Exploring more of Manitoba

 

Day 20 + 

So this guy, Cameron Cross, had this vision of erecting 7 giant paintings around the world, and here in Altona, Manitoba stands one of them - a giant steel easel displaying Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’, all 76’6” of it in celebrating Altona’s reputation as the Sunflower Capital of Canada. 

In the same park is this: 

Blessed are the Peace makers, the Conscientious Objectors.  Thank you 🙏🏼

While in the area we visited the Gallery in the Park, a beautiful and tranquil outdoor gallery, a nice relief from the 32* weather we’ve had for the past week or so!  This one is my favourite - 

It’s called “The Splash”

Further down the road now to the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden to meet “Bruce”, an Allosaurus - a type of carnivorous dinosaur that lived in North America during the late Jurassic Period, 155-150 million years ago.  He was found in the in the Morden-Miami area.  This was a ‘must see’ from Russ in Glenboro!  And worth it - we had to remind ourselves that these were Real Live Bones, not replicas!  Well, kinda ‘real live’.  These reptiles were huge - I can’t imagine more than 4 or 5 living in the entire area of Mission, Dewdney and Deroche combined!

Did I mention that Roger’s middle name is Bruce? 

We came upon our 1st EV Charger hog - plugged into the only charger in town for about 4 hours before we finally gave up and went to bed, with visions of ‘nasty notes’ dancing in my head!

Day 21 -

It’s still 32*, has been for at least a week.  

Treherne Glass Bottle Church and House, wishing well and outhouse built from over 5,000 bottles!  Who has that kind of time?  Who has that many bottles!!  

Treherne is an urban community halfway between Winnipeg and Brandan on Provincial Hwy 2.  aka a place where the EV charger isn’t working!

If you are ever out this way - Spirit Sands in Spruce Woods Provincial Park, an area created by glacial melt waters, is a must.  It is not technically a desert because of its precipitation but it is one of a very few areas of sand dunes in Canada.  In it is Devils Punch Bowl, a 30 metres deep depression that disappears into an ever moving eerie phenomenon pool of blue-green water with underground streams that have eroded and collapsed the hills beside the Assiniboine River, and the water never freezes. 

Spirit Sands Outfitters:  Larry Robinson, his 11 year old grandson, and new puppy were our guides leading us through on a horse drawn wagon, the best way to see the place.  Larry has lived around here his whole life ranching and also drives rigg in the tar stands in the winter months. This man talked about all sorts of things, and his stories affirm that he has been blessed by the Creator with the spirit of the land and everything upon it.  I could listen to Larry for days. 

I’m trying to download a video but it doesn’t seem to be working this morning, so here’s a picture, without Larry’s voice :( 

Portage la Prairie

Checked into Days Inn - not nice!  

Day 22 - 

Portage la Prairie is on the Assiniboine River diversion that diverts water from the Assiniboine northward into Lake Manitoba.  Quite beautiful actually with white swans and pelicans!!!  There’s a beautiful park like walkway all along it over to Island Park.

We visited Fort La Reine Museum, and outstanding collection of historic homes, businesses, churches, war artifacts (lots of old uniforms), stuff like that plus the Allis-Chalmers building.  Wish I knew more about the Chalmers family, I know zip about them!

We’re getting a little anxious about finding places to stay, things are beginning to fill up.  So we took the evening off and drove to Delta Marsh, check it out at:  http://www.dmbo.org/ 

and then to Delta Beach on Lake Manitoba and relaxed for a while, waded in the water and watched the beginning of the sunset.

 

Spoiler Alert - out of sequence

We came to Fort Frances to visit International Falls.  

Well, we accidentally ended up at the border crossing into Minnesota, and when we told the American border guard that we were crossing because we were told about International Falls, she said 

“Who told you that?” 

- seems the falls have fallen victim to a dam and the only evidence is a town called International Falls!

We left from Fort Frances, Ontario and ended up in the U.S. of A. !

Nice over there, never been to Minnesota before

MeAnd’Er-ing into Manitoba

 

Anyone who has motored across the prairies of Canada knows the sense of surprise when coming upon a wooded grove or dip in the land.

- Ivan Eyre

Day 14 - 16 

Trip planning for us is fun - map laid out on the table, places circled that we would like to see (thanks everyone for your suggestions, almost got ‘em all so far), Roger on the EV app, and away we go!  It helps having a local like Sylvia there, “you gotta go there” or “why would you want to go there?” is really helpful, trust me.  

