Spatial Organization, perception and patterns of mobility in a railway city of the Great Plains:

the case of Regina.

by

Claude-Jean Harel

Submitted for the degree of Master of Arts, Archaeology and Heritage

School of Archaeological Studies University of Leicester

June 2003

www.greatexcursions.com

Acknowledgements

Many people have made invaluable contributions in helping this work come to light. I would like to thank the staff of Saskatchewan Archives Board, particularly, Tim Novak, Chris Gebhard and Ivan Saunders; the City of Regina Drafting Department and Archives gave early on their wholehearted support to this project − special thanks to Eric Bonke, Fred Waldie, and Carey Isaak. Credit is also due to Information Services Corporation for providing research access to base line files. I would also like to acknowledge the help and support of Joseph Pettick, John Brandon, Carlos Germann, Brian Scribe, Ernest Walker, Margaret Kennedy, Greg Marchildon, Dominique Sarny and Bill Brennan. Last but not least, I will never be able to thank enough Helen and Katia for their patience during this whole adventure.

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Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..4 Chapter 1: The Railway town as a Population Distributing Machine in the Great Plains Landscape ………………………………………………………………..……………….7 Chapter 2: Industrial activity and its impact on the Urbanizing Landscape………..…...15 Chapter 3: Emerging Patterns of Mobility…………………………………………….....20 Chapter 4: Spatial Utilization and Power relationships…………………………………30 Chapter 5: The advantage of accessibility………………………………………..……...40 Chapter 6: Settlement and Spatial Perception…………………………………………...49 Chapter 7: From beacons in the city to beacons in the Southern Saskatchewan Plains……………………………………………………………………………..…...…57 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..…...61 References……………………………………………………………………………….63 Figures…………………………………………………………………………………..78

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Introduction

One could compare the Regina town site of the turn of the twentieth century to a mail

order city and not be far from the truth. The Canadian Pacific Railway's eagerness to sell

the territory adjacent to the transcontinental line it built in order to finance its operations

during the 1880s has been well documented from the historical perspective (Berton 1971;

Brennan 1989; Eagle 1989 and Legget 1987). The CPR produced the street layout (fig. 1)

and encouraged the Dominion government to approve the location of the new capital of

the Northwest Territories on the land it owned - a vast expanse of virgin treeless prairie

bordered to the south by a creek the aboriginal people of the area had named ''Pile of

bones creek'', for the abundance of buffalo bones that were found along its bed (fig. 33).

But how Regina’s future population would come to settle and move around in this new

paper-based city to be; how these new inhabitants – women, men and children - would

come to perceive their urbanizing landscape surrounded on all sides by the endless

horizons of the vast Assiniboine river plain; how they would produce their own space to

inhabit has not been given much attention. This is the subject of discussion in this study.

It will be argued that the power relationships imbedded in the accessible street layout

prescribed by the CPR surveyors are more complex and fluid than it appears at first

glance. The grid street layout is harmonized with the main rail line, and reaffirms the

CPR's dominance in the daily economic activities of the City. Viewed in this light, the

CPR takes on the role of a host and the new residents, visitors and land seekers who come

to populate this emerging street layout become the guests. This host-guest relationship

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would not reflect reality, however, unless the hosts included also store owners, hotel

employees, livery stable operators, municipal politicians, city workers and clergymen

who communicate their own perceptions of their growing settlement to each other and to

others. From the built environment that they inhabit, communications also emanate

subtly. These are the multiple signals of a cognitive wealth that can be read in the

organization of space by those who pass through the city - almost as if one read a road

map while navigating through the landscape. Spatial organization over the landscape can

be likened to a road map on paper in the sense that a fundamental level of literacy must

be achieved in order for the user to be able to decipher it. This literacy results from study

and practice, or through the help of tutors who share their interpretation of the human

experience in the landscape and guide its users along appropriate paths that are

compatible with the prevailing power relationships agreed upon by inhabitants and

visitors in the spirit of territorial harmony. It is important to point out that this map must

be learned.

The cognitive map has a legend with symbols – some easier to decipher than others in the

interest of accessibility for the greater number – the grid street layout being perhaps the

most self-evident. It may well be that the level of familiarity new landscape users will

have with Western urban plans might be instrumental in allowing them to decipher the

messages that are imbedded within landscapes. Consciously or unconsciously, the urban

landscape of the City of Regina seems to communicate that it is there to help, at the very

least, facilitate urban sprawl in order to stimulate rapid population growth and ultimately

large-scale human settlement throughout southern Saskatchewan.

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How intentional was this? Very little has been written about the thought process that

motivated the surveyors. The artisans of historical research on settlement have devoted

much energy to events surrounding political scandals and gigantic business deals to open

up the West. The surveyors tended to receive much less attention, perhaps because they

were seen more as instruments of decision-makers than shapers of settlement. More

discrete generally, they recorded their impressions in diaries where they marveled at

untouched landscapes, diversity of wildlife and the richness of the fertile land of the

Great Plains. Yet the town site plans that they drew warranted just as much attention, for

they dictated much of the shape our cities and towns would assume in time.

Little did these surveyors know that well over one hundred years later, students of

frontier settlement would want to take another look at their work in order to gain some

insight into how settlers would come to perceive the application of these prescriptions for

urban settlement, and how they were set into production to create new spaces for human

adaptation and economic productivity.

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Chapter 1: The Railway town as a Population Distributing Machine in the Great

Plains Landscape

Railway towns are industrial complexes. At their core, there is of course the railway

itself. Then there are the businesses that depend on it to deliver the goods they ship or

bring in. There are the employees and the whole support network of municipal authorities

and brokers that allow families to find homes, to feed, clothe themselves and obtain basic

education services for the children. Growing settlements likely generate basic community

needs much faster than they can be met – the needs of workers, migrants, as well as those

of the railway’s representatives and of those who depend on the railway for their

livelihood generally. The pace of daily activities must be nothing less than dramatic if the

law of supply and demand is at the root of every economic system. The demand for

solutions in railway towns must have been overwhelming given the prevailing fast

rhythm of local economic activity.

It would be easy to find in every facet of the railway town – in ultimately every building,

street and fence that accompanies settlement – a confirmation of its all-encompassing

economic purpose: to engender revenue growth in Eastern Canadian and European

regions with influence over the new frontier. As Steffen puts it:

''Great Plains agricultural settlement along with the corporate stages of mining

and ranching, then, were merely western extensions of national development and

need to be studied from that perspective. (Steffen 1980) ''

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But economic marketplaces need places or locations where economic activity such as

trade can occur – a vocational space where people can engage in the livelihood they carry

out to sustain themselves and their community.

Lefèbvre (1991), Hillier and Hanson (1984), de Certeau (1984) and Markus (1993) have

provided useful frameworks for analyzing the spatial organization of these locations –

known today as ''railway towns'' - that allow us to look at the urban landscape from the

point of view of the users. It becomes then possible to draw a distinction between

‘‘inhabitants’’ and ‘‘visitors’’ (Hillier and Hanson 1984) that can help provide insight

into the production process of new space within the abstract frameworks (city blocks and

lots) that the guide the human induced landscape modifications (buildings and fences)

generated by urban expansion. By relying on paper-based visual representations of the

built environment (maps and fire insurance plans), available period photographs, and on

documentary accounts of life in the City at that time, it becomes possible to gain new

insight on the user perception of the emerging landscape. It is the perceptions of

inhabitants and visitors that define the settlement because they ultimately govern its

activities of exchange and distribution of wealth. The latter regulate population

movement and growth, which in turn are influenced by prosperity – or the degree of

human adaptation success within the system of settlement. All this takes place within

boundaries (legal descriptions expressed in town plans) that were pre-established as rules

to abide by, but rules to a game whose objectives have not all been overtly articulated.

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The concept of the city as a population-distributing machine needs to be defined here.

The product of this machine is the encounters one makes in it. When Markus (1993)

describes the urban space in Hanseatic towns over the centuries, he advanced that it

“maximized the probability of encounter between merchants, and made access for bulky

goods arriving by land or sea easy”. A parallel could be drawn with railway towns. The

accessibility of the urban space along a north-south and east-west grid system of streets

and avenues in cities like Regina maximizes the possibility of encounters between

inhabitants and visitors. The system’s integration with the railway lines made access to

bulky goods arriving by land easy. Not only that, but the spatial configuration made it

easy also to distribute the bulky goods onto the land, with the people who are likely to

use them, because the spatial configuration in Regina evolved in a way that maximized

the opportunities for encounters and encouraged mobility over the entire landscape.

