The Regina that could have been: Talk focused on influential architect looks at early plans for city

Regina could have looked drastically different if the early 20th-century architect Thomas Mawson had his way.

Mawson, a self-taught architect from England who drafted plans to help cities strategize their layouts, is the subject of a talk Wednesday night at Regina's Bushwakker Brewpub called The Regina That Never Was: Un-built Buildings and Plans from Archives in Regina.

According to Saskatchewan Council for Archives and Archivists president Jeremy Mohr, Mawson would have proposed a different layout for Regina's streets.

"He would have changed the downtown core quite a bit. He wanted to eliminate the classic grid system we see now."

After he wrote a 1911 book called Civic Art: Studies in Town Planning, Parks, Boulevards and Open Spaces, Mawson gave a talk about city planning at the University of Toronto. That received widespread media coverage, which led to commissions for work in Saskatoon and Regina, as well as Toronto, Halifax, Banff, Vancouver, Victoria and Calgary.

Mawson's other plans for Regina  included erecting more buildings in what is now Wascana Park, including a civic centre, a Great War monument and a lieutenant-governor's residence.

He was a spokesman for the "City Beautiful" movement in Canada in the early 20th century, which meshed the typical North American city-grid layout with the more rounded and winding European streets, Mohr said.

We have really amazing plans including, as we're showing here, [ones] that weren't built and some that were. I think it's a little bit eye-opening that all these things can be used for various purposes.- Jeremy Mohr, Saskatchewan Council for Archives and Archivists president 

Mawson's plans were considered impractical, though, as they called for changing the layouts of the streets.

Also, there was an economic slump by the 1920s, which became worse during the Depression. That made the proposed plans implausible.

"One of the things in Saskatchewan is that we tend to boom and bust a lot. Perhaps if it was earlier on, and a start of a boom period and there was enough time in it, and enough capital and enough money flowing around, they might have more seriously considered it," Mohr said.

There are some parts of the plan that came to fruition, such as the Wascana Authority Centre. Also, the plan influenced the city's architecture, such as the Broad Street Bridge. Mawson noted that the curve of Broad Street, particularly the section over the bridge, was made wider in anticipation of building the lieutenant-governor's residence.

Alex MacDonald, an English professor with Campion College at the University of Regina, will be talking about the spirit behind the Mawson plans at Wednesday night's talk.

The evening is part of Archives Week, an annual Saskatchewan Council for Archives and Archivists event that showcases Saskatchewan's culture and history through documentary records, which runs this year from Feb. 4-10.

Other speakers include James Youck of P3 Architecture Partnership and retired University of Regina history professor Bill Brennan.

Mohr says that Archives Week is about more than old books.

"We have really amazing plans including, as we're showing here, [ones] that weren't built and some that were. I think it's a little bit eye-opening that all these things can be used for various purposes — even for general history or general interest or research interest."

If people can't attend the talk or get to the local archives, they can view many of the Mawson plan reproductions at Government House for the next month.