We were going to do some backtracking and head to Val Maria and stay in “The Convent” built in 1939, some say was a church, some say was a residential school.  BUT - we didn’t make it!  Mark phoned the day before departure to say they were digging up the pipes trying to find a problem with the sewer line.  Urch - take out the eraser and re-map our route.

We had 3 nature encounters today - deer eating Sylvia’s rose bush in her front yard, a flock of pelicans fly over Buena Vista today on their way to Pelican Point on Last Mountain Lake, and ticks!!  We had a whole bunch of them,(ticks that is) nasty little things Roger about 6 and about 4 for me.  Yuk!!  Left them all behind in the freezer at Sylvia’s.  Lots of people fishing off the pier at Regina Beach, and Roger held quite an audience at the Community Trash and Treasure fundraiser sale talking about electric cars, charging, range, and cold weather.  A guy on the dock caught an 8lb walleye - dinner’s at 5! 

A visit to Buena Vista wouldn’t be complete without fish and chips from the Blue Bird Cafe, it’s been around for 90 years!!  And it’s like Sue’s Copy Place - hang around there long enough and you run into pretty much everyone you haven’t seen in ages :) 

We visited an amazing couple who are raising 7 foster children!  Sadly, same as back home, a lot of children are “aging out” of care, so Devonie and Loris are working on changing their level of care status to community care home so they can keep some of the young adults with them.  Biggest hearts ever.  

Took in a Tom Hanks movie, A Man Called Otto at the Memorial Hall - $2.00 each including popcorn provided by Sylvia!  Some brought their own snacks, some brought wine, and we brought Roger - the only guy!  They do this every month - I love it!  I think we’ll try this at The Mews.

Little side note: Sylvia has some lawn damage called Snow Mold - who has snow that sticks around long enough to get moldy! 

Day 17 - 

Regina  - in all its glory!  We toured the Legislature, drove around some of the old parts of town - lots of murals and had lunch at the Mercury Cafe and Grill on 13th - an old diner out of a time machine.  The Indian Taco had at least a pound of meat on it!  Yesterday we had lunch at Houston Pizza, family owned and been around since 1970.  They keep everything!  

I had no idea that people have been coming to Canada from places like Serbia, Ukraine and Russia for so many years - some of these buildings like the Serbian Centre and the Ukrainian Co-Op Association were probably here before BC was discovered!!  This place is old!

The rotunda of the Legislature was interesting - it has space for 4 busts of famous people and only 3 are filled and the 4th is open to someone notable , maybe the 1st Aboriginal Premier?  Who knows.  

The RCMP are celebrating 150 years and we happened on the day of celebration!  It’s a fantastic exhibit, a definite must see.  Sylvia tells us there is a move underfoot to move the training Depot to Ottawa!  “Not going to happen” says she.  Been here since 1885 - It belongs in Regina, always has been, always will be.  I am embarrassed to admit that I missed the Place of Reflection, I will add that to our Return Home journey,

That’s a wrap for Saskatchewan!  

  17 days on the road and 3403 km

Day 18 - 

The drive from Buena Vista to Brandon was fun and eventful.  We stopped in at Indian Head, home of the Little House on the Prairie, hello all my CBC friends.  Only no-one we talked to knew where the mosque is, although someone at the information booth did say that it might have been vandalized.  Better info than we got from people who didn’t even know what we were talking about.  They should read their sign!

Here’s the eventful part - 

We pulled out of Indian Head with 63km in “the tank”, and the app is telling us 84km to the next charging station!!  What?  How did that happen?  We can’t be 21km short!!

We think the app gets updated periodically vs live, so it wasn’t accurate - just panic inducing!

Wait - it gets better.  We rolled into Whitewood Co-op station with 15% charge left, and the charging station isn’t working!  Whitewood is 175km east of Regina and 403km west of Winnipeg (there’s a few stations in between, but at this point we weren’t exactly calm!).  The station would only charge for 1 to 4 minutes at a time, then had to unplug, restart the station, and then 2 mins later do it and again and again and again. It took longer to unplug and restart the station, plug in the car again than the charge lasted, so the tent Jody lent us was beginning to look pretty good.  We phoned customer support, they confirmed that the station wasn’t working, very helpful, but told us there was a Petro-Can charger nearby, like one block over!  Almost 2x the price but worth 10x as far as we were concerned.  

