Manitoba:Now THIS is Farmland!
Our grandson Kody and beautiful Katelyn were married on the 19th. Since it was an outdoor wedding, they were fortunate with the day. The one before had thunderstorms and 8 hurricane warnings for the immediate area. We Islanders may worry about earthquakes, but the prairies have their worries also. With climate changes, there's really no place left on earth where extreme events aren't possible. Anyway, the celebration was happy and filled with love.
Our granddaughter, Chase, did a fine job as MC and bridesmaid.
10 year old Bentley, Katelyn's son and now our great grandson, was a handsome ring bearer along with his cousin, Violet, the flower girl.
The day after the wedding we head into Manitoba, the under-rated province. As we travel, we see rolling green fields with lush green crops, well advanced from those previously viewed in Saskatchewan. I fully understand why Louis Riel and his cohorts were upset when forcefully uprooted from the Red River Valley. The land around Batoche, Saskatchewan is nothing by comparison. Here the soil is rich dark loam, and plants are thriving.
We drive through peaceful little Russell. Citizens have erected large steel arches along the major corners of Main Street. Flower pots decorate this rather unusual landmark.
Passing through Neepawa, we make a quick stop at the childhood home of Margaret Lawrence. This town provided the model for 5 of Lawrences' novels in the fictional Manawaka. I read Stone Angel for the first time in my late thirties, and again recently. One's prospect of dying changes with time.
Interesting mushroom 'villages' in Neepawa
Hanging flower pots welcome visitors to Riding Mountain National Park, our destination for 2 nights.This park was developed in the 1930's. It's dotted with many small lakes, streams and marshes inside a Poplar tree forest. The little village has a variety of cafes and tourist places. The lodge is a traditional log construct and was built during the depression as make-work project.
Locals enjoy BIG animal effigies
June 24 is sunny and warm, as we continue East. We stop at the heritage village at Fort la Reine, north of Portage La Prairie. This park was established in the 1960's by moving in various heritage buildings from surrounding towns and farms. The buildings include a 1870's log home that housed a family of 12. And I thought our camper was small!
Among the houses is an Eaton home. These homes were ordered from the catalogue and the building materials would arrive at the closest train depot. Then, the owner was left with assembling the house. I wonder if the instructions were like IKEA. A former Manitoba premier, Campbell, had a rather deluxe two-story model on a nearby farm. The original cost was $18,000, but many homes came for as little as $4000. Wayne's family home in Rosetown was an Easton house.
Eaton's catalogues were a big part of my youth. Two large seasonal catalogues arrived in Spring and Fall. The Christmas edition was a child's wish book, and there were various smaller sale catalogues where you hunted for a bargain. You mailed in your order and then waited eagerly for it to arrive at the local post office. Before Xmas, mysterious parcels came and you could only speculate and wait until Xmas Day to see what they held. Once their usefulness as catalogues ended, they often served in outdoor toilets or as fire starters.
Never complain about shared laundry, it could be worse.
June 24: Winnipeg, the Maligned:
This prairie jewel often gets a bad rap. Yet it is a well established, thriving dual community of Anglos and French, who settled across the Red River in St Boniface. This place had more millionaires than anywhere else in Canada in the 1930's. Due to cheap labor from desperate immigrants, factories and businesses flourished.
Today we visit two major sites. The Museum of Human Rights is a sobering experience. The building is designed to spiral you up 7 levels of ramps to a glass topped viewing tower. At each level you learn about our inhumanity to others, and repression of people within Canada. The idea is to inspire us to remember, and to set ourselves as protectors of human rights wherever, and whenever, we have an opportunity. As we are reminded of the struggles for basic human rights by various groups - LGBQ rights, women suffragettes,workers, Blacks, Jews, people escaping repression with hopes of better lives only to encounter more repression, it is easy to become dispirited. The architect had hoped the viewer would be inspired and we could transcend the darkness of repression and finally be the light.
Ramps between levelsBasalt garden of reflection, on level 6, before coming to the light.
View from the Tower of Light ....
Next stop is the Canadian Mint, where we take a tour learning about our coins. I discover that our Winnipeg mint produces coins for 90 other countries around the world, and presently their biggest contract is a 1 billion dollar agreement with the Philippines. Unfortunately they aren't handing out samples, so we return to our campsite for the evening.
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