![]() A wooden plank sidewalk leads to a wooden building at the left of the frame. Photograph looking south from the railroad tracks in about 1883. The Canadian Pacific Railroad ultimately foiled Dewdney’s plan and chose to move the train station closer to what is now Regina’s downtown. The cartoon depicts Edgar Dewdney dumping a bottle of perfume on a pile of bones while political critics ask “Doesn’t your Excellency detect a Bad Odour about this Pile of Bones?” A directional sign in the background points “To Fort Qu’Appelle The Natural Capital of Assinobia”. Newspapers and politicians at the time, speculated that the only reason for selection of Pile of Bones as the capital of Assiniboia was its proximity to Dewdney’s own land purchase.Įditorial cartoon of “The Governor-General Transforming Pile of Bones Into Regina, Capital of Assinobia”, from the book REGINA: An Illustrated History by J. ![]() ![]() Other sites with more natural beauty, such as Moose Jaw and Troy (now Qu’Appelle) had been rejected as locations for the capital. Macdonald, who was minister of the interior as well as prime minister, so when Dewdney’s land speculation in the Regina area came to light in Parliament, it sparked a major controversy. He was also Indian commissioner during his time as lieutenant-governor, and was instrumental in setting up the reserve system, a legacy which continues to impact Canada’s Indigenous peoples. Dewdney, in addition to being a land surveyor and politician, was a land speculator. Photograph in 1882 of Lieutenant-Governor Dewdney’s order reserving land to form the town of Regina. Why? Because Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney selected the railroad’s path and placed the North West Territories’ new capital near land he owned. Photograph of three bison grazing in King’s Park in about 1970.īut in 1882, settlers did just that. Regina’s lack of reliable water, shelter or trees made it a poor spot for a permanent settlement. Prior to the treaty’s signing, Aboriginal people had followed the buffalo through the area. The land where Regina now sits is part of the Treaty 4 area, which was established in 1874. The bone piles were an effort by Indigenous peoples to honour the animals’ spirits. By 1882, First Nations people had been pushed onto reserves, and non-Indigenous hunters had greatly depleted the once-mighty buffalo herds through mass hunts. Taken in about 1912.īefore there was a permanent settlement here, Regina was known as “ oskana kâ-asastêki,”or “the place where the bones are piled”. Canoes are tied by a dock in the foreground. Photograph looking south over Wascana Lake towards the Legislative Building. Narrator: Hi, there! Today, we’re going to do about 135 years of Regina history in about 14 minutes with a segment I like to call “Regina in a Nutshell”. Today, this diverse and vibrant community is one of Canada’s fastest growing major cities. Two years later, Saskatchewan became a province and chose Regina as its capital. As the settlement grew and became established, it was renamed Regina (latin for “queen”) after Queen Victoria, who was the British monarch at the time. European explorers, fur traders and settlers translated this to Pile of Bones.Įuropean settlement began in the 1880s as an agricultural community and served as a distribution point for farm materials and produce. ![]() Indigenous peoples named the area oskana ka-asastēki, which roughly translates to “bone piles”. They began to stack the long bison bones into large piles in an effort to honour the animals’ spirit as the bison herds were becoming depleted due to overhunting by non-Indigenous hunters. This area was one of the important places where Indigenous people would come to hunt the roaming herds of bison. Indigenous people have lived in this region through many thousands of years. Regina is located on Treaty 4 land and within the traditional territory of the Metis.
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