Wascana Lake is one of the few scenic attractions boasted by the city of Regina, Saskatchewan.
Regina started out as did most prairie cities and towns as a farming settlement. In the great Western Canadian frontier tradition of naming towns after landmarks, it was called "Pile o' Bones" for some years until residents and county authorities came to their senses and changed its name to something respectable: Regina, of Latin origin, in honour of Queen Victoria. Her portrait still decorates the supports of the Albert Street bridge that crosses over a narrow arm of the lake.
The lake began as a reservoir, a water supply for townspeople and their livestock fed by a trickle of runoff called Wascana Creek, within the city limits and without in the flat area that surrounds it, like a coin held in an outstretched palm, promising development and great things for the future.
The turn of the century passed and by 1908 the small town of Pile o' Bones had expanded into the growing city of Regina. Saskatchewan had entered into Confederation as a province, and as such required legislative grounds and buildings to house its government; the location of the legislature was to be near enough to the reservoir that its expansion would be only natural, as it could be transformed from a humble water supply into a design feature of the legislative grounds and a fully-fledged artificial lake for recreational use.
The city applied to the province for permission to carry out an operation to deepen and expand the reservoir. Permission was granted, and after it was dredged and refilled it became a popular area for summer water recreation and a feature of the urban parkland which had sprung up in the downtown area.
The park to which the lake is central has become one of the largest urban parks in North America. Trees, not native to this area of the prairies, were planted by the thousands, and have since developed into a forest that from the air during summer looks like a jewel set into the ash-coloured dried-out and drought-stricken plain. Walking trails and bike paths in dirt and asphalt and concrete criss-cross the park and it is possible to walk for nearly the entire length of the city without ever venturing into the semi-urban sprawl that surrounds the park.
Regina, as did most of North America, saw a great deal of economic growth and development throughout the Roaring Twenties. With the crash of the American stock market in 1929 followed by nearly a decade of drought, however, the city saw a rapid decline. Unemployment rates soared and farmers from the outlying area lost nearly everything they had as strong winds from the west blew the topsoil from their fields and tore the fallow stubble from the ground of the land at rest, creating whirlwinds of dust that left the fields and irrigation ditches bone-dry and the farmhands out of work.
In 1931 - early on in the scheme of the Great Depression - the unemployment situation had already grown desperate enough that something had to be done quickly to salvage what could be saved of the economy. The government put forward a proposition to employ those who wished for it to deepen Wascana Lake by hand, with shovels and spades. The lake was drained, and hundreds upon hundreds of men worked to deepen and enlarge it; the soil and sediment removed was formed into two islands, named Willow Island and Spruce Island. The length of time it took for the lake to be emptied, dredged, and refilled employed enough workers for a long enough period of time that the worst of the unemployment crisis was averted.
Ask any resident of Regina about what autumn here is like and they will tell you that it is filled with geese. In 1956 the federal government recognised the eastern end of Wascana Lake as a Federal Migratory Bird Sanctuary. Hundreds or thousands of Canada Geese use this area as a resting place on their migratory path, as well as over a hundred species of others, mostly shorebirds, punctuating the changes of the seasons and giving the province the slogan which now appears on license plates: "Land of Living Skies".
Through the 1960s to the present day, various water sports have grown in popularity and become established in clubs and organisations that practise on the lake when it isn't frozen over. Since the mid-1990s, an annual dragon boat festival has become ritual on the lake, drawing a hundred teams and several thousand spectators to the lakeshore for a weekend outdoors.
Since 1931 when it was emptied and deepened the lake has been gradually filling with sediment to the point where the average depth was less than two metres. Growth of weeds and algae affected the quality of the water - namely the smell of it, which polluted much of the park with the stench of stagnation, like the marsh at Chaplin Lake - and grew thickly enough to impede water sports. The stillness of the water caused it to become what amounted to little more than an "urban marsh".
In the late autumn of 2003 after the geese had come and gone all three levels of government - federal, provincial, and municipal - agreed that the concerns of city council and residents regarding the quality of the lake needed to be addressed. A project was launched in the form of $18-million in funding to again empty and deepen the lake, just as had been done to stave off unemployment during the Depression.
The project began in winter of 2003. However, it was faced with a problem - the lake could remain empty during the winter, while the soil was frozen, but as soon as the spring thaw hit the runoff would start and the lake would fill up again regardless of any action taken to stop it from happening.
It was determined that the only course of action would be to work at dredging the lake twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. A crude dirt road was built leading from the edge of the lake, empty by now and looking forlorn in the muddy snow, to an empty field near the SIAST campus in the east end of the city. The contractor hired to perform the dredging was true to the plan, and for much of the winter and early spring all over the east end you could hear the trucks coming and going at all hours of the day and at night see the eerie glow of the lamps set up to light the path from the lake to the field reflecting off the clouds, brighter than the further-off lights from downtown.
The project, dubbed the "Big Dig" by city residents, became a curiosity and an attraction for its duration. Passers-by on the Albert Street bridge would gather at lake's edge, just outside the fluorescent orange fencing and the signs ordering unauthorised personnel to Keep Out, to gape at the empty pit in the middle of the city and the heavy machinery used to remove and relocate the dirt. Near the end, the snow and frozen ground began to melt in the first traces of spring thaw; then it was a sinkhole, a pool of mud, instead of an almost surreally empty earthenware bowl, drawing even larger crowds as most of the city waited breathlessly for the completion of the dredging.
It finished up last weekend. For the first time since its beginnings in winter, it was opened up to the public - this became an attraction, too, a lazy Saturday afternoon spent walking around the bottom of the lake on the path of planks laid out to keep it from being too uncomfortably muddy. A dedication ceremony was held with a First Nations elder, Regina mayor Pat Fiacco, and Saskatchewan premier Lorne Calvert. There were some formalities and speeches made and then it was through, the people were chased out again and the fences closed behind them so that the workers could finish off the last work that was to be done.
It was timely, too; it's spring, now, and the geese are coming back, this time headed north for the summer. The lake hasn't yet filled completely with water but the park is filled with geese. East end residents can sleep again, the park does not (yet) smell like rotting leaves and stagnant swampwater, and the water level standing at half with the short native grasses still indecisively brown makes it feel as though we are in the midst of another drought that hasn't yet been crippled by spring rain.
Source: http://www.wascanalake.com/; photographs of the "Big Dig" can also be seen here.