Regina sits on the flat, open prairie of southern Saskatchewan, the provincial capital and home to around 225,000 people. It's a planned city — there was nothing here when the Canadian Pacific Railway rolled through in 1882 — built around Wascana Centre, a large artificial lake at the centre of town. That park is Regina's saving grace: 930 hectares of green space with the Legislative Building, the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, and the MacKenzie Art Gallery all clustered around the water.
Regina is the headquarters and training depot of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The RCMP Heritage Centre, next to the barracks on the western edge of town, is an excellent museum covering the force's history, and the Sergeant Major's Parade and Sunset-Retreat Ceremony during the summer are genuinely impressive.
The winters are brutal — Regina is one of the coldest major cities in Canada — but summers compensate with long hot days and a prairie sky that goes on forever. Mosaic Stadium, home of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, becomes the centre of civic life during football season; Rider Nation is not a thing to be taken lightly.
For travellers, Regina is mostly a stopover on a longer Canadian road trip, but the city has enough to fill a relaxed day or two: the park, the museums, the Legislative Building tour, and a surprisingly lively cafe scene around 13th Avenue in the Cathedral neighbourhood.