Trudging through the snow, carrying a camera…

…was how I spent a large chunk of today. Still working on Historic Walks of Regina and Moose Jaw, and having been stymied in my plan to do two, count ’em, two tours yesterday by snow. (Snow! In Saskatchewan! In the winter! Who’d have thunk it?) today I at least managed one, in the General Hospital area.

I started off from CBC, where I’d had a meeting regarding my science column (more on that later this month), and where I took my first photo:


I liked the contrasts between this snow-covered tree and the back wall of the Canada-Saskatchewan Production Studios.

Then it was off down College Avenue:


Lots of pictures of houses later, I discovered this rather impressive set of icicles at the General Hospital Power House:


Not far from there, I found a beetle stoically awaiting the spring thaw:


Did I mention we’ve had a bit of snow?

Finally, my favorite house of all those I saw today:


The house was built in 1912 for William H. Flood, whose family lived here for 15 years.
Flood was born in Ontario in 1888, and took up ranching in South Dakota for three years before moving to Winnipeg, where he sold furniture for Imperial Dry Goods Co. for two years. In 1903 he moved to Regina, where he opened a real estate business and a building and contracting business. He built houses on speculation and then sold them on terms that allowed people of modest income to own their own homes, an important element in the growth of Regina in those early years.

The Flood Land Company worked aggressively to bring new settlers into the new province, many of them from the United States, not only encouraging them to move here but also offering them various kinds of assistance to help them establish themselves. As Legislative Librarian John Hawkes put it in his 1924 book Saskatchewan and Its People, “It has sold many thousands of acres of land and has been a factor not to be lightly valued in considering the forces that have contributed to the phenomenal development of the Canadian west.”

In just 10 years, Flood founded not only the Flood Land Co., but also the General Builders Co., the Regina Grain Co. and the Queen City Development Co., and was directing operations on 1,200 acres of farmland south of Regina.

Tomorrow, I hope (weather permitting–it’s snowing again right now) I’ll hit both the Warehouse District and Germantown.

Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2007/03/trudging-through-the-snow-carrying-a-camera/

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