In his book ‘‘Space is the machine: A Configurational Theory of Architecture’’, Hillier

(1996) establishes that:

‘‘Encountering, congregating, avoiding, interacting, dwelling, conferring are not

attributes of individuals, but patterns, or configurations formed by groups or

collections of people. They depend on an engineering pattern of co-presence, and

indeed co-absence. Very few of the purposes for which we construct buildings

and environments are not “people configurations” in this sense. We should

therefore in principle expect that the relation between people and space, if there is

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one, will be found at the level of the configuration of space rather than the

individual space.’’ (Hillier 1986)

Accordingly, when one looks at the Regina town site, the configuration of space can be

likened to a mechanical device that produces encounters along a certain configuration

governed by rules. Hillier and Hanson (1984) have referred to it as a “space syntax”.

“Syntaxes are combinatorial structures which, starting from ideas that maybe

mathematical, unfold into families of pattern types that provide the artificial world

of discrete systems with its internal order as knowables, and the brain with its

means of retrieving descriptions of them. Syntax is the imperfect mathematics of

the artificial’’ (Hillier and Hanson 1984)”

We believe that the built landscape of Regina articulates messages embedded within its

network of buildings and streets, expressing that this city invites those who travel to it to

venture a little further once they have readied themselves for this. It implies that visitors

must acquire a cognitive map of the landscape themselves before undertaking further

mobility, or that someone – an inhabitant – with his or her own cognitive map of the

landscape is facilitating the visitor’s settlement by communicating to him or her a

culturally approved version of a cognitive map; and this is done through a variety of

encounter mechanisms within the machine: church services, visits to banks, porter

services, etc. The information thus acquired is validated by the visitor’s own perception

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of the landscape he or she is exposed to during subsequent encounters and during the

course of further travels.

Encounters allow inhabitants to act as agents who facilitate the cognitive process for

visitors. They can be family members who have already settled in town. They can be

cultural groups, some of which have already settled in concentrations of inhabitants in

certain areas within the town around their own institutions (Fig.2). They can be land

development companies represented by inhabitants who take charge of visitors arriving

“en masse” by train to take them to areas where they hope they will agree to settle. In this

case, the mechanism that generates encounters becomes the party of landseekers’ journey

- the event itself.

Another type of encounter is that which takes place between visitors and agencies selling

lots in real estate developments. The encounter generating mechanism then becomes the

brokerage relationship. The encounter becomes all the more rich cognitively by virtue of

the systemized distribution of cognitive elements to visitors in the form of paper maps

showing the way to the real estate development of interest (Fig. 4).

There are opportunities for encounters in stores, hotels, at livery stables, pool halls, in

government buildings and on the streets. But how is it communicated to visitors that they

are welcome in these spaces allocated in the landscape for specific purposes? There are

signs on buildings, of course, but there are also signs in the make-up of spaces as

configured buildings. A business with a door directly accessible from a public sidewalk

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will appear to invite encounters more than a residence separated from public access by a

front gate, a walkway to the porch and a locked door. In addition, it must be said that not

all inhabitants and visitors have the same ranges of mobility, which entail different

patterns of encounters.

Ranges of landscape use

It is useful at this point to define four ranges over which users of the landscape (both

visitors and inhabitants) might travel.

1. Municipal range:

• This basically covers the extent of the town’s urban territory.

2. Local range:

• This can be defined as the extent of territory that can be covered in the

vicinity of the city during daily activities by local residents and those of

the surrounding area within a day’s horse-drawn vehicle’s drive – roughly

within a radius of 35 kilometers of the city (Reesor 2003). Mailmen and

stagecoaches might travel 60 kilometers a day (Reesor 2003 and Underhill

1989). Well-seasoned cowboys could travel on horseback over 80

kilometers in a day. But the standard distance a well-seasoned traveler on

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the plains would cover before needing a rest was more in the 35-kilometer

range.

• The local range encompasses the territory covered by the municipal range.

3. Regional range:

• This would be the extent of territory that encompasses the 250 towns and

villages that depend on Regina for a variety of social and economic needs

on a periodic basis by 1913 (Brennan 1989). The total population within

this trading area numbered 400,000 (Brennan 1989). The residents of this

trading area would be motivated to come to the city for various reasons

such as government business, access to goods and services unavailable

locally, for cultural or ceremonial reasons (weddings, festivals, etc.). They

might travel by horse with sleepovers over a number of days or by train.

• The regional range encompasses the territory covered by both the regional,

local and municipal ranges.

4. Interregional range:

• Interregional range travelers could be defined as non-residents who are in

transit through Regina to another destination. They could also include

travelers who are aspiring residents to the city who have not yet

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established permanent residence but may have found temporary

accommodations within commercially available facilities or boarding

residences.

• The interregional range encompasses the territory covered by all other

ranges.

With the historical data currently available, it is impossible to determine the exact

frequency of the encounters that are generated by the mobility requirements of those who

travel within the landscape. The ranges constitute an attempt at creating a framework that

will help understand the evolution of various patterns of mobility over a landscape

increasingly reshaped by the encroachment of the humanly built environment. Their most

useful quality at this point might well be that they remain constant over time and space,

even when space becomes more compartmentalized or when spatial production

intensifies over the landscape. The potential for encounters may increase with the

increased population one expects with urbanization, but this increased population can still

be assigned only one of four possible ranges of landscape use through time.

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Chapter 2: Industrial activity and its impact on the Urbanizing Landscape

What would be the life expectancy of a town plan conceived in 1881? When the

settlement it is designed to accommodate is to become a city of the future, the question

hardly needs to be asked. A chronological survey of urban expansion activities will help

understand the impact of the industrial activity that influenced spatial production over the

landscape. It will help shed light on how the original plan – a product of its time – was

actually quite well enough suited to stimulate growth in an era of rapidly evolving

communications systems.

Two periods should be identified at the onset. Brennan (1989) described the years 1885

to 1905 as “a period of sluggish economic growth for Regina… The town’s fortunes were

closely tied the agricultural development of the region and settlement lagged badly after

1885.”

He adds that:

“The development of manufacturing in Regina was retarded by the absence of any

substantial pool of local capital… Local markets were limited, the local labour

force was small, and so was the water supply. For all these reasons, Regina’s

manufacturing establishments were not only few in number, but modest in size. In

1901 not a single firm in Regina employed even 5 persons” (Brennan 1989).

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It appears that the initial ambitious planned deployment of the city, as suggested in the

town plan (fig. 1) was not realized during the early settlement period. Reality was

characterized by the less than glorious images of temporary shelters and rustic dwellings

(fig. 5). But this period would soon be followed by more exciting times:

“By the turn of the century, hard times began to give way to unprecedented

prosperity across the West. The price of wheat rose, and cheaper transportation

rates on land and sea made the export of this commodity more profitable. At the

same time, sophisticated techniques for farming in a semi-arid region brought

good harvests to the prairies. With the free land of the American West nearly

exhausted, the “Last Best West” of the immigration literature came into its own,

as thousands of settlers arrived each year. (Brennan 1989)”

Indeed after 1906, the small agricultural service centre that was Regina would go through

unprecedented growth. Within five years, the City’s population would rise from 6,000 to

30,000 people (Woodsworth 1913). This unprecedented growth led to the earliest

manifestations of what could be characterized as a form of early urban sprawl (fig. 6).

New houses were built over unbroken prairie farther and farther away from the CPR’s

main line (fig.7) and the business centre of town (fig. 8). With the increasing distance that

had to be traveled, consideration had to be given to the quality of the road surface to

facilitate mobility needs within the urban environment.

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The volume of human transit through the city became so intense in the decade prior to

World War I that 33 passenger trains a day stopped in Regina on a daily basis by 1913

(Woodsworth 1913). This increasing visitor traffic created considerable pressure for the

City to invest in its system of roadways. Though it is difficult to get a precise

configuration of where these improvements were made, Woodsworth (1913) provided in

his Social Study of Regina the following list of the civic improvements that had been

carried out:

Bithulitic pavement: 8.81

Creosote wood block pavement: 2.1

Asphalt block pavement: 0.72

Granitoid pavement: 1.45

Sheet asphalt 5.75

Graded streets: 73.5

Boulevarded streets 10

Granolithic sidewalks 20

Plank sidewalks 54

Sewers 34.7

Water Mains (supply mains) 13.5

Number of Hydrants 222

Number of house connections 3,600

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Many of these improvements we made necessary by the peculiar nature of the soil in the

Regina area, made up of mostly heavy clay to a depth of 12 meters. This makes for a very

unstable soil for building foundations to this day. As moisture content varies seasonally,

the clay expands and constricts, inflicting significant damage to street surfaces and

buildings. The clay made even the simplest pedestrian travel challenging at times (fig. 9).

Sidewalks made it easier for pedestrians to move around. The early city was really geared

toward walking as the chief mode of locomotion, if one judges by the number and quality

of sidewalks present in the numbers above and in period photographs (fig. 10). Until

1913, most points in the city still were found within a radius of one mile from one

another. Maps that were produced by land developers actually showed distance radiuses

form the Regina Post Office in one-mile increments (fig. 4). The same maps banked on

the accessible grid layout of the city as a way for prospective settlers to find their way

around the city, and exaggerated the scale of street widths in order for prospective

inhabitants to navigate more clearly to their destination. The map produced by Smith

Bros. is also noteworthy for the optimistic projected expansion of the City’s residential

neighborhoods it showed – as far as four miles away from the central post office.

