Regina is the capital city of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province and a cultural and commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. 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. The city is surrounded by the Rural Municipality of Sherwood No. 159. In 2013, Regina was named the 6th best Canadian mid-sized city (17th best overall) in which to live by MoneySense magazine.
Regina was previously the seat of government of the North-West Territories, of which the current provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta originally formed part, and of the District of Assiniboia. The site having previously been Wascana ("Buffalo Bones" in Cree), it was renamed in 1882 after Queen Victoria, Victoria Regina, by her daughter Princess Louise, wife of the Marquess of Lorne, then the Governor General of Canada.
Unlike other planned cities in the Canadian West, on its 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 840-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 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 provincial museum of natural history, 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 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;[10] 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; in the 1930s, the Regina Riot brought further attention and, in the midst of 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 CLP, a major left-wing political party in Canada), formulated its foundation Regina Manifesto, 1933 in Regina. In recent years, Saskatchewan's agricultural and mineral resources have come into new demand, and it has entered a new period of strong economic growth.
The current estimate of the Regina CMA population, as of July 1, 2013, according to Statistics Canada is 487,389.