I know what I was expecting, and I was wrong! Like really wrong! About a lot of things essentially, and that’s okay because I never went into this with any certainty towards being right. It’s funny eh, because I do like being right you know, and oftentimes I am, but I also don’t mind being wrong if wrong turns out better than right, and that seems to happen more and more the older I get.
Saskatchewan, Land of Living Skies, is a case in point. This province has indeed been a revelation to me, and I see now that my pre-conceived notions concerning it were way off. I did not anticipate being so taken in by this vast expanse of grassland, folded hills and prairie potholes. There are trees too, not that many at the start of our journey but growing more and more numerous the further East we travelled, birches, elms and cottonwoods, and closer around settlements and homesteads, white spruce and Russian olive. The farms are big, much bigger than I am accustomed to seeing, and the towns small. Gull Lake, Indian Head, Wolesley, Moosomin, you blink and you are by them, but slow down and take a longer look and you will find a Canada more representative of our grandparent’s time, a Canada of large Victorian houses with screened-in verandas on streets shaded from the sun, and everybody knows your name and you need not lock your doors at night. Just East of Gull Lake there is a golf course that you can see from the Trans-Canada with old style, sand greens, and you can play golf there all day for $10. We didn’t stop to play but maybe one day we will. Maybe afterward we’ll take our dinner at a diner if we can find one somewhere along the road, and maybe next time we won’t be in such a rush to drive through this country, knowing what we know now.
We drive on, Eastward, and it feels like we are leaving our Summer behind, or maybe it’s leaving us, and we frown as raindrops splatter our windscreen. We keep driving though, we have to, we must be in Winkler at 2. The rain comes and goes but otherwise the world outside changes little, this is Southern Manitoba and it’s just as beautiful as the province we left behind; Souris, Notre Dame de Lourdes, Manitou, wheat fields, corn, rolling hills and cottonwood copse’s, even with the rain the heartland of our nation shines down it’s gentle light and whispers, “this is Canada.”
Winkler, Manitoba, Winkler Bible Camp, and no we are not here ‘to find Jesus.’ It’s an RV Rally of Leisure Travel Vans (Unity’s) of which we have one, and they are built right here in Winkler, Manitoba. Selection to attend is through a lottery system, we were chosen and decided to attend in the hopes that maybe some of our questions regarding the running and maintenance of our motor home could be answered.
Packed in pretty tight at the Winkler LTV Rally in Winkler, Manitoba
The camp itself was nice – a small lake, a beach, and plenty of trails to walk or ride a bike, but the rain arrived soon after us and rudely insisted on remaining for the duration of our stay; no beach bonfires or nature walks or well, pretty much anything outdoors. So … the choices were to attend a seminar or two (none of which stimulated much curiosity) or sit in the Unity with the heat on (it never got warmer than 10C), within touching distance of other Unity’s on either side (sardines in a tin, packed into a crate kind of tight). The meals were sufficient if you were an 80-year-old with gastro-intestinal issues (read – tiny and pedestrian). Sounds positively hideous, doesn’t it? Yeah, except it wasn’t.
“As a good traveler, you measure the quality of the experience by not how you check things off on your bucket list, but how many people do you talk to.”
Rick Steves
All dining was communal at a large hall with many long tables, and at these tables sat people. Now if you wanted to eat you had to join these people and maybe engage in polite conversation, like in talking to them. This is something Max is very comfortable with while me maybe not so much, but talk we did. We talked to people from British Columbia, California, Washington State, Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, Ontario and Quebec, and I discovered for myself what Rick had said – the quality of the travel experience is immeasurably enhanced by taking the time to talk to people (I ran across his quote after we had returned and thought, “holy shit man, Rick nailed it!”).
People! Wow! Like who knew eh? Well yeah, I think that maybe I did know, have always known, that in the end it’s about the people. Sometimes it’s a choice to be inhospitable to others and sometimes it’s simply defensive, where the unpleasantness acts a suit of armour to protect a vulnerable soul stepping outside the castle walls. That suit of armour though is heavy, and it is hard work to carry around, and it could be that the soul is not so vulnerable after all, and that talking to people is actually good for the soul. I do believe that shedding the amour allows us to connect with one another on a deeper level, even if only for a moment.