The appearance of bicycles on city streets (fig. 11) certainly made issues of distance more

manageable. At a speed of ten miles an hour, a bicycle user could cover considerably

more ground than a pedestrian. The cyclist also had a distinct advantage over horse-

drawn means of transportation because, contrary to the horse and carriage, the bicycle

was easy to park, did not have to be watered nor fed, and bicycles certainly did not

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produce manure to soil city streets. On the other hand, the horse allowed one to move

considerably heavier loads throughout the city.

Horse-drawn vehicles were the backbone of transportation over the municipal, local and

regional ranges from the earliest days of Regina (fig. 7). Heavy loads likely took a toll on

the street surfaces. Wheel tracks were quite prominent over unimproved surfaces and

ease of transportation was affected by the weather.

The combination of the complex uses of the street system by a variety of vehicles on the

streets; the pedestrian traffic on sidewalks where they were available and on the streets

themselves where they were not; and the negotiation of mobility activities among

pedestrians and non-pedestrians within a climate of intensification of industrial affairs

over the landscape likely gave rise to navigation habits which were directly guided by the

built environment.

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Chapter 3: Emerging Patterns of Mobility

In 1912, the city-owned street railway system (fig. 6) opened a new era in urban mobility

by enabling people to travel faster than on foot without having to own or hire their means

of transportation. Automobiles were also beginning to influence patterns of movement in

the city, but the bulk of transportation services within the city were still carried out

through the help of four-legged horsepower. The grid layout with its network of back

lanes was ideally suited for keeping horses, as we will see in the next chapter. The

thought process, which we presume has led to this town plan, was becoming more

obvious with every infrastructure improvement.

By 1913, a number of new railway lines had been built through the city, extending the

options for travel over regional and interregional ranges (figs. 34, 35 and 36). The City

had fully achieved a new level of population distributing effectiveness. The urban railway

systems (trains and streetcars) were imbedded in the urban landscape with minimum

impact on the 1881 town plan (figs. 1, 4 and 37).

Besides photographs, the earliest readily available visual representations of the early city

of Regina landscape are the Fire Insurance Plans produced by Charles E. Goad in 1911

(fig. 12) and 1913 (fig. 13). By studying these plans - specifically the 1913 edition - one

gains insight into the purpose of the emerging city (fig. 14). The CPR’s main line is

lodged into the railway reserve land that is bordered to the north by a mainly industrial

area dominated by factories and warehouses, mostly in the vicinity of an elaborate

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network of railway lines interspersed with pockets of residential zones. To the west of the

railway reserve and straight north of the CPR main line, residences have been built in

close association with the Canadian Northern Railway yards.

South of CPR main line is South Railway, the street that interfaces with the CPR railway

to the north. South railway branches out to other streets southward in nearly

perpendicular fashion at city block intervals. These north-south streets constitute as

many points of accessibility from the south toward the loci of zones that are presumed to

be conducive to higher numbers of encounters between inhabitants and visitors. It is

principally this area of settlement south of the CPR’s main line, as of 1913, that will be

the focus of our investigation of possible patterns of mobility (fig. 15).

The grid pattern takes expression over the area by the presence of a network of avenues

that crosses streets at city block intervals in east-west orientation (fig.16). Because of

this, most points in the grid are accessible from all cardinal points. Visual analysis on

1913 fire insurance plans suggests the existence of three possible sectors (A, B, C in fig.

17) where the encounter mixes might vary as a result of distinctive spatial configurations.

They are arbitrary to some extent but nonetheless useful in understanding possible

patterns of mobility.

South Railway West

The western portion of South Railway (A) located between Elphinstone and Cornwall

Streets - and extending to 16th Avenue - is characterized by the presence on its northern

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side of the Lumber Manufacturers’ yards and shed, agricultural implements dealers’

facilities and grain elevators, while the south side of South Railway is lined with sale and

livery stables as well as hotels. This suggests predominantly agricultural-oriented

activities in this sector. As one moves south however, the area becomes distinctly

residential. Churches, schools and houses and neighborhood recreation facilities line

streets; sheds, possible outhouses and stables line back lanes. Fences have been erected

between some of the northernmost and easternmost lots.

South Railway Centre

The centre portion of South Railway between Cornwall and Broad Streets (B) is

dominated on the north side by the CPR railway station, while the south side is

characteristically business-oriented. This clearly is the commercial district, presumably

where one would find the highest concentration of opportunities for encounters. One

finds in this area many hotels, shops, offices and government services. There are very

few residences in this sector, but when one moves a few blocks to the south, one enters

an area of proportionately more elaborate dwellings built on wider lots than those found

elsewhere in the city during that period. There are comparatively more fences throughout

the residential area of this sector than in the previous sector.

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South Railway East

The easternmost portion of South Railway (C) and the landscape to the south exhibit a

different orientation to the City than the other two portions. Most noteworthy, the

northern side of South Railway here is devoid of buildings or platforms of any kind. Even

the lumberyards that one finds in this sector are located on the south side of South

Railway, occupying space that would have significant value if this had been an area with

important opportunities for encounters. This configuration suggests a less well-defined

interface with the railway line along this section of South Railway.

Secondly, the southeasterly CPR line that branches out from the main line in this sector

seems to provide a boundary of sorts for the eastern edge of the settlement. And again,

there appears to be very little formal interface between the railway traffic on this new line

and the residential zone south of it. When one looks at the fire insurance plan, the service

lane immediately south and parallel to this line does not even connect with southbound

streets. Of the three sectors, this is the only one that seems dependant on another in terms

of its relationship with the CPR line.

One explanation for this apparent reduced accessibility might be that, because another

larger train station to the west by the early 1900s had replaced the original CPR station

that was located in this sector by 1883, there was a shift in the focus of economic activity

toward Broad Street. This imparted to the northernmost area of the sector a certain

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character of isolation from the railway. Yet, the east-west accessibility was not

compromised because avenues reach deep into the sector. The grid ensures access

ultimately.

A period of significant settlement intensification also occurred there and can be witnessed

over a period as short as two years when one compares 1911 and 1913 fire insurance

plans. It is reflected in the clusters of new dwellings being built and in the extensions

being added to existing dwellings to accommodate the increasing population. Fences are

erected here in the highest concentrations found throughout the city. The compositely

rich nature of the built environment and Woodsworth’s (1913) assertion that the area had

the highest population density in Regina warrant further spatial analysis in chapter four.

Clearly, one gets the impression that the railway in this sector constricted territorial

expansion of the city rather than encouraging it.

The advantage of creating a digital footprint

In order to acquire a clearer picture of the dynamics of mobility as they are influenced by

spatial configuration, I undertook to derive a digital footprint of buildings and fences in

the area south of the CPR mainline from the 1913 fire insurance plan (fig. 16) that was

imported into a GIS program as a shape file to which physical attributes eventually were

attached. This footprint allows us to make the following observations about fences:

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• If fences are built generally after the buildings have been built, there appears to

have been until 1913 a general expansion of residential development southward,

eastward and westward on the periphery of the commercial/business district,

evidenced by the reduced number of fences as one moves away from the centre of

town

• Where the buildings in the commercial district are adjacent to one another, there

appear to be very few fences present in that sector. Presumably, they were not

needed because of the monolithic nature or building complexes along business

sector streets.

• Where the buildings are spaced out from one another, fences appear more

regularly between lots.

• Fences appear therefore more regularly in residential districts than in the business

district.

Fences can be used as a measure of inhabitants’ desire for privacy. If one believes that

desire for privacy increases over time, it is possible to infer that increased concentrations

of fences between lots can be indicative of neighborhood maturity, and perhaps also, of

the volume of human traffic along streets and avenues by visitors and inhabitants. This

would be consistent with the expectation that there would be less traffic on the periphery

of new settlement areas than in the center of the business district, as long as one agrees

that mobility patterns might take travelers through residential neighborhoods on their way

to and from the business district.

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Could it be then that fences play a role as guideposts for culturally acceptable urban

mobility patterns within the city? I am inclined to believe that they do when I study

photographs (fig. 8) and footprints of the built environment (fig. 16).

An urban landscape configured to communicate an impression of order to newcomers

One must keep in mind that the Regina landscape was relatively undifferentiated prior to

the arrival of settlers. There were no trees. There was neither natural shelter nor shade

from sun, wind and snow available to humans. Tents, buildings, equipment and tracks left

by wheeled vehicles on the unbroken prairie; walking or riding trails at various levels of

weathering and survey monuments were in essence the only navigation features humans

relied upon during the course of their day to day travel activities – apart from the sun’s

position.

