Neighbours: A Look Back at Regina’s Cathedral & North Central Neighbourhoods
Separated by the Canadian Pacific Rail line, Regina’s North Central and Cathedral neighbourhoods are some of the oldest and most well-established areas in the city. The two neighbourhoods have a lot in common, including beautiful tree lined streets and historic architecture.
Established in close proximity to the Canadian Pacific Railway, North Central’s earliest residents were European immigrants who worked as labourers for CP Rail. In her thesis about the representations and stigma surrounding North Central, Amanda Miller argues that due to undesirable conditions associated with the nearby railroad and general neglect as the city grew, the neighbourhood “has historically been inhabited by the marginalized”.
North Central was a middle class neighbourhood into the fifties but in the present day North Central is often associated with an almost twenty year old headline that branded it as “Canada's Worst Neighbourhood”. The headline caused considerable controversy, even to this day, but many of the problems referenced in the article, written by Johnathan Gatehouse, existed long before and long after it was published.
“North Central stands separate in almost every possible way from the rest of the city: Largely Indigenous, impoverished, plagued by drugs and crime, with many of its 10,000 residents marginalized and their problems ignored.”
The Albert Street underpass, looking north. This underpass is the main way to cross the railway from North Central to the Cathedral Neighbourhood (which has a grocery store, unlike North Central) and Regina’s downtown.
Photo: Jessie Stueck
North Central is bordered by railroads and high transit streets that insulate it from most through-traffic and non-residents. This physical separation enables neglect and negative perspectives from the city and the general population: people who really spend no time there. In this way, many of North Central’s socio-economic problems are built into the neighbourhood.
“From its earliest days, there was a classed division in both the built environment and the inhabitants of the south and north ends of Regina.”
The Albert Street underpass, looking south-east. This underpass is frequently icy in the winter and very wet in the spring making it less than ideal for pedestrians travelling between North Central and central Regina. The underpass does not drain properly and floods like this on occasion, forcing those who wish to cross the tracks to travel blocks east or west to alternate crossings.
Photo: Jessie Stueck
As one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods, North Central came into being at a similar time as formal and organized planning, and wasn’t established and developed in the same way that newer neighbourhoods have been. The proximity to the railroad that made the geographic location advantageous to the city of Regina has often been a disadvantage to North Central.
Since the fifties, North Central has seen patterns of out-migration of its working class residents and in-migration of low income and Indigenous residents. This happened for various and complex reasons, including the dissolution of the pass system, the introduction of the Canada Mortgage and Housing’s Mortgage Insurance Funds, and changing class demographics in other Regina neighbourhoods. Considering Regina’s relatively high Indigenous population, much of which is concentrated in North Central, the current socio-economic problems faced by the neighbourhood must be examined within the broader context of settler-colonialism.
Cathedral neighbourhood was established at a similar time to North Central, but Cathedral Village Online writes that Cathedral was “was one of the earliest and most affluent residential neighbourhoods to be developed in the city”, as opposed to North Central’s working and lower class history.
Both neighbourhoods began to feel the pressures of their age and changing surroundings by the 1970s, and both Cathedral and North Central formed their respective community associations in 1976. Cathedral Village Online credits the Cathedral Area Community Association with the neighbourhood’s subsequent revitalization.
In 1980, the North Central Community Society (now the North Central Community Association) marched to City Hall to demand investment and revitalization for the neighbourhood, expressing concerns about racism towards its Indigenous residents, as well as worries about the residential neighbourhood being threatened by Regina’s expanding downtown. These concerns centered around the age of North Central and the strain that had been placed on the neighbourhood's infrastructure due to rapid growth that was not accounted for by city planners. However, the NCCA eventually conceded that North Central had advantages that its southern neighbour Cathedral did not, as North Central is separated from downtown by the CP rail line. This granted North Central some stability, and consequently much more of the city’s effort and budget went to the Cathedral Neighbourhood rather than North Central at that time.
This blog post barely scrapes the surface of either neighbourhood’s history, and there is much more to be said about the details of neighbourhood planning and community advocacy. It is interesting to think about how two neighbourhoods that have so much in common, could follow such different paths. Where do their histories overlap and where do they diverge?
City of Regina, Neighbourhood Profiles
https://www.regina.ca/about-regina/maps/neighbourhood-profiles/
Johnathan Gatehouse. Ten years later we ask again: What’s wrong in Regina?
https://macleans.ca/news/canada/ten-years-later-we-ask-again-whats-wrong-in-regina/
Angela Miller. (2014). Territorial stigma on the Canadian Prairies: Representations of North Central, Regina. Master’s Thesis, University of Regina.
https://dam-oclc.bac-lac.gc.ca/download?is_thesis=1&oclc_number=1032934807&id=16a56774-3cb5-44fe-8b3b-c8e472ec774c&fileName=Miller_Angela_189902931_MA_JUST_Spring2014.pdf
NCAA Regina. History of North Central. North Central Community Association Regina. https://www.nccaregina.ca/northcentral_history/
Cathedral Village Online. About
https://cathedralvillage.org/about/