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Regina

QUEEN CITY: Downtown’s Victoria Park

Regina is rebranding itself as a city with “infinite horizons” – a dynamic place to live and invest, with endless potential and possibilities. Scanning the list of developments Saskatchewan’s capital currently boasts explains why. To name a few, there’s the $93-million Canadian Pacific intermodal rail distribution project that will widen Saskatchewan’s accessibility to international markets, the $350-million construction of the Loblaw Companies Ltd. distribution centre, the $170-million renovation to trade show and exhibition space Evraz Place, and a $1.9-billion expansion of the Consumers’ Co-operative Refineries operation, currently producing 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day. While other Canadian cities reported shrunken GDP and higher rates of unemployment in the face of global instability, Regina’s GDP remained stable, and as of last December, its unemployment rate of 4.5% was the second lowest in the country. As for 2010, the Conference Board of Canada predicts Regina’s GDP will grow 2.8%.

Estevan

BADLANDS?: The landscape of the Estevan region is yielding considerable prosperity in the form of land leases and oil revenues

The sunshine capital of Canada, Estevan, basking in the sun for about 2,500 hours a year, also basks in the glory of being the centre of Saskatchewan’s coal-gas-oil resource triumvirate. The Estevan region, in the heart of the Bakken oil formation in Saskatchewan, accounted for 82% of Crown land sales for the province in 2008, and last December, with the nearby Weyburn area, it made up $6.9 million of the $34.9 million worth of petroleum and natural gas exploration licences issued in Saskatchewan in that month alone. This year’s first round of Crown land sales in February saw a licence for a 1,860-hectare area 24 kilometres west of Estevan sell for $1.3 million.

Also, SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Power Station, which generates 813 megawatts of power, is being retrofitted with a $1.4-billion clean coal carbon capture and storage unit, storing approximately one million tonnes of CO2 per year that will enhance recovery in neighbouring oilfields. To top it off, in 2011, “The Energy City” will be home to the province’s $14-million Energy Training Institute Centre of Excellence, a 40,000-square foot facility providing research and hands-on training for the oil and gas, trades, mining and manufacturing sectors. The existing Energy Training Institute, part of Southeast Regional College, currently takes in about 4,600 students a year and shares the college’s facilities. Once the centre is built, enrolment is estimated to jump to about 6,000.

Meadow Lake

With a population of at least 5,000 required for a community to be incorporated as a city in Saskatchewan, Meadow Lake squeaked in last year at 5,021. The northern community, also known as the “gateway to pure air and water,” one day might also be called the gateway to black gold. Since 2004, Calgary-based exploration company Oilsands Quest Inc. has been developing an oilsands industry in northern Saskatchewan. Meadow Lake would be the province’s largest urban centre even relatively close to the Axe Lake discovery, the site of approximately 2.5 billion barrels of bitumen.

But until commercial production begins on Saskatchewan’s share of the oilsands, calling this new city Canada’s next Fort McMurray will have to wait. In the meantime, what will keep this community abuzz is having won the bid for the 2012 Saskatchewan Summer Games and preparations to host as many visitors as there are residents.

Moose Jaw

UNDERGROUND ATTRACTION: Moose Jaw is quietly making a name for itself as a business (and tourism) leader

Moose Jaw is a contender. The city of nearly 35,000 has been gaining recognition in the past few years for its new businesses and competitive environment. In the 2009 Communities in Boom report by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Moose Jaw came in fourth out of Canada’s top entrepreneurial cities, due to meeting the criteria of having “a high concentration of entrepreneurs and a high business startup rate” (91 new businesses began in the first half of 2009).

The NATO Flight Training Centre is one of the top employers in the Moose Jaw region, which is also home to the Moose Jaw Refinery; the refinery processes about three million barrels per year of Alberta and Saskatchewan’s heavy crude to produce over one million barrels of road asphalt.

Moose Jaw’s tourism industry is also heating up as the community makes the most of its brush with infamy. In 2000, the Tunnels of Moose Jaw opened, revealing a connection to gangster Al Capone. During the Prohibition era of the 1920s, the tunnels were used for moving illegal liquor into the United States, and Capone himself is said to have hid in them when on the lam from U.S. authorities. Also part of the tour is the story of late-19th century Chinese immigrants who hid underground, in this case from the Canadian government, when they were unable to pay an oppressive “head tax” for entering the country.