Manitoba - 

Clocks clicked another hour ahead so now we are 2 hours ahead of home and I don’t like it.  I’m sure none of my 5am people really want to hear from me at 3am!  

The Welcome to Manitoba sign is horrible, I’ll write to someone when we get there!

We are staying in a hotel in Brandon attached to the hughest parking lot I have ever seen! and there is some sort of domed temple that people are pouring into, and what appears to be an area that could be an arena..  Time to check things out! 

 - the arena is home to the Brandon Wheat Kings, although there is a polo match in there this weekend?  

 - the domed temple? - the only surviving building from the Dominion Exhibition (1879-1914) and was the Agriculture building.  Tonight it is a church. 

 - the parking lot? - the Fair Grounds of course!

Day 19 & 20 - 

4000km into our journey 👍 

Our drive through the Pembina Hills in the Central Plains Region to our destination in Carman was out of this world, certainly not what we expected Manitoba to look like.  Rolling hills, lots of trees on a meandering road through a lot of French communities like Norte Dame De Lourdes, some settled in the 1890’s by people of French and Swiss origin.  Can’t wait to see this on our way home when the fields are in bloom.

We stopped at Glenboro along the way for 2 reasons - it has a charging station, and it has Sara.  I promised pictures posing with landmarks, and here she is!

Why, you may ask, is there a camel in southern Manitoba?  Good question.  Sara is there to do exactly what she did - make us stop and take a picture!  A local businessman and the Chamber of Commerce embraced the idea of an emblematic figure to draw attention to their community, and to Spirit Sands, so they brought in Sara - all 17’ tall and 2000 pounds of her!  

Appealing to most, but Roger preferred this roadside attraction - Deutz tractors… 

Glenboro - It’s lovely here and the townsfolk are really friendly.  We met Russ who was hanging out at the new thrift store.  He is a jack of all trades, and at 86 is looking to getting a bigger place to hold all his stuff!  Downsizing doesn’t seem to be in the cards for Russ.  The lady down the street when we asked for directions to somewhere to eat said ‘hop in the car and I’ll take you there’, the lady at the post office told us that when we go to Quebec to immediately identify as an English speaking tourist and we’ll do just fine, and Bob told us to ignore the plaque in the park  that says ‘Here stands the town’s wooden water tower which marks where the train stopped to fill the steam engine’ because the water tower fell down over 20 years ago.!

Carman - 

Carman is in the Pembina Valley Region of Southern Manitoba on the Boyle River.  At one point the community moved the river around a bit to make a pool for a swimming competition that attracted about 2000 people!!  For a town of just over 3,000 that’s pretty impressive!  

Our b & b. the Bell Aura is a historical old church built in 1898.  Each room has a literary theme, We were in Britannia room (Agatha Christie Poirot story), there’s Zhivago, Limberlost (Gene Stratton-Porter) and Gable (W.O. Mitchell) to name a few.  Our host, Barbara, is an amazing cook, and we sure needed that!  Downtown Carman we met a group of Communities in Bloom ladies painting a mural in an alley.  This is a really old town (with a free level 2 charger!) along the settler route of the Missouri Trail in 1870, traditional lands of waters of Anishinaabe, Ininiwak, Anshiniwak, Dakota and Dene Peoples and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.  Tomorrow we’re heading out to explore, so we’ll leave you here. 

Day 11 - 

Medicine Hat

We’re still in Medicine Hat and the smoke from the forest fires is really quite nasty, but definitely not complaining as we think of those closer to the fires and the devastation.  

The sun is trying to burn through the smoke, and it made us warm.

We visited the Saamis Tepee and it literally took my breath away.  The paintings, the story boards, the overall size of it is all very powerful.  The Tepee was constructed for the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympics and brought to Medicine Hat to its permanent home.  Each of the 10 masts feature a large storyboard depicting aspects of native culture and history - I have pictures of each, and their storyboards, which I’ll put in an album when we get home.  

Cypress Hills and Maple Creek

On from there to Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park; we chose to visit the Saskatchewan side because there are more services, and we wanted to visit Maple Creek!  

1st - Maple Creek: - it was fun!  We visited Cowtown Kids Toy & Candy, wow!  It boasts “Canada’s Largest Puzzle Display” and it’s true to its word - the entire upstairs is jigsaw puzzles, including the wall.  Everything from your favourite TV show, to buttons, to Group of Seven - some have 20,000 pieces!  This is a picture of the wall, all one jigsaw puzzle.  Ray will love this place!  And a whole wall downstairs lined with board games.  

