On any warm afternoon in Regina, people drift toward the shores of Wascana Lake, the heart of Wascana Centre, a sweep of parkland that wraps around the water right at the edge of the provincial capital's downtown. Close to two million people pass through every year. Formal gardens, a waterfowl sanctuary, a pair of low green islands, and the domed provincial legislature all draw visitors across the grounds, especially in the warmer months, and the park ranks among the largest of its kind in North America. Its wide lawns and lakeside paths, set against the downtown skyline, offer a peaceful reprieve from the hustle and bustle of the surrounding streets.
Long before Regina was founded, Cree and other Indigenous peoples camped along Wascana Creek, gathering at its banks as it wound slowly across the open plain. When the town was chosen as the capital of the new province in 1905, one of its first undertakings was to dam the creek, and by 1908 a broad, shallow lake had taken its place. The lake's most dramatic change came during the hard years of the 1930s: rather than bring in machinery, the province hired hundreds of men who were out of work to deepen the basin entirely by hand, and the earth they hauled from the lakebed was heaped up in the middle of the water to form Willow Island.