How do we shed the armour? We tell stories, don’t we? Joan Didion once wrote that “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” From our stories we find connection through shared experiences, and in Winkler I found that connection, had an epiphany if you will, and discovered that in the future there should be more talking, more stories, more engagement, more people. Wow!
After Winkler we moved on, further East into the Canadian Shield and Western Ontario, to Kenora and Lake of The Woods. It’s an incredibly beautiful part of Canada, this Lake of The Woods, but it’s main population centre, Kenora, maybe not so much. We had decided to give ourselves a break from the cramped quarters of the RV and get a hotel for Kenora, have a proper shower and not have a dog hogging the bed and all the covers. That ended up being the Comfort Inn. We arrived at 2:30 for a 3 pm check in and the woman at the front desk adamantly refused to check us in, because 2:30 is not 3. Whatever … so to kill time we wheeled over to the local KFC for some chicken. We are in the parking lot at our table in the Unity, eating our chicken and I look up to see a man walking out front. He stops not far from where we are parked, sits down on a rail, pulls out a pipe and lights up. Yeah I don’t know what he was smoking but it wasn’t Captain Black. Hmmm…..
Husky the Muskie, the nicest part of Kenora, Ontario
Later, Max decided to walk over to the Walmart to look around and maybe pick up a few things. While shopping she looked over and saw a grungy looking gentleman wearing a pair of pants, from the store, tag still hanging off, and he had pissed in them, and was walking around like, “nothing to see here, no big deal!” I know it’s Walmart but even so, that’s a bit much, no? We got the Hell out of Kenora first thing the next morning.
Back to beautiful Manitoba and Gimli / Winnipeg Beach on Lake Winnipeg. We loved it here. Gimli was settled by immigrants from Iceland and if you drink Crown Royal well, it’s made right here. This is cottage country and in the summer these two little places swell up to 30 thousand people plus, but it was very quiet for our visit, and rather cool as well, though still absolutely lovely.
BodhiBoy MegaStar walking the lakefront, Winnipeg Beach, Lake Winnipeg
Moose Jaw was to be our last stop on our way back home, and the idea was to do a night at the Temple Gardens Hotel and Spa. It sounded wonderful but for one problem, the hotel and spa are right in downtown Moose Jaw and there is no place to park the RV. The lady at the front desk said, “no problem, you can park it in our staff parking, it’s only a couple of blocks from the hotel.”
“Great,” we said, until we saw the parking lot – weed dispensary, sex shop, tattoo parlour, parking lot – so like this is NOT fucking happening! Moose Jaw was worse than Kenora; we are not parking a Mercedes Benz RV in the middle of a bunch of drug-addled homeless people. Man, they were everywhere, and it angered me. Not at the people because it’s not their fault, I was mad at society, mad at our government, mad that a country as rich as ours allows this to happen to its own citizens. It’s not just Canada I know, homelessness and drug addiction are at epidemic levels throughout the 1st World, but collectively we should do better, we must do better, but my God, where does one even start? Anyway, ‘Spa Day’ was out, and we decided to drive on and find an RV park somewhere further on down the road.
We found one too, just West of Swift Current. The owner told Max to just pull into one of the available spots and he would be around later to collect the fees. So we did, right beside a motor home that looked like it was just pulled out of the South Saskatchewan River; this machine had seen better days. The owner was a chatty old hippie dude from Wawa and he smoked dope literally from the time we got there till we turned out the lights and went to bed. It was an impressive display of cannabis consumption and I’m still not sure how that man is even alive, to be honest.
Good things usually come to an end though, don’t they? Summer is done, the RV season as well. The Unity sits out front, winterized and awaiting the big freeze that is to come in the not-too-distant future. It was a good summer too, we took the Unity into British Columbia, Northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario and in so doing saw a nice chunk of Canada. Where are we going next? Not sure, but that is one of the fun things to do in Winter; maps, guides and books will soon spread out and cover the kitchen table, dreams will begin anew, and next year when we hit the highway I am going to be pleasant and charming and yeah, talk to those humanoid creatures who look and sound sort of like me, and we will share stories, learn from each other and maybe even connect on some level. Wouldn’t that be something, eh?
Elbows up!!!!