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 thecathedral city of the Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox Dioceses of Regina and the Anglican Diocese of Qu'Appelle.Citizens of Regina are referred to as Regina’s. The city is surrounded by the Rural Municipality of Sherwood No. 159. In 2012, Regina was named the fifth best Canadian city to live in by Money Sense 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. It was named 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 was a tabula rasa, without 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 and constructing the 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 Regina's signal attraction 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 Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery and the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts.
Residential neighbourhoods in Regina are largely indistinguishable from those in other western Canadian