This environment must have appeared totally different from anything settlers from other

parts of the country and overseas had ever seen prior to moving here. Depending on the

range of travel they were active in, visitors to the city and inhabitants would have

displayed various levels of familiarity with the environment. It is fair to expect that

travelers over the municipal range would have been relatively familiar with their

surroundings, or would have become relatively familiar with them within a short period

of time because of the user-friendly (accessible) layout of the city. Travelers over the

local and regional ranges, we will assume, have a generally good knowledge of the

26

landscape in and around Regina because they experience both the natural and human-

built landscape during the course of their mobility activities. Interregional users are

expected to have the least knowledge of the urban landscape because they have just

recently arrived in the City. In addition, they are also expected to have only a superficial

knowledge of the natural landscape as they have experienced it only through mechanized

means before they arrived – through the window of the passenger car they traveled on.

Schivelbush made the following insightful observation.

“The abandonment of animal power in favour of steam was experienced as the

loss of sensorially perceptible animal power/exhaustion, i.e., as the loss of the

sense of space and motion that was based on it. As the natural irregularities of the

terrain that were perceptible on old roads were replaced by the sharp linearity of

the railroad, the traveler felt that he lost contact with the landscape, and surely

experienced this most directly when he went through a tunnel.” (Schivelbush

1977)

Schivelbush refers to the effect of railroad travel on a given spatial distance in the early

19th century as the “annihilation of space and time”.

“The regions, joined to each other and to the metropolis by the railways, and the

goods that are torn out of their local relation by modern transportation, shared the

faith of losing their inherited place, their spatial-temporal presence…”

(Schivelbush 1977)

27

He draws an interesting parallel between the effects of the transition from travel by coach

to travel by train and those of the transition from the traditional retail shops to department

stores.

“The department store encouraged the development of the kind of perception that

we have called ‘panoramic’. To recapitulate its essential characteristics as seen in

the context of the train journey: as speed caused the foreground to disappear, it

detached the traveler from the space that immediately surrounded him, that is, it

intruded itself as an ‘almost unreal barrier’ between object and subject. The

landscape that was seen in this way was no longer experienced intensively,

discretely… but evanescently, impressionalistically – panoramically, in fact.

More exactly, in panoramic perception the objects were attractive in their state of

dispersal (Schivelbush 1977).”

If one gives credence to this assessment of the evolution of perception, it is fair to assume

that it can also be usefully applied to our efforts toward understanding how those who

traveled in the Regina landscape might have oriented themselves and developed

perceptions of a rapidly evolving landscape along similar lines. Travelers may have

developed a perception of the landscape that is based more on orienting themselves

around panoramic considerations than by what they saw in the foreground immediately

around them. Railways town, which tend to be dominated by grid type layouts perhaps

express thus a more easily decipherable landscape to users tuned to more panoramic

28

perceptions. As one travels by train, the grid layout offers glimpses of straight long lines

– the frame of reference to which travelers are becoming increasingly accustomed. Once

they step off the train, fences and buildings along the streets may provide the reference

points they need, especially in instances when the road networks have not yet been laid

out.

Meanwhile, as the city produces new encounters in its centre, it requires more inhabitants

to interact with the increased flow of visitors. These encounters may convert visitors into

new inhabitants. All the inhabitants have to be distributed over the urban landscape in a

way that allows them to play the role, which they are assigned in space. At the same time,

one would expect that the built environment of residential streets gives travelers the

indications they need to orient themselves discretely in the sense that they can do so

without having to engage in encounters with inhabitants that slow down their mobility

“en route”.

29

Chapter 4: Spatial Utilization and Power relationships

As the paper-based city becomes built environment, space fills in or, more precisely, it

produces and adds complexity to the landscape. Infrastructure investment such as road

improvement and the construction of sidewalks encourage certain patterns of mobility.

Privacy requirements and relationships of power expressed in the form of host-guest

relationships become increasingly important along residential streets, as suggested by the

increasing presence of fences between lots. Photographs, fire insurance plans and houses

from the early 20th Century that are still standing, suggest that streets had become the

main channels for human mobility as population and economic activity increased. Houses

often had porches facing the streets that would provide the neutral ground from where

visitors would be admitted once their identity was confirmed and their purpose been

approved by the inhabitants of the dwelling. Back lanes were used more for utilitarian

purposes such as refuse removal and vehicular access to backyards.

Cognitive variations among different ranges of users and encounter-based compensations

It is useful at this point to bring back the four ranges of users of the landscape which I

have described in chapter 1, in order to explore how various types of users might travel

over the three subdivisions identified in figure 17 over the portion of the landscape

located immediately south of the CPR railway to Victoria Avenue – an area covering

approximately 43 of the city blocks most closely located to the rail line. More precisely, I

30

would like to get a comparative sense of the encounter production potential individual

city blocks in the identified in the area are likely to generate. It is useful therefore to

further define landscape user types in terms of the level of familiarity they are expected

to have with the area and their motives for traveling within it.

1. Municipal range users:

a. Live within the City

b. Are very familiar with the area (have acquired a cognitive map of great

detail)

c. Are presumed to travel regularly along established patterns, occasionally

straying from these as need arises

d. Will typically travel over the of the city’s territory with a level of intensity

that is higher than all other users

e. Will be involved in encounters in the City more frequently that all other

users

2. Local range users:

a. May live in the City; may farm outside the city; but will typically live in

the periphery of the City

b. Are familiar with the area (have acquired a cognitive map with moderate

detail)

c. Are presumed to travel regularly along established patterns, occasionally

straying from these as need arises

31

d. Will typically travel over limited areas of the City

3. Regional range users:

a. Most likely live outside the City

b. Are somewhat familiar with the area (have acquired a cognitive map with

basic functional detail only)

c. Are presumed to travel regularly along established patterns, occasionally

straying from these as need arises

d. Will typically travel over limited areas of the City

4. Interregional range users:

a. Live outside the City or are in transit

b. Are generally not familiar with the area

c. Will generally travel over established patterns, occasionally straying from

these as need arises

d. Will typically travel over the most limited areas of the City than all other

users (are in the process of acquiring a cognitive map of the urban

landscape)

32

Table 1 is a set of proposed set of estimated values that stem from the descriptions above

and can be attributed to the four types of user ranges in the urban landscape.

Landscape User Type Municipal Local

Regional Interregional

Degree of acquired cognition of the map

75-100% 50-75% 5-25% 0-5%

Relative concentration during 24 hours of encounters (daytime)

70% 10% 10% 10%

Percentage of user autonomy

75-100% 50-75% 5-25% 1-5%

Percentage of user mobility

75-100% 50-75% 5-25% 1-5%

Rate of turnover 0-5% 0-5% 90-100%% 90-100% Intensity of frequency 75-100% 25-50% 1-5% 1-5% Table 1

33

While I haven’t found a way to monitor these characteristics through GIS analysis at this

point, they have inspired the encounter generation ability chart described in Table 2 as an

estimation of concentrations of potential encounters associated with different building

types in the landscape.

Encounter generation ability of individual building types

Commercial (com) 50 Shed (she) .5 Bank (bank) 200 Res (residence) 1 Stable (sta) 1 Garage (gar) 50 Hotel (hot) 200 Church (chu) 50 Lumber (lum) 50 Library (lib) 200 Office (off) 50 Post (post) 200 Fire Station (first) 50 Laundry (lau) 50 Coal shed (coal) 50 City Hall (civ) 200 Movie House (mov) 100 Union Station (cpr) 1000 Grain Elevator (ele) 50 Warehouse (war) 50 Ice House (ice) 50 Hall (hal) 50 Hardware (har) 50 Rink (rin) 50 Recreation facility (rec) 50 School (sch) 200 Unknown (unk) 50 Table 2

34

For instance, if it is expected that a one-storey residence is the site of one encounter

between and inhabitant and a visitor during a day, it seems reasonable to expect that

roughly 50 such encounters might occur over a day in a commercial building such as a

retail establishment or a repair shop. These estimations are based on the average number

of clients, window shoppers and general visitors with requests for information one might

encounter in such settings. Furthermore, I have chosen to use the number of floors in

commercial and residential buildings as well, as a factor that would increase the variation

in volume of visitors and inhabitants in encounter generation ability. I have ensured that

the database reflected this parameter in its formula for the automatic calculation of each

building’s potential for encounters.

This information was then programmed into ArcGIS by Eric Bonke of the City of

Regina’s Drafting Services in order to derive a map of potential encounters shown in

Figure 18. Using Union Station as the main port of entry for newcomers to Regina, I

estimated that the maximum distance new visitors arriving by train and willing to walk

with or without luggage would not exceed a distance of half a kilometer on average

before some means of transportation or storage assistance was required (access to a livery

service, checking into a hotel, or hiring a porter). I instructed Eric to establish a buffer

zone of 500 meters around Union Station south of the CPR line before we proceeded to

further analysis.

