History
In anticipation of its presumed eventual urban importance the Anglican ecclesiastical province of Ruperts Land designated the village of Qu'Appelle, some 30 miles east of the site which became Regina, now (what fragment of it still remains) on the Trans-Canada Highway, as the cathedral city of the new diocese of Qu'Appelle, although there was also an element of the churchmanship in St. Paul's Regina at a time when the town of Qu'Appelle's anticipated significance was already passing: "Opposition by the congregation of St. Paul’s, Regina, to candles on the altar led Anson to ask the people of St. Peter’s, Qu’Appelle to become the pro-cathedral." The Diocese of Qu'Appelle still retains that name, though the historic significance of the town's parish church other than as a subsidiary associate-congregation of the parish of Indian Head is long past.
The once significant town was doomed by the English Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney acquiring substantial land ownership at the site Pile-of-Bones, soon re-named Regina, and deeming it the capital of the North-West Territories (as then spelled), as early as 1883. Nevertheless, optimism persisted as to the continuing significance of the town of Qu'Appelle and the old pro-cathedral was built in 1885. St Paul's, Regina supplanted St Peter's, Qu'Appelle as the pro-cathedral of the diocese in 1944. The name "Qu'Appelle" of course retains actual significance as to the Qu'Appelle Valley.
Obviously once Regina was named territorial headquarters and, in 1905, provincial capital, it made more sense for the cathedral city to be the capital city of the civil province, though cathedral "cities" that are actually mere villages or towns are far from a rarity: see Our Lady of Assumption Co-Cathedral (Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan) and for that matter, say, Rochester Cathedral in England.
(The diocese in fact was originally precisely coterminous with the District of Assiniboia of the North-West Territories, though in the 1970s a strip of the diocese which since the creation of the civil provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta had lain over the Alberta provincial boundary was ceded to the diocese of Calgary.)
Beginning in the 1890s the indicia of diocesan metropolitan status were incrementally removed from Qu'Appelle, first to Indian Head and then Regina where the de facto diocesan administrative headquarters, with Bishops Court, the St Chad's theological college and the Qu'Appelle Diocesan School were established by the beginning of the 20th century.
Bishop's Court and the diocesan administrative bureaucracy having been removed first to Indian Head in the 1890s and then Regina at the beginning of the twentieth century, pro-cathedral status was ultimately removed from St Peter's, Qu'Appelle and conferred on St Paul's, Regina in 1944: at that time the diocesan property at the corner of Broad Street and College Avenue was planned ultimately to contain a substantial cathedral, whose anticipated site is still outlined in caragana hedges and whose liturgical west front faced the intersection to the northwest. By 1974 fiscal and demographic realities -- Anglicans are a tiny minority of the population of southern Saskatchewan -- had dispelled that fantasy and St Paul's was formally elevated to cathedral status.
The original rectory (from 1944 onwards the deanery) stood immediately to the north of the church on the site of the present parish hall. It was demolished and a new deanery purchased on Angus Crescent; this subsequently has also been alienated and the Cathedral Dean is provided with a housing allowance in order to arrange his or her own housing privately.
The Cathedral has intermittently been the home of impressive liturgy and music (see Donald M. Kendrick); latterly its worship has been infelicitously described as "high church meets happy clappy." Significant redecoration of the cathedral's interior occurred in the 1980s during the deanship of the Very Rev. Duncan Wallace, later himself a bishop of Qu'Appelle. At present plans are afoot to replace the parish hall.
Read more about this topic: St. Paul's Cathedral (Regina)
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