The young man who owns the toy store also owns the bookstore in Maple Creek.

There are numerous Hutterite colonies along the route and we’ve been told they and expanding all the time.  They farm the land and sell local and continue to keep the farms of the prairies going as we see a lot of the farmers who are retiring and haven’t been able to find family or others to take on the work of food production.  

Both the Mennonites and the Hutterites trace their origins to the Swiss Anabaptist movements of the 16th century; and both groups immigrated, directly or indirectly, to the Canadian Praries from German colonies in South Russia. Ah, that explains the memorial statue outside the Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre in Medicine Hat!  

We went from there out to Cypress Hills, a park that spans the Alberta/Saskatchewan border.  Lookout Point is the highest elevation point between the Rockies and Labrador, elevation approximately 4,000 ft (1,275 m) above sea level.  The area was forged out by glaciers  millions of years ago, and until the decimation of their stock it was filled with roaming bison.  It was relatively easy to see through the smoke, but of course the colours and contrast were lost to us.  But you really do have the feeling of looking out onto something breathtaking!  

Where most of the grassland regions have gone to cultivation, the Cypress Hills area is a pretty well preserved ecosystem.  Each type of grass is high in protein during different times of the growing season, ensuring nutritious forage throughout the year.  Now a lot of it is used from cattle, although 1/3 of Canada’s endangered wildlife species are found in the grasslands.

The area around the Lodge where we had lunch is filled will trees with blackened bark, apparently part of the death cycle caused by pine beetle!  

This has been a lot to take in in one day - Saamis teepe, Toy Store, Grasslands.  And we even stopped at a gas station- to wash our windows!

Day 12 - 

We got up this morning ready to move on to Saskatchewan and there was a Hyundai Kona plugged in beside our car at the hotel - From BC!!!  Better yet - from Mission!  Wow.  

Interesting how the conversation went …

- what’s your range?

- what year is your car?

- how’s been your anxiety?  

- how low do you let your battery go?

- what is the cost / minute at the various charging stations?

Questions not asked …

- who are you?

- what is your name?

- do you work in Mission?

They appeared to be a lady and her father, and we did learn that they were driving to Regina to attend something then straight back to Mission, that they rolled into Medicine Hat at 1:am with 35km left in the tank!

We’re at 3,000km of our journey, and the Kona hit 40,000km.  

We blasted through a lot of western edge of Saskatchewan because we’re headed to Sylvia’s in Buena Vista/Regina Beach.  Together we are the Great and the Grand - Parents that is, to Connor and Everly.

We drove past Reed Lake, known as part of a Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve, but what we saw the Salt - piles of it!  acres of !  An intermittent, shallow endorheic salt lake, same as but much smaller than Salt Lake, Utah, and their decline is leading to many environmental problem. Here’s a link if that interests you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorheic_lake

Swift Current - 

It’s cold here - only 9’ and I’m in sandals!  

Great little sticker store, and we laughed out loud when we read the story of Blowtorch, a life-size mechanical horse remembered on a plaque in a downtown Swift Current square.  I thought I would share it here but it’s too long, but man is it funny!  We had a nice chat with Karen back home - she’s working in the community garden and it looks hot!  We charged at the Co-Op on our way out of town and used the time to visit the Visitor Centre, lots of agricultural history of the area there.  Then we drove pretty much straight through stopping for a top up charge in Moose Jaw.  We’ll come back tomorrow and visit the town.

Day 13 - 

We’re in Saskatchewan!  We arrived at Sylvia’s around 4:30 last night and had a great dinner at Regina Beach Golf Course.  Sylvia is the Great and we are the Grand - Parents of Connor and Everly back home in Mission.  (I know I said that earlier, but we’re pretty proud grandparents!) 

She actually lives in Buena Vista, which neighbours Regina Beach and there is quite a friendly rivalry between the two - street lighting, pot holes, drinking water, yes, drinking water!  They have separate water towers with distinctly different tastes, or so we were told.

This is a seasonal community and it is the May long weekend so the population is beginning to swell.  It reminds me of living in Gibsons when the Beachcombers crew would return and the tourists!  It’s very exciting really, and we got to help with the annual Trash and Treasure fundraiser flea market.  Sylvia is a very active volunteer in the community and has made us feel right at home.  

Moose Jaw

We drove back