35

Early GIS map generation results

On the map (fig. 18), the buildings in red are those likely to generate the highest number

of encounters. Among them are Union Station, hotels, City Hall, the Public Library and

the 10-storey McCallum-Hill Building – the highest one in the city. The buildings in

yellow, orange and light green colours progressively generate fewer opportunities for

encounters and correspond to an intermediate level. They represent - in the same

decreasing encounter-generation order: schools, multi-floor commercial buildings or

offices, followed by single-floor commercial buildings and factories. At the lowest end of

the encounter generation spectrum are buildings with darker shades of green (residences,

stables and sheds) where one expects fewer encounters between guests and visitors to

take place.

You will notice that the 500-meter buffer introduced above follows fairly closely the area

where the highest concentration of encounters is likely to occur within the city. This is

likely due to the fact that users of the landscape engaged in mobility activities over all the

four established ranges to which they are assigned are expected to visit more or less

regularly this zone. They may come to it once in a lifetime, if they are an interregional

user passing through town and spending a night in a hotel on the way to a destination in

another province, or they may come within this zone on a daily basis if they are a porter,

a clerk or a business owner.

36

Germantown spatial dynamics

The 500-meter buffer extends eastward into Germantown. The ethnic diversity of the

population has been well documented (Woodsworth 1913), but few have attempted to

explain why a multicultural concentration occurred there rather than anywhere else. I

would venture to say that the proximity of this mostly residential neighborhood to Union

Station, liveries and hotels made it easier for newcomers to the area to make contact with

kins and to arrange temporary accommodation until they felt the time was ripe for them

to make their way further onto the landscape (fig.2). Among the 669 families

interviewed during the course of Woodsworth’s study (1913), a little less than half were

tenants of other people’s houses, and the rental prices here were higher than elsewhere in

the city for comparatively lower quality houses. It is as though this neighborhood allowed

new, recent and non-English stock immigrants to exert power over a significant territory,

but that for this privilege they had to pay an unusually high price. Only 48 of 599 houses

in Germantown had indoor plumbing. Over 60 percent of the houses were considered too

poorly built to be connected to the water and sewer mains. The need for a roof over one’s

head outweighed that for modern conveniences, but not the need for asserting a certain

amount of power over a territory that was located strategically close to services that could

help immigrants fulfill their aspirations.

Figure 19 is one of the few photographic representations of Germantown during our

period of interest. The view is of 11th Avenue looking east, from the west side of Broad

Street. A number of commercial properties line the street. A street car can be seen in the

37

distance. Few, if any, trees line the streets. Houses are tucked against each other with

stables and sheds in the backyards. The need for fences to control access to individual

household space becomes almost self-evident when no other natural protection against

unwanted intrusions are available. Streets surfaces appear to be graded earth into which

streetcar rails have been inserted. Back lanes are uninviting to visitors who are more

likely to encounter rubbish, mud (on a rainy day) and manure than a pleasant walking

surface. The preferred access to households was through the front portion of dwellings

and shortcuts across yards were prevented by the proliferation of fences more and more

as issues of territorial control took on more importance.

Encounter generation potential as a defining factor in future spatial adaptations

The encounter generation map suggests intermediate potential for encounters in

Germantown along 11th Avenue going east (fig. 19) and intermediate to high

concentrations along 10th Avenue, due to the presence of hotels and commercial buildings

within walking range of the train station. This likely accelerated the rate of fence building

in the sector and the need to regulate mobility along the patterns dictated by the town

plan. Thus, a cause and effect relationship could be established between encounter

generation ability around built structures and the reactions of inhabitants in the vicinity

wishing to maintain the power they have traditionally held over their domain and

controlled territory.

38

The fences along back lanes and between lots; the presence of porches along streets from

which inhabitants could monitor visitors in the summer; all were the symbols that

contributed to the cognitive map acquisition process of newcomers because visitors

understood that access to these zones was controlled and therefore not worth venturing on

without legitimate purpose. Conversely, in areas with lower potential for encounters there

is less need to exert control through added built structures. Note how few red and light-

green-colored buildings are located close to the eastern portion of the rail line, confirming

the suspected lower opportunities for encounters in the area. One finds less built

structures along the rail line in the area to control access as a result. Therefore, grid

layouts allow movement patterns to evolve over time depending on the needs and

direction where urban development occurs, but also on the evolution of the potential for

encounters, a factor which can shift in amplitude rapidly as a result of events that may

even be temporary in nature.

39

Chapter 5: The advantage of accessibility

On the late afternoon of Sunday June 30th 1912, after a hot and muggy day, a funnel

cloud appears in the fields south of Regina’s newly built provincial legislative building.

Within 20 minutes (Brennan 1978), it would cut a swath through the city that would kill

28 people, injure hundreds, make 2500 homeless and destroy at least 400 buildings

valued at five million dollars. Almost immediately, civic leaders and journalists

predicted that from the tragedy a new and more beautiful city would emerge.

“The horrors of the cyclone are already pushed aside… The people are getting

down to building operations, and every man who can lend a hand is working with

a “hammer in his hand and a mouth full of nails.” It is the indomitable spirit of the

west that leads Regina on to bigger and better things, and by its aid Regina will

yet resume her place in the forefront of western cities.” (Daily Standard in

Brennan 1978)

Figure 20 depicts the path of the tornado and was prepared by city archivists who

compared the Fire Insurance Plans of 1911 and 1913 as well as photographs and accounts

of the event. Every structure along the path of destruction sustained massive damage.

Yet, by 1913 the clean up appeared completed. I would argue that the completion of this

project was facilitated by the grid layout of the city that provided multiple ways to access

damaged areas by road. Figure 21 is a partial 1913 GIS map produced for this study of

the classes of buildings in our area of interest that can give us an indication of the

40

resources at the disposal of cleanup and construction crews. The arc depicts the 500-

meter radius around the railway station. The two red lines indicate the path of the

tornado.

The reconstruction effort: a possible temporary impact on the potential for encounter

Because of the accessible nature of the layout, horse-drawn wagons could come and go

from north-south and east-west axes in order to remove rubbish, to bring workers or to

deliver supplies. Private stables are shown in violet are easily spotted near back lanes,

while larger commercial stables are shown in red.

The 1911 version of figure 21 is unavailable at this time, but when the 1911 fire

insurance plan is compared to it, one notices that by 1913 not only were many of the

damaged buildings already rebuilt or repaired, but a good number of new one had also

been added on lots. There had therefore been an intensification of construction activity

over this area and others in the city, despite the fact that resources must have been in

greater demand then than they would normally be. The City must have somehow have

had the ability to adjust its space production output in a manner that enabled it to respond

to unexpected pressures, which is in itself quite remarkable. The type of civic effort the

reconstruction would have required must also have been aided by the constant flux of

newcomers. New energy, new visitors in need of revenue generation opportunities and

41

new acquaintances - all these factors must have allowed the urban community to take it

all in stride.

During the period of crisis immediately following the tornado, horses from both private

and commercial stables must have been used for emergency transportation purposes and

likely came from throughout the city. The accessible layout must have minimized

bottlenecks, facilitated the identification of alternate routes, and reduced the stress

generally for visitors and inhabitants who were presumably engaged in encounters in

zones that would have normally seen fewer encounters, and away from which most

visitors would have normally remained. If one were to generate an early July 1912 post-

tornado version of the potential for encounters GIS map that took into account new

construction and demolition sites, as well as the visitor attraction ability of a devastated

neighbourhood, it would look temporarily at least different from the 1913 version.

What archaeological analysis can reveal that historical records by themselves have not

There is another factor this type of analysis brings into light. Much has been made in the

historical accounts of the tornado of the loss of human life and of the destruction of

beautiful buildings. But the historical record has failed to mention the significant loss of

animal life that would have been inflicted on draught animals sheltered in stables within

the impact zone of the tornado/cyclone. At 5:00 pm in the afternoon on a Sunday, the

inhabitants must either have been coming out of church, on the way back from the lake,

42

or in their home about to sit down for their evening meal. Many horses throughout the

50-plus stables in the area must have been indoors in the shade and relative coolness

those shelters provided.

Figure 22 is a 1913 GIS Map indicating the type of building materials used in buildings

situated on the path of the tornado. Red indicates brick; light blue is brick with stone

façade; blue shows brick veneer; light green indicates wood. Most stables were made of

wood, as most back buildings were prior to and after the tornado according to 1911 Fire

Insurance Plans. The quality of their construction was of course inferior to that of

dwellings. In short, they were vulnerable to the elements. The devastation among the

animal population as the tornado hit must have been high. The stench that ensued from

decaying corpses and food must have been overwhelming, as people assessed the damage

and devised strategies to clean up and rebuild (figures 23-26).

