Wascana Centre Authority
Wascana Centre, a 930-hectare area in the heart of Regina, is considered one of the largest urban parks in the world.
Established by an act of the Saskatchewan Legislature in 1962, it brought together the Province of Saskatchewan, the City of Regina, and the University of Regina to form the Wascana Centre Authority. In addition to beautifying Regina and the seat of the provincial government and creating a huge recreational green space, Wascana Centre is an important conservation area.
The Wascana Waterfowl Park is a 223-hectare thriving marshland within Regina's city limits. It dates back to 1913 when a planner had the foresight to establish the Wascana Game Preserve. Part of the preserve later become the Wascana Bird Sanctuary and the Regina Waterfowl Park.
Wascana Centre also hosts such amenities as the Royal Saskatchewan Museum and the Saskatchewan Science Centre.
It all began at a crossing of the shallow creek the Cree called Oskunah-kasas-take (bone creek). Captain John Palliser, in his reconnaissance expedition of 1857, took the name as Wascana. In the 1880s, a water reservoir of about 65 hectares was created in the creek primarily for stock-watering purposes, although some of the citizens used it for recreational sailing. Deepened by some 2000 unemployed laborers during the Depression, Wascana Lake became the focal centre of the park.
The initial development of Wascana Park, now part of Wascana Centre, resulted from the decision made in 1906 to build the Saskatchewan Legislature in Regina. To select a precise location and design a befitting setting, the new government commissioned Frederick Todd a prominent Montreal landscape architect and student of Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of New York's Central Park. Todd recommended extensive irregular plantings of trees and shrubs and advised the building of a nursery to test and acclimatize imported plants. From 1908-12, more than 100,000 trees and shrubs were bought from commercial nurseries in Canada, USA and Europe, and seeds and plants were obtained from as far away as Siberia and Korea. Under the influence of Malcom Ross, Provincial Landscape Architect, the Wascana nursery became an experimental plot for hundreds of these tree and shrub varieties. In 1913 alone, 11,000 seedlings were planted out on the grounds surrounding the Legislative Building.
In 1912, another very prominent landscape architect was commissioned, England's Thomas Henry Mawson. His Vancouver office had done landscape plans for the University of Saskatchewan. He favoured a much more formal layout of gardens to complement the symmetry of the building and envisioned Regina as a 'garden city' with cultural facilities linked along tree lined boulevards and pathways in a unifying civic design. His formal plan was instituted on the grounds of the Legislative Buildings but with WW1 and the Depression his grand scheme was abandoned.
The final stages in the development of Wascana date from the 1950s, when the lake was again envisioned as the central element for educational, cultural, and recreational facilities along the lines Mawson had proposed. In 1961, Minoru Yamasaki was appointed architect/planner for the proposed Wascana Centre, which would create a large-scale, long-term Master Plan for the area.
Also in 1961, the Regina Waterfowl Park Committee presented a brief to Wascana Centre planners recommending Waterfowl Park be administered by Wascana Centre. By 1989, the Wascana Centre Act had been amended to add conservation of the environment to the goals for Wascana Centre. Today, Waterfowl Park, with its protected islands, is home to many birds and mammals in addition to some 225 pairs of Canada Geese that breed there each spring. Several rare birds including the Arctic loon, black scoter, brant, glaucous gull, and Virginia rail have also been observed.
The park is an outdoor classroom for thousands of Saskatchewan children every year. Classes are taken on nature hikes through the marsh area and taught to observe the flora and fauna. Some classes return several times during the year to observe the changes taking place from season to season.
The balance between habitat preservation and public education is a delicate one and must be closely monitored. By encouraging limited use of the Waterfowl Park, people can gain an appreciation of their natural heritage. Children, the urban planners of the future, can learn the value of protecting and conserving natural resources.
Historical Information taken from New and Naked Land - Making The Prairies Home by Ronald Rees, Western Producer Prairie Books, 1988.