Queen City and Little Chicago

My overly helpful iPhone informs me I walked 8.41 kilometres today. My feet respectfully disagree.

But, despite my moaning feet, I have found myself pleasantly surprised by Regina, SK. I don’t know what I was expecting. But a lovely city apparently wasn’t it. I also was surprised by Moose Jaw, SK’s apparently thriving Main Street. Which more or less shows you what I know. My entire previous experience with Saskatchewan is Porcupine Plain, population 700 or so, home of Quilly Willy. So I guess I just mostly hadn’t thought about what I would find here.

I managed to get out the door by the crack of 9 a.m. First stop: Tourism Regina. The first stop took me a bit longer to accomplish than I expected, but afterwards I walked around Regina’s downtown a bit. A nice mix of some new buildings (including a pair that put me in mind of the Bow Tower in Calgary) and old. There was a farmer’s market in Victoria Park that seemed to be hopping, extra surprising since it was Wednesday morning, but hey. I got offered a photography job solely on basis of having an SLR on my hip so there’s that.

From there, I headed off to the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. It’s also nice, with a wildlife gallery that reminds me of the one at the Royal Alberta Museum. I particularly liked their First Nations Gallery. I also liked MegaMunch, their mascot, an animatronic T-rex. Cartoony t-rexes are my spirit animal, because they stomp around and have humourously short arms.

I walked around Wascana Centre, Regina’s jewel of a park, for a bit, then headed to the Saskatchewan Legislative Building.

I found the history of getting the thing built quite interesting (journalists’ investigations meant they had to have an open competition for the design, go free press!) as well as the sheer amount of marble. There are over 30 kinds of marble in that place, from all over the world. Walter Scott (the premier at the time) apparently liked marble. And red carpet. He eschewed the traditional green carpet for the actual legislature room and went with red. It was switched to green in recent years (and already has coffee stains on it, the tour guide grumbled to me).

I checked out the MacKenzie Art Gallery, which had one cool exhibit – called Road Trips and Other Distractions – which I quite enjoyed, and a second main exhibit that featured dozens (probably hundreds) of an artists’ exceptionally repetitive Canadian landscapes.

Then! Government House. The former residence of Saskatchewan’s lieutenant-governors, it is now a museum. The first lieutenant-governor of the province of Saskatchewan, Amédée Forget, did not have any children. Instead, he and his wife had a pet monkey, Jocko, who really loved his rocking horse.

They also kept a parrot.

I really liked this museum, filled with several of the original pieces which had to be bought back after they were sold at auction, but also many period appropriate pieces. I asked the guard what his favourite room was when we were chatting and he took me to the dining room. It’s his favourite room because it had a safe in it, which was meant to be opened up the day of the auction. The person who would have opened it was not there the day of the auction (the guard likes to think intentionally) and so the safe remained shut for the next few decades, despite the place being used as a veteran’s hospital, an education institution and even just standing empty. When they decided to restore Government House they got a safecracker in and in it they found much of the original sets of the crystal, which was on display.

I should mention all of the above attractions were either free or by donation. As was parking. Excellent idea, Regina! I heartily approve.

Next stop was the RCMP Heritage Centre, where I took a tour of the training depot. Many interesting buildings, including the chapel, which is also the oldest building in Regina (it didn’t start out as a chapel). My thoughts were on Const. David Wynn, actually, when I was in the chapel as I recognized it as where the photo they circulated to us press for use after his death was taken.

There are many wonderful stained glassed windows there. Several of them were donated by a rich British woman who left money to the RCMP for their creation, despite never being to Canada or, as far as they know, having any connections to Mounties. They still don’t know why she left them that money, though I immediately started coming up with romantic scenarios in my head.

The Heritage Centre was very well put together.

You’d think that be enough, but then I drove the 40 minutes or so back to Moose Jaw, where I’d missed the apparently awesome Tunnels of Moose Jaw attraction the day before because it was closed by the time I emerged from the wilds. I took both tours – there’s one that highlights Moose Jaw’s bootlegging “Little Chicago” reputation and U.S. Prohibition connections with a more fun gangster theme, going with the never-proven idea that Al Capone had connections to the city (there are apparently stories from those they trust that place him there though) and the much more sombre but powerful one that told the stories of Chinese immigrants trying to get by in the city in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

I was surprised to find Moose Jaw’s Main Street to be attractive, historic, and with several interesting-looking shops, etc. I’d highly recommend a stop in Moose Jaw – I actually wish I had had more time.

Winnipeg-bound tomorrow.