The type of information yielded with the help of a GIS helps understand more clearly

aspects of vernacular architecture and uses of the built environment that tend to be

overlooked by historians. The journalists of the day chronicled those aspects of the

tragedy that were perceived as having the most impact for their readers, but they were

blind to some impacts and adaptation strategies to the tragic events. Most of the existing

photographs of the tornado focus on the view from the street. Few, if any, focus on the

view from back lanes. It is possible that the back lanes were so cluttered with debris after

the tornado that access to them was impossible. Yet, the clean up did occur swiftly

enough. New bricks and new lumber were brought in from various locations in the city.

43

What could be recycled on site was probably quickly re-used to avoid the burden moving

it around. All new building materials had to be brought in from outside the city, except

perhaps bricks fired locally. The lumberyard located northwest, next to the rail line, must

have done exceptionally good business. By the following year, life had – it seems –

returned to normal. It appears that archaeological approaches can reveal more about the

processes of adaptation than historical records have. Although, in all fairness, historians

like Bill Brennan (1978, 1989) have chronicled the evolution of the built environment

throughout their work.

Life expectancy of cognitive impressions in accessible landscapes

This previous discussion brings me to consider the following. What happens to the

cognitive map of inhabitants and visitors (be they construction workers or onlookers)

when an important component such as the buildings one recognizes on the streets and

uses to navigate in a given landscape are no longer standing? To what extent does

disorientation occur? On a cloudy day, in a landscape with poorly defined boundaries

such as what is visible in figure 5, one would predict that general disorientation would

ensue, unless the potential for the usual human encounters is still present along streets.

Many post-tornado – though undated - photographs suggest unusually high pedestrian

traffic in the affected streets and on the lots themselves. As described earlier, I would

argue that the potential for encounters became high as a result in those areas because

44

encounters are closely associated to the actual buildings and their immediate

surroundings. Those surroundings were populated with people cleaning up and rebuilding

dwellings. Progress on efforts to rebuild must have become a municipal pastime (Figs.

27a, b and c). The increased numbers of encounter opportunities, as a result, might have

offset disturbances in the references relied upon by landscape users in normal

circumstances. If this assertion is true, it confirms the partial dependency of cognitive

map acquisition on the potential for encounters.

An example of shift in the potential for encounters made possible by the accessible layout

If the tornado did cause as much damage as the photographic and fire insurance plan

evidence suggest, there must have been a general scramble of inhabitants looking for new

shelter, temporary or otherwise, Newly homeless inhabitants likely became visitors to

new neighbourhoods. Some may have taken temporary shelter nearby west of Albert

Street, which was mostly residential. The possibility of some increased mobility east

toward Germantown is not far-fetched. 11th, 12th, and Victoria Avenues provided direct

routes to Germantown within a distance of roughly one kilometre or a little more.

However, Woodsworth’s (1913) study suggests that households there tended to generally

board people of the same ethnic origin as the hosts themselves. The majority of them

there are of German descent, whereas most of those affected by the tornado were of

English stock. Despite this, it is not unreasonable to expect that a good number of

Germantown inhabitants hired themselves and their team of horses out for various

45

cleanup jobs because most private stables in the city were located in that neighbourhood.

Figure 28 attests to that. Stables are orange coloured, neatly tucked away along back

lanes, but within easy reach of the avenues identified earlier. The blue line indicates the

shortest possible routes east toward the affected area from 10th, 11th, 12th and Victoria

Avenues. Germantown horse and wagon owners were actually the best positioned to

participate in cleanup and rebuilding activities in the business district, as they were only a

few city blocks away.

Clearly then, shifts in the potential for encounters are likely to occur when the landscape

is modified through natural catastrophes and other human induced phenomenon

associated with increased urbanization. The landscape users’ cognitive map must allow

adjustments and additions to the variety of guideposts they use for navigational purposes.

Faced with increasingly complex cognitive interactions such as those stimulated by a

post-tornado context, a regional landscape user might be at a disadvantage over a

municipal user, especially in a competitive setting - at least temporarily - if he was a

door-to-door salesman. A municipal landscape user might remember that a particular

building on a street corner was made of wood covered with brick veneer and might

recognize the makeup of damaged building materials laying in the front yard, whereas a

regional user might remember only the shape of the intact building and might miss the

site altogether because of the lack of complexity of the cognitive map he is equipped

with.

46

The accessible layout as cognitive map equalizer

One suspects that the actual layout of the streets and lanes acts as a kind of great

equalizer in this type of situation. Despite the destruction, one believes that municipal,

local, regional and interregional landscape users were guided by the regularity of the

streetscape; the square angle quality of intersections occurring at equally spaced intervals

one could count as one traveled over the landscape. One always knew more or less where

one was by remembering the times and direction one turned to as one moved around. The

encounters one made along the way constituted as many opportunities to confirm that a

traveller was going in the right direction.

In fact, a tragedy such as the 1912 tornado is likely to have brought to light new unknown

facets of the landscape to the eye of both inhabitants and visitors accustomed to what

Schivelbush (1977) calls the panoramic perception of the built environment. Schivelbush

used the example of the department store in his analysis. We could build on that. The

tornado would have had the effect on the streetscape that a riot might have had on the

shelves of a department store that decided all of a sudden to give away all its products.

The visitors might have started to pay attention to the quality of the paint on the shelves,

to how many of them are stacked end to end, or to how narrow the shopping alleys appear

when boxes of products are thrown open on the floor. The overall cognitive map

landscape users acquire becomes endowed with new richness because the landscape has

undergone significant alterations. The foreground becomes momentarily more important

than the panorama.

47

Yet, some constants remain. In a post-tornado environment, once the streets have been

cleared of debris, they define an otherwise chaotic landscape of ruins piled at regular

intervals on both sides of the streets. Soon enough, city blocks start to emerge.

Inhabitants and visitors recognize them as elements of the cognitive map people use to

navigate when other navigational features or signposts become unavailable. The grid is

the fundamental base line along which all settlement has taken place. As such, it always

assumes a place of importance in the landscape. It provides the necessary support upon

which all other cognitive images are hung and rearranged as need arises.

48

Chapter 6: Settlement and Spatial Perception

Contemporary visitors to treeless portions of the Great Plains often draw parallels

between the impression the wide horizons found in this region leave on them and the

sensation of general disorientation one gets while at sea. It can be argued that the space

produced in the plains landscape in the form of street layout and built environment

provides the topological references that enable both inhabitants and visitors to navigate in

an otherwise undefined landscape. The regularity with which streets are laid parallel and

intersect with one another in a north-south, east-west fashion allows one to acquire a

cognitive map of the area that encourages one to take one's eyes off the ground and to

focus on a particular destination within the landscape. Thus, the signs advertising

businesses and products that appear on the buildings and street corner billboards (Fig.

19), become accessible to those who move through the landscape - they contribute to

enriching the cognitive map of those who experience those signs. The signs suggest

alternative routes to an event, a store or a business that did not figure in the landscape

features that travelers were familiar with before, or they bring them to the forefront.

As the landscape evolves through time, perception itself evolves, contributing to the

creation of a sense of place for new city residents whose mobility activities become easier

over time from a navigational point of view because their displacements are increasingly

instinctive. The confidence level of potential new residents (visitors on the way to

becoming inhabitants) and the evolution of how they perceive the landscape provide them

with a certain measure of power over the space in which inhabitants allow them to travel.

Visitors may even become more conscious of the sense of place than longtime inhabitants

49

who rely mostly on a panoramic perception dotted with occasional changes in the details

of the foreground that they perceive, such as billboards on street corners.

Late-19th Century town site designers such as the CPR’s L.A. Hamilton (fig. 1) carried

out their work with the inherited experience of hundreds of years of layout knowledge.

The majority of landscape users who came to populate Regina during the first two

decades of the city’s history were of English or Canadian stock. Even when Canada’s

immigration policy started luring newcomers to town in the early 20th Century, it was

intended that they come from European countries such as Germany, Ukraine, France,

Hungary and Romania, all countries with significant urban environments - populations

with lifestyles and from economies that were compatible with those for which Regina

was established and conceptualized. Clearly, when immigrants suddenly found

themselves in the midst of this new urban landscape, the spatial rules that governed it

would be articulated in a way they could understand rapidly.

Regina’s advantage for the study of perception in railway towns

A quick survey of city plans across the North American Plains makes one realize that to

this day, Regina has one of the most consistent and best-preserved railway town layouts

in the whole region. Along the east-west axis, blocks measure 103 meters. Along the

north-south axis, they measure 174 meters. This recurs over the entire original surveyed

area of the city. Somehow, Hamilton must have thought it was best to make city blocks in

50

Regina longer as one went away from the rail line. Other cities (Winnipeg, Calgary,

Saskatoon) will tend to have city blocks that are shorter as one moves away from the rail

line than they are along the other axis. This imparts a different perspective for landscape

users. Then, other cities will have blocks of equal length along both axes (Minneapolis).

