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“My one little girl, the oldest one, she had a little red coat, and she looked like Little Red Riding Hood. She would go out on Albert Street, and she’d put her hand up … to stop the traffic while she went across, ” Laureen said. (Their oldest child was only in Grade 3 or 4 when the family moved off the Legislative Grounds.)

But their “education” also came not from a classroom but from living on the grounds, which has a reputation as a bit of a lover’s lane.

“(One of her daughters) had a little trike, and she was riding her little trike, and she went by a car, put her hand up, and went bang! bang! bang! on the windows. Because, the people were in the car necking, you know. And these kids knew this. Oh god, they scared the livin’ hell out of them, I’m sure. And then she goes sailing by on her little tricycle.”

Laureen also recalled people coming onto the grounds on the weekends, not far from the houses, to wash their cars in Wascana Lake. “They’d back their car down a little slope, until the hind end of the car was in the water, and then they’d wash their cars.”

Swimming and car washing in the lake are relegated to the history of Wascana Centre, as are those houses on the grounds. The last ones were demolished in the 1970s, and with them went a unique piece of Regina’s history.

But for those like Laureen who once had a humble, family home next to a tyndall stone palace of power, it was “a nice place to live.”

charbron@postmedia.com