REGINA — The hourly tours at the Saskatchewan Legislative Building explore many nooks and crannies, but there’s one part of the over 100-year-old building that the public usually doesn’t get to see.
Stretching about a kilometre in total, a series of underground tunnels connect the building (and others) to a central power plant about 200 metres south; tunnels continue to the Walter Scott Building, and the Wascana Rehabilitation Centre.
The tunnels used to carry coal-fired heat to the buildings. These days, steam, power, and communication lines run through it. Cobwebs and cracked cement line the walls, but that’s the extent of its spookiness
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“No rumours, no issues; we don’t even have mice in here,” said chief engineer, Doug Elder.
Casino Regina has a similar tunnel stretching about 60 metres. It’s the only tunnel left, but there were more back when the casino was a train station, and unsavoury characters might have gotten a personal tour of them decades prior.
“Canadian Pacific Police would have brought prisoners into a jail cell much like this one,” said Sask Gaming’s director of communications Julianne Jack in a room in the basement of the casino. “We don’t use the jail cells any longer here at Casino Regina. We use them for storage, but we don’t use them for anything else.”
The University of Regina is home to one of the most extensive tunnels in the city. Built in the 1980s, they are primarily used for utilities, though they also moonlight as something else particularly fittingly for the school.
“We have classes that come into our facilities, so we’re trying to encourage engineers to understand, prospective engineers especially, and environmental engineers – ‘Hey, look at this stuff. This is a lot more sustainable than burying it underground,’” said associate vice-presidents of facilities, Nelson Wagner.
And with a new residence building – and, subsequently, a new tunnel – on the way, there are more lessons to be taught in the future.
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