And some cities will display a combination of many configurations (Lethbridge,

Indianapolis) influenced by the arrival of new rail lines and the physical constrains

imposed by geophysical features such as river valleys.

Regina’s situation could be unique as far as mid-sized cities are concerned. In the United

States, people had been developing rail lines since the 1820’s and 1830’s. Rail lines

started out as transportation networks - an alternative to canals – that could help propel

“misplaced’’ mercantile centers into distant markets effectively (Vance 1995). Thus, they

linked existing towns and cities – that was their purpose.

By 1882, the body of knowledge for railway development had evolved considerably. So

much so that the City of Regina became part of the new generation of railway towns

described in Chapter 1 – one where the plan is drawn for the needs of the railway and

then executed. As a latecomer, the town site plan is endowed with a purity of purpose-

specific design. Regina today has a population of near 200,000. It has not been able to

afford yet, nor felt sufficiently the need to carry out the massive rail relocation program

that would facilitate contemporary human mobility needs in terms of road-based

transportation with motorized vehicles, because to automobile drivers railways are an

obstacle. Ironically, Regina’s CPR line and its associated railway yards now limit

51

accessibility for those vehicles. But the more or less intact nature of the infrastructure of

streets and avenues and their configuration in regards to the main railway line are

precisely what makes this resource an ideal testing ground for the study of early human

settlement and mobility in the industrial context of railway towns.

From the onset of the 20th Century, until passenger rail service stopped at Union station

in 1990, immigrants to Regina arriving by rail were exposed to an urban landscape that

was relatively easy to ascertain. Naturally, new arrivals to Regina were by train in the

beginning. Once outside of the train station, an interregional range user would be exposed

to a fairly open viewshed in the foreground. Figure 29 is a section detail of a panoramic

photograph of South Railway looking west taken from a rooftop in 1920. On the right is

Union Station; centre is what remains of Stanley Park, where trees and shrubs have been

planted; to the left is the main commercial district, where a number of hotels are located.

From the railway station, a short walk would provide the first time visitor a basic

cognitive map of the town site. He or she would realize that South railway is the point of

origin of nearly perpendicular streets at regular intervals. A look north of the tracks from

the railway station would confirm the more industrial nature of that section of the city

(fig. 30).

Initial cognitive map acquisition

Cognitive map acquisition may have started prior to the arrival of the visitor in the form

of information contained in letters from family members and compatriots already

52

established in Regina. Information may also have been shared on the train during

conversations with fellow travelers who are familiar with Regina. But the cognitive map

is only validated once it can be rooted in the actual landscape. The visitor would likely

then identify points of reference that would be useful for general orientation purposes.

Structures of notable height would constitute such desirable markers. From the panoramic

photograph one can identify in Figure 31, at least three such useful structures that would

have been visible at various points near Union Station. One must keep in mind that this

photographs was taken from an elevated position and that these references might be seen

only from north-south streets if the observer was at ground level. The three points are

(from left to right) the 1912 City Hall with its pointed tower, the massive 10-storey

McCallum-Hill Building completed in 1913 and the Post Office built in 1907 with its

rotunda-type tower. Those structures were easily recognizable from any distance.

In order to get a better sense of the height factor as one element that contributes to the

cognitive map of landscape users, we generated a GIS map that assigned different colors

to the height of structures distributed in the landscape (fig.32). Blue indicates the highest

building (McCallum-Hill). Violet corresponds to the City Hall (five-storey) and the

building adjacent to the Post Office. The post office itself is displayed only in pale red

(three-storey) because the height of the tower was not visible on the fire insurance plan. It

becomes apparent that the bulk of the highest buildings are located within a 500-meter

radius of Union Station. There is another cluster around Victoria Square. Grain elevators

along South Railway were likely distinguishable from a distance as well. They stood out

in height north of South railway on the west side of the city, but also because of their

53

irregular location, out of pace as they were with the dominant grid along the railway.

Combined, these features provided the reference points required for the kind of mental

triangulations disoriented travelers might use to orient themselves.

When one takes into account how rapidly the built landscape and the communications

networks were evolving in and around the City (figs. 33-37), keeping track of how far

these buildings are located from one’s position in the landscape might have been a

particularly useful way to measure relative distance between destinations in accessible

landscapes. In fact, because city blocks tend to present themselves less frequently to the

traveler who moves along the north-south axis than the east-west axis, keeping track of

these reference buildings might have provided a more reliable confirmation of relative

traveled distance than did distance measured by the number of city block passed. This

would have constituted an additional marker in the cognitive map set of resources.

Impacts of chronological and built environment evolution on perception

If perception is a cultural factor that is a product of the experiences to which humans –

visitors and inhabitants – are subjected, it will be affected accordingly by action of time

and growth of the urban landscape. This evolution provides exiting opportunities for

analysis. For instance, when one combines analyses of period photographs and the GIS

height map, because most building outside of the commercial district tended to be one or

two storeys high for the most part, it might have been much easier before 1914 to get

54

more of a senses of the city’s layout from ground level than later on. For instance, on this

photograph from 12th Avenue (fig. 38), the outline of Legislative Building on the south

bank of Wascana Lake is visible from downtown. Again this photograph is taken from

the roof of a two-storey building and the perspective is deceiving. But from the right

angle, the building must have been visible in the distance from street level as well. The

photograph in Figure 39 is taken from McCallum-Hill Building and provides an even

clearer perspective that would not have been available after 1927 - date at which the

Hotel Saskatchewan was completed - because the view would have been obstructed (fig.

40). If one compares the built environment and the intensification of space utilization

achieved by 1939 to what it was at the turn of the century (fig. 41), it is apparent that with

time the street layout became better defined and dominated by an increasing number of

massive buildings that could be used as beacons to navigate in the urban landscape. On

the other hand, the general street layout might have become more difficult to ascertain for

newcomers because of the added clutter in the viewshed.

I would argue that to this day, inhabitants of Great Plains cities – and by extension

railway towns – navigate instinctively while following perceptions that originated, have

evolved and were transmitted from the earliest days of settlement until now in great part

through acquired cognitive maps. Inhabitants may only become aware of them when

tourists and visitors from different regions of the world are given directions; when they in

turn tell them how easily they have been able to find their way around town; or when the

inhabitants themselves travel to other regions and find themselves disoriented in

unfamiliar surroundings.

55

In the last chapter, I will argue that a renewed appreciation for the monotonous

landscapes of railway towns may be the key to instilling a missing sense of place in

neighbourhoods that seem to have lost some of their appeal to suburban environments.

56

Chapter 7: From beacons in the city to beacons in the Southern Saskatchewan

Plains

Automobiles have universalized panoramic perceptions over time, enabling travellers to

move through the landscape just about anywhere without really looking at it in great

detail. By 1955, the public transit system had extended the distances that travelers

without cars could cover in the city (fig. 42). As long as they knew where their

destination was in relation to the assigned route of the appropriate transit vehicle, they

would have no difficulties in reaching it. As one moves away from the centre of the

sprawled city, one needs to identify new navigational beacons. These most likely will be

buildings with higher elevation; building complexes for specialized purposes; or sites for

specialized activities. In other words, they will be locations where a sense of place is

solidly attached to a location.

The 1955 map of the City of Regina actually depicts some of these places. Figure 43

shows iconic representations of a number of places in Regina’s west end that are instantly

recognizable for a great number of landscape users. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police

barracks are depicted beside a “Mountie”. The latter is to this day the most recognizable

Canadian symbol throughout the world. One finds in this location a number of buildings

used by the Academy where recruits train to become the Queens’ (or King’s) police

officers in Canada. To the east, along Dewdney West, the Luther College campus has its

own non-descript icon; followed by the Veterans Home, which is really the former

residence of the Lieutenant-Governor of Saskatchewan. Rather than the historic

57

significance of the building, it is its current use that is depicted on the map. This shows

how uses of the day tended to dominate in the messages sanctioned by the governing

inhabitants of the landscape. The cognitive map evolves and imposes new palimpsests of

perception over previous ones.

Further east yet, one comes across the Exhibition facilities where horse races take place

as well as agricultural fairs. The railway tracks figure prominently on the map, but the

alternating motif in their depiction hints at the fact that they constitute an obstacle to

navigation rather than as a useable artery for travel. It could be argued that the paper

version of the map sought to become the inhabitants’ authorized published equivalent of

cognitive maps for the use of visitors, thereby attempting to wipe out previous

interpretations. The icons depicting the sailboat on the lake and the diver jumping in the

water (fig. 44) impose a recreational vocation on the lake in a way that attempts to make

it enticing for visitors to spend more of their leisure time in Regina.

