Regina Saskatchewan Canada |
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Regina was founded in 1882 three years before the Canadian
Pacific Railway, then being built across western Canada, reached
the site: by the time of the Riel Rebellion in 1885 the CPR had
only reached Qu'Appelle (then Troy), some 30 miles to the east
of what became Regina. The Dominion Lands Act encouraged homesteaders
to come to the area where they could purchase 160 acres (647,000
m²) of land for $10. The city was originally known as the "Pile
of Bones" -- the English translation of the aboriginal place
name - because of the large amounts of buffalo bones on the banks
of the Wascana Creek, a spring runoff channel rising some couple
of kilometres to the east of Regina and gradually becoming a
substantial coulee as it approaches the Qu'Appelle Valley some
ten kilometres to the north. The hamlet of Pile of Bones was
renamed in 1882 as Regina (Latin for queen) by Princess Louise,
the wife of Canada's Governor General, in honour of her mother
Queen Victoria, the British monarch at the time, giving rise
to frequent use of the sobriquet "Queen City". |
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