[A/S] Fwd: TWIMC - Maintoba!

["Sandy Noyes" <boojum@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, I had the luxury of sleep a half hour later than usual before
getting up and doing my e-mail.  Another chat in German with my hosts
and then I sent my mail off and downloaded a little more.  I had a chat
with my neighbors in the park.  One was an Ontarian crossing the
Laurentian Shield for the first time.  I warned him that here was about
150 miles more of it that I thought necessary.  I am not alone in this.
 Most Canadians agree,  The Ontarian was my age, bloom of youth at 60,
and this was his first passage.  Most likely his last.  He admitted he
always had taken the southern route through the US in the past
traverses.

My other neighbor was local.  We all were driving Dodge diesels,
though, and they are very popular up here for pulling travel trailers. 
W all went through the usual "love my truck" thing that guys, and some
gals, do.

I left Prawda about 9:00 for Winnipeg which rises Oz-like from the
prairies.  There are no real suburbs east of the city so, suddenly,
there is Winnipeg.  I wandered around the part of Winnipeg on the east
bank of the Red River.  It used to be St. Boniface and the neighborhood
I was in was Louis Riel's neighborhood, complete with his home and a
museum in his memory.  And what about that famous statue?  The jolly
lady in a Canada Post office told me it had been moved form its prime
spot in front of the provincial parliament to the grounds of St.
Boniface College.  The province is in the process of replacing naked
Louis with clothed Louis.  But the dissension runs deeper and splits on
anglophone/francophone lines.  He is still a bogeyman to many
anglophones as he led a francophone rebellion against the legal
anglophone government.  The francophones still think of him as a hero. 
In St. Boniface, a francophone community where anglophone and
Protestant folk used to go to sin on Sunday when Winnipeg was closed,
the folks I talked to all seemed to like him, regardless of language of
birth.

Anyway, the Canada Post lady told me where to find him and with the
help of a St. Boniface art student who was passing by at the time I
found Louis, still surrounded by his "clamshell."  Well, he was not as
large nor nearly as offensive as I thought he would be.  And not nearly
as "naked."  The statue had him looking like a genie, rising out of a
wisp of smoke.  The anglophones are mostly upset that he was
memorialized at all; the francophones are upset because the genie-like
depiction is construed to mean he was crazy, which they do not like. 
Louis led two rebellions, if my memory is right.  The first was
successful and ended with an agreement with the government in Ottawa. 
The second failed and Louis was hanged.  Anglophone history hints
darkly that the second rebellion was led by and insane Louis. 
Francophone history says that is an anglophone slander.  I don't know. 
There is a split in Canada along language lines; the Canadian
dichotomy.  Two camps divided by history, culture, language and
religion.  

I have spent the night at Oak Lake, Manitoba in a large family
campground.  It is a time machine back 30 or 40 years in America.  The
life here is simpler, more relaxed and less showy here.  Maybe the
Joneses have not yet moved here to be kept up with.  The people here
have that reserved Canadian attitude I remember.  Things just are not
as showy.  The rates at the campground are CDN$15 a night for water and
"hydro" (electric) and a dump station to use.  While registering I was
enrobed in the aroma of fish and chips and succumbed.  I figured the
two piece order would be too small and the four piece too large so
settled, Goldilocks like for the three piece order, with a side order
of fried onion rings.  It was the largest and best order of onion rings
I had ever had.  The onions were not separate from the batter inside
and the fish and chips was good and the portion huge.  Two pieces would
have been plenty.  I finished about 6:30 or 7:00 and lay down for nap. 
When I awoke it was pat 11:00.  A quick walk for the dogs and off to
bed for some more sleep.  I was bushed.

The "wheat miners" are had at work harvesting wheat along the TCH in
Manitoba.  Flax, buckwheat, oats, sunflowers and canola also line the
highway.  These folks are kind enough to label many of the fields as to
crop.  The wheat is gorgeous:  reddish-gold; the flax likewise but more
red.  Oats grow quiet close to the ground.  The sunflowers are close to
being harvestable.

The roadside bloom is Goldenrod, Yellow Rocket and Purple Loosestrife. 
This is prime forage for bees.  Buckwheat, too.  Bees love it almost as
much as basswood, an earlier bloom, and work in mightily.  Buckwheat is
one of the very few blooms bees will sting you while working.  Possibly
because buckwheat's nectar flow stops at around noon.  No one knows. 
Cattails are not yet bloomed up here in the marshes.  Still brown hot
dogs on a stick.  These are past into seed by June in California by
June.  This is far north, and this is the southern edge of Manitoba.  I
passed the geographic midpoint, 96 degrees plus some minutes and
seconds, today and am officially in Western Canada.  So far it has been
great.  The folks here have all been quite pleasant despite the fact
that Canada has had a love/hate relationship with the US for 200+
years.  They seem willing to take us one at a time rather than make a
sweeping judgment on us all.  A striking feature of Canada is the
apparent number of different nationalities here.  There is a large
immigrant community which does not seem to assimilate as quickly as in
the US. In Canada this is proudly called "the Vertical Mosaic" and
pointed out as another reason that Canada is superior to the US, that
people are able to keep their national roots intact.  You make the
call.  I can't and won't.  Both ways work for me.

Today, Thursday, will be a march across the rest of Manitoba, not much
of that left, and then Saskatchewan.  I will fill up just before the
border as fuel is about 10› a litre cheaper which works out to about
30› a gallon.  

Happy Trails to all.

L8R  


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