around the former Market Square by 1892. German, Ukrainian, Romanian and Serbian religious, secular and educational institutions and services were early established in the neighbourhood — including St Nicholas's Romanian Orthodox Church (established in 1902^[11]), the oldest Romanian Orthodox parish in North America; St George's Cathedral (founded in 1914^[12] though the present building dates from the early 1960s), the episcopal seat of the Romanian Orthodox Bishop of Regina; and the now long-demolished Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Descent of the Holy Ghost, both formerly on Winnipeg Street. Beth Jacob Synagogue, originally established in 1905^[13] and now re-located to South Regina, was originally also in Germantown.

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Regina's Anglo-Saxon élite grievously neglected Germantown in the early days and basic services of water and sewerage came scandalously late to the precinct. Many residents of the Germantown quarter of Regina lived in squalid shacks without basic services till well into the 20th century, when issues of loyalty to the British Crown during the First World War were comprehensively resolved in the favour of the residents' complete Canadian-ness.^[14] By the 1960s invidious past ethnic prejudice had long since passed and Ukrainian food had become pan-Saskatchewan food. Apart from German Lutheran and Roman Catholic establishments throughout Regina, however, European churches and cultural clubs remain concentrated in Germantown.^[15]

Trinity Lutheran Church^[16] — now occupying a large but undistinguished A-frame building on Ottawa Street in the heart of Germantown — remains the centre of Regina's Lutheran constituency, though Canadian Lutheranism, while maintaining the historic episcopacy and indeed being in full communion with the Anglican Church of Canada, does not designate metropolitan churches as cathedrals. Trinity for many years maintained a traditional German parish church in Germantown; in due course, when it had built its new modern building, it sold its impressive German pipe organ to an Anglican parish church.

Qu'Appelle Diocesan Property

On the southeastern periphery of Germantown, where British Isles-descended Canadians settled after the turn of the century is St Matthew's Anglican Church, one of only three substantial historic Anglican parish churches in Regina; across College Avenue immediately to the South of Germantown, is the former Anglican Diocesan property. It contains the former Qu'Appelle Diocesan School (whose premises were originally a theological seminary for the training of clergy) and Anglican nunnery (with the historic St Chad's Chapel), diocesan administrative buildings, an old people's home and the bishop's palace. The property had been acquired by the Church of England (as it then was) when it became apparent that the original see "city" of Qu'Appelle had been passed over as the metropole for the new District of Assiniboia and Province of Saskatchewan. The site of the once-mooted but never-begun Anglican cathedral is outlined in caragana hedges diagonally at the corner of Broad Street and College Avenue.

The property was sold to the provincial Crown in the 1970s by way of finally obtaining fiscal self-reliance: the Anglican Diocese of Qu'Appelle was originally a mission field of the English Diocese of Lichfield and this was increasingly anomalous. For a time the Diocese leased back the property from the Crown; it has now been sold for commercial and residential redevelopment and it remains to be seen what use, if any, will be made of the historic buildings.

North Central

Neighbourhoods of the North-Central part of the city have been the subject of controversy and concern over the years due to the high concentration of poverty, prostitution, and rundown rental housing. It is estimated that there are more IV drug users in North-Central per capita than in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.^[17] Although crime rates in the area remain relatively high, they have fallen in recent years due to efforts by the Regina Police Service and several agencies, including a stolen vehicle program, an anti-drug strategy, and an increase in the number of police officers in the area.^[18]This has been a national trend for some time^[19]. As of November 2006, nearly 18% of the crime in Regina occurred in this neighbourhood, which has less than 6% of the population, or a 153-block area containing approximately 10,500 people.^[18]

In recent years the local government's commitment to invest in the inner-city has been questioned in view of its attempts to close inner-city library branches and a proposal to implement a base tax which would have lowered property taxes in outlying areas, where average household income for all residents is more than triple that of all residents in the inner city^[20][21] — but would have increased taxes for inner-city properties. Positive efforts to engage the social problems in North-Central include the Inner City Family Foundation, community association programs and a rental property inspection team provided via a volunteer organization. The City of Regina has legal authority to create a rental licensing program and an inspection team, but has not yet implemented either of these solutions. At the beginning of 2007, City Council increased funding for six inner-city community associations by $19,000, but disbursed the total $369,000 to an additional 18 associations.^[22][23] A change in funding structure will result in the three low income neighbourhoods of Cathedral Area, Al Ritchie and Argyle Park having funding reduced by $40,000 collectively and North Central having funding increased by $15,000.^[24] The $494,000 necessary to reach this target have not been fully provided.

A recent article in Maclean's^[25] has helped prompt the city government to look at new ways of providing better housing to residents.^{[citation needed]} The mayor has met with First Nations chiefs to create a dialogue, the first time during his tenure in office (6 years)[2]. Also, It has spurred renewed discussion of establishing Regina's first urban reserve with in the city, in association with the Piapot Cree Nation. Several years ago, the City of Regina negotiated a servicing agreement with the Nekaneet First Nation to establish an urban reserve in the northeast Industrial Area. The reserve has not yet been approved by the federal government.^[26]

Notes

External links

• Neighbourhood profiles