At the heart of downtown in Saskatchewan’s capital city of Regina, stand the two towers that comprise the Hill Centre (sometimes inaccurately referred to as the MCCallum Hill Centre).

The original McCallum Hill building was built in 1912. It was Regina’s first high-rise building and was Saskatchewan’s tallest building for many years. It was imploded in 1982 in just six seconds with 200 lbs of explosives.

Original McCallum Hill Building
Credit to memorysask.ca

I remember the implosion event very well. Implosion of buildings had been around for some time already, but this was the first time it was done in our prairie province so it was a pretty big deal.

The two towers (built at the same location as the original building), with their mirrored, angled walls are one of the main architectural tourist attractions in Regina.

An interesting fact is that although they appear to be identical twins, the tower on the west side of the street (known as tower 1), is two stories taller than its facing twin across the street.

The angled sides of the buildings often feature major upcoming events or holidays. Right now, they’re featuring Grey Cup which is Canadian professional football’s national championship game. It will be held in Regina this year.

Photo Note: I tried to edit out the BMO building in back of Tower 1, to see if that would improve the photo. That process left too many artifacts which would take too much time to remove, so I opted to just correct the white balance and leave the post processing at that.

“Even identical twins have their own differences.”

Mokokoma Mokhonoana