War memorials and Canadian history have been principal obsessions of our trip to date. We have gone into about thirty hamlets looking for memorials featuring a soldier statue. We’ve chased Northwest Resistance ghosts of 1885: Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont and their Metis fraternity, at Duck Lake, Batoche and Winnipeg. To ensure that Jan’s affections aren’t forever alienated we stop at quilt stores too, though not in fair and equivalent ratio.
A corollary benefit of the war memorial chase is that it leads us to out-of-the-way towns and villages we’d never have seen, into the arms of strangers we’d never have met. More than once on the trip, while photographing a war memorial, I have been cautiously approached by a townsperson wondering what I’m up to. Perhaps casing their beloved cenotaph for night-time demolition by a gang of crazed pacifist-terrorists. Once they realize that my intentions are benign, even loving, doors are typically flung open and I’m often rewarded with snippets of history and bits of context I’d never have otherwise had.
Some folks claim to find the prairies boring. Astonishing. How could they possibly be boring? There are no trees to obstruct your view. Every pond and slough has an abundance of breeding ducks and waterfowl to delight the passing birder. It is a rare village that avails nothing to commend it. Small towns turn up all kinds of unexpected local attractions and curiosities: a creation science museum in someone’s front parlour (Big Valley AB), a fine array of outdoor historical murals (Duck Lake SK), a handsomely restored 1910 steam engine tractor (Austin MB).
Hamlets compete for attention by arranging to have the world’s-biggest of something: the world’s biggest T Rex at Drumheller AB, stalk of wheat (Rosthern SK), prairie crocus (Arden MB). Or they brag about the number of hockey players produced in the local shinny nursery that have gone on to fame and glory in the NHL. Tiny Foxwarren MB took the cake with four.
Some days we have to put with a longer-haul drive. To shorten the long hours we gawk at roadside wonders, or sort out the problems-of-the-world, or simply shove a CD in the disk drive. Or maybe (in my case) think fondly about women’s body parts. Sadly, even that pastime has a limited shelf life. But Jan has a solution for driving ennui: before departing Victoria she loaded up her iPhone with podcasts of the CBC Radio program Ideas. That was sheer genius. In Victoria we’re normally too distracted by other stuff to listen to night-time radio. In Big Bras d’Or we do listen to Ideas but invariably fall asleep about a third of the way into the program, no matter how entrancing it might be. But in the truck, barreling down the road at 100 kph we are a captive audience, and don’t dare to sleep. The podcasts have turned out to be vastly more entertaining and illuminating than listening – for the umpteenth time – to our favourite Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn or Fred Eaglesmith CDs.
We spent three happy days with Steve and Elizabeth in Winnipeg. Jan joined Liz for a ukulele ‘Strum n’ Suds’ while Steve took me off on a – what else? – war memorial quest. We went to Gimli to see relics of ‘New Iceland’ and watched Steve and his Britannia Rovers teammates win a Manitoba Major Soccer League match.
This morning, loath to drive northern Ontario yet again, we crossed the 49th and had a three-state day: North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin. Crossed the Mississippi twice, close enough to its source that it looked little bigger than a fair-sized creek, offering no hint of the epic river it will eventually become. The mission here in America is not war memorials but that other obsession: birds. Or more specifically,
one bird. Kirtland’s warbler is one of the rarest birds in North America. In breeding season it goes about its business in only one place in the world: scattered patches of jack pine habitat in northern Michigan. We aim to see our first Kirtland’s warbler Friday morning. We’ll report on how that goes.
War memorials and Canadian history have been principal obsessions of our trip to date. We have gone into about thirty hamlets looking for memorials featuring a soldier statue. We’ve chased Northwest Resistance ghosts of 1885: Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont and their Metis fraternity, at Duck Lake, Batoche and Winnipeg. To ensure that Jan’s affections aren’t forever alienated we stop at quilt stores too, though not in fair and equivalent ratio.
A corollary benefit of the war memorial chase is that it leads us to out-of-the-way towns and villages we’d never have seen, into the arms of strangers we’d never have met. More than once on the trip, while photographing a war memorial, I have been cautiously approached by a townsperson wondering what I’m up to. Perhaps casing their beloved cenotaph for night-time demolition by a gang of crazed pacifist-terrorists. Once they realize that my intentions are benign, even loving, doors are typically flung open and I’m often rewarded with snippets of history and bits of context I’d never have otherwise had.
Some folks claim to find the prairies boring. Astonishing. How could they possibly be boring? There are no trees to obstruct your view. Every pond and slough has an abundance of breeding ducks and waterfowl to delight the passing birder. It is a rare village that avails nothing to commend it. Small towns turn up all kinds of unexpected local attractions and curiosities: a creation science museum in someone’s front parlour (Big Valley AB), a fine array of outdoor historical murals (Duck Lake SK), a handsomely restored 1910 steam engine tractor (Austin MB).
Hamlets compete for attention by arranging to have the world’s-biggest of something: the world’s biggest T Rex at Drumheller AB, stalk of wheat (Rosthern SK), prairie crocus (Arden MB). Or they brag about the number of hockey players produced in the local shinny nursery that have gone on to fame and glory in the NHL. Tiny Foxwarren MB took the cake with four.
Some days we have to put with a longer-haul drive. To shorten the long hours we gawk at roadside wonders, or sort out the problems-of-the-world, or simply shove a CD in the disk drive. Or maybe (in my case) think fondly about women’s body parts. Sadly, even that pastime has a limited shelf life. But Jan has a solution for driving ennui: before departing Victoria she loaded up her iPhone with podcasts of the CBC Radio program Ideas. That was sheer genius. In Victoria we’re normally too distracted by other stuff to listen to night-time radio. In Big Bras d’Or we do listen to Ideas but invariably fall asleep about a third of the way into the program, no matter how entrancing it might be. But in the truck, barreling down the road at 100 kph we are a captive audience, and don’t dare to sleep. The podcasts have turned out to be vastly more entertaining and illuminating than listening – for the umpteenth time – to our favourite Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn or Fred Eaglesmith CDs.
We spent three happy days with Steve and Elizabeth in Winnipeg. Jan joined Liz for a ukulele ‘Strum n’ Suds’ while Steve took me off on a – what else? – war memorial quest. We went to Gimli to see relics of ‘New Iceland’ and watched Steve and his Britannia Rovers teammates win a Manitoba Major Soccer League match.
This morning, loath to drive northern Ontario yet again, we crossed the 49th and had a three-state day: North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin. Crossed the Mississippi twice, close enough to its source that it looked little bigger than a fair-sized creek, offering no hint of the epic river it will eventually become. The mission here in America is not war memorials but that other obsession: birds. Or more specifically, one bird. Kirtland’s warbler is one of the rarest birds in North America. In breeding season it goes about its business in only one place in the world: scattered patches of jack pine habitat in northern Michigan. We aim to see our first Kirtland’s warbler Friday morning. We’ll report on how that goes.
1 comment:
Another fine tour through the Prairies. I too can not imagine how anyone could find it boring!
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