Navigational aspects still dominate the printed map. Figure 45 shows a detail of the

traffic flow along the one-way streets of the business district in 1961. We must keep in

mind that the Regina Chamber of Commerce published the map. One-way streets were

established to increase the fluidity of motorized traffic in the sector. The arrows confirm

the supremacy of such vehicles in Regina’s urban landscape. When one looks at the

territory that has been annexed to the original rectangle of land area that constituted

Regina in 1883 (fig. 46), one understands how mobility challenges required adaptations

that could not have been predicted in the original town plan of the city. However, it

58

remains apparent upon analysis that this original layout still forms the backbone of the

City’s mobility network through the urban landscape.

In 1971, Trans-Canada Highway was completed after over half a century of struggle to

link the country from coast to coast through the construction the longest highway in the

world. This was a major communications achievement that would lead to new traveller

habits in Regina’s landscape for all ranges of users. Rather than seeking to impose it on

Regina’s existing layout, it was decided that it would be angled from Victoria Avenue

East to a south-westerly direction, so that it would by-pass the bulk of the city to the

south, making it possible for interregional users to avoid Regina altogether as they moved

east or west to other destinations. Judging by the published maps, automobiles had

enabled city residents to live farther away in emerging suburban neighbourhoods by the

1950s. Inhabitants commuted to their place of employment and had the freedom to

commute to weekend residences in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

Figure 47 provides a telling depiction from an elevated viewpoint from a city map of

1971. This drawing was meant to provide a perspective of a view from Trans-Canada

Highway. Evidently aimed at visitors to the City who accessed Regina from the newly

inaugurated national highway, the authors of this view assumed that visitors had greater

autonomy in their mobility patterns then than they ever had before. The City is now but

one cluster of buildings in the proximity of the landscape users. A landscape, the remotest

section of which can be reached in less than an hour by car from the point of view.

59

So little of the built environment is actually seen by travellers during their daily mobility

activities as more than outlines along streets, that Great Plains cities finds themselves in a

position where the landscape in which users travel has become more or less that of an

environment oriented toward fast human mobility. The accessible quality that made the

Regina landscape of the early 20th Century so advantageous is now overshadowed by the

drive to cover as much ground as possible, even if it means circumventing the grid.

Business associations in the downtown areas of Great Plains cities are now busily trying

to make their layout more attractive to visitors from newer neighbourhoods in order to

draw them back in. It is ironic that central to their efforts is a recognition that these areas

need to become more attractive for pedestrian and bicycle use - slower means of

transportation that encourage greater awareness of Schivelbush’s foreground (1977).

I, for one, am of the opinion that the planning efforts that will be successful in this will be

ones that focus on the authentic features and dynamics that made them work for the city

at conception.

60

Conclusion

It has been our intention during the course of this study to look at how various aspects of

the Regina landscape and its built environment have influenced human mobility through

time. It has been argued that the accessible grid-type layout of the city made it easy for

visitors to orient themselves in the landscape, but also imposed on visitors certain

measures to protect the territorial control of the domain over which inhabitants exert

control. Hence, for example, the need for fences.

The layout invited visitors who accessed the city through the CPR’s railway to explore it

and settle on some of the available lots whenever they were ready for it; it enabled the

population to change their patterns of mobility in order to respond to arising needs as a

result of events such as unexpected natural disasters like tornadoes; it also set the stage

for suburban development. The grid layout actually invited urban sprawl and provided

the communications network Regina needed to become a population distribution machine

serving the economic interests and the settlement policy set forth by the railway builders;

eastern Canadian government authorities; and the inhabitants of the city who depended

on the population influx to sustain and develop the local economy.

The cognitive map acquired by inhabitants and visitors to the city was partly shaped by

the potential for encounters along various urban locations. This potential could shift from

one location to another in response to shifts in patterns of mobility engendered by

landscape modifications such as construction activity; new business development;

61

changes in industrial activities; and advances in transportation and urban sanitation

technology. All of these factors can have an impact on how the landscape is perceived,

or at least on what type of markers and points of reference landscape users rely upon

during the course of their activities of mobility.

However, as long as the initial layout of the city is not profoundly modified though

railway relocation programs, it continues to influence travel in the spirit of the intentions

that motivated the creation of this particular layout in 1881, despite the restrictions it

imposes on contemporary mobility activities. We chose the preservation of the former, as

warranting more immediate attention – being that it constitutes a cultural landscape in

need of protection. Its true value may not be known and appreciated until more research

activities around the spatial configuration of 19th Century railway towns are conducted.

62

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Fig.1. Original 1881 town plan produced by the Canadian Pacific Railway

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Fig. 2. St. Nicholas Romanian Orthodox Church built in 1901/02 and congregation, some of which presumably went on to settle farther onto the landscape.

Fig. 3. Landseekers leaving Strasbourg in 1910.

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Fig. 4. Map of Regina produced in 1912 by land developer. Note the finger pointing to the development and the concentric rings indicating one mile increments from the Post Office and the rail lines radiating from the city.

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Fig. 5. Early photo of Regina from 1882 suggesting the establishment of the grid layout prescribed by the town plan in the form of aligned buildings and tents.

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Fig. 6. Unprecedented growth in the city by 1912 made it necessary to invest in the urban transportation network in projects such as the city-owned electric streetcar system.

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Fig. 7. An early 20th Century photograph of farmers bringing their grain to an elevator in Regina.

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Fig. 8. The City of Regina encroaches south and away from the CPR mainline over unbroken prairie. Notice the small grain elevator in the centre of the background indicating how far building materials had to be hauled from.

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Fig. 9. Early pedestrian mobility challenges during the course of travel over the municipal range of landscape users.

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Fig. 10. Granolithic sidewalks had gradually started to replaced plank sidewalks in the business district of Regina by the time the City Hall was built in 1912. Notice the CPR railway line in the top left corner of the northeast looking photograph.

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Fig. 11. The golden age of the bicycle.

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Fig. 12. Detail of the Fire Insurance Plan from 1911.

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Fig. 13. Detail of the Fire Insurance Plan from 1913. Note how quickly city blocks are filling in with dwellings when compared to the 1911 edition (fig. 12).

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Fig. 19. Germantown around 1913.

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Figure 20. Representation of the path of the Regina tornado of June 30 1912.

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Fig. 21. Detail of GIS map of 1913 building types showing the tornado’s path.

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Fig. 22. Detail of a 1913 GIS map indicating the type of materials used in buildings situated along the path of the tornado.

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Fig 23. The Methodist Church destroyed by the tornado.

Fig 24. A photograph of house blown across the street by the tornado.

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Fig. 25. A photograph of Smith Street looking north after the tornado.

Fig. 26. What was left of the Telephone Exchange Building after the tornado.

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Fig. 27a. A view of pedestrians surveying the damage near of South Railway.

Fig. 27b. Some of the 2500 people left homeless after the tornado.

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Fig. 27c. Pedestrians taking stock of their modified landscape after the tornado.

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Fig. 28. Predictive paths that owners of horse-drawn wagons might have used to help the clean up efforts are shown in blue. Access to the affected zones to the East (the reader’s left) was made relatively easy by the accessible grid that provides access even from back lanes.

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Fig. 29. 1920 view of Stanley Park looking west down South Railway. Union Station is to right.

Fig. 30. Another detail of the fig. 29 panoramic photograph looking north-west.

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Fig. 31. Detail of the same panoramic photograph (fig 29 and 30) looking south-west.

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Fig. 33 Township Register map dating from 1882 showing the Canadian Pacific Railway line at Regina and Pile of Bones River. Amall squares represent quarter sections (160 acres); large squares are whole sections of 1 square mile.

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Fig. 34 Township Register map dating from 1898. Notice how Pile of Bones River has been dammed to created a water reservoir.

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Fig. 35 Township Register map dating from 1917. Notice the added rail lines branching out north and southeast. The reservoir is called Waskana Lake and the Creek’s name is now Waskana Creek.

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Fig. 36 Township Register map dating from 1921. Notice the intensification of rail line development on Section numbers 19 and 30 in growing Regina.

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Fig. 37. Map from 1919 showing in red streetcar lines throughout Regina.

Fig. 38. The faint outline of the legislative building tower can be seen in the background to the right as the farthest visible building. The photograph looks south from a building near Rose Street around 1912.

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Fig 39 Scarth Street looking south in 1926 from the McCallum-Hill Building. The Legislative building is visible to the right.

Fig. 40. A 1939 view of the Hotel Saskatchewan from Cornwall Street. The hotel was built in 1927 between Scarth and Cornwall streets on Victoria Avenue.

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Figure 41. The same view as figures 39 and 40 around 1905 before trees were planted in Victoria Park.

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Fig. 42. The city of Regina map of 1955 published by the Regina Chamber of Commerce.

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Fig. 43. Detail of the 1955 City of Regina Map

Fig. 44. Detail of the 1955 City of Regina Map.

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Fig. 45. Regina Chamber of Commerce map of Regina’s business district from 1961 shows the traffic flow direction of one-way streets.

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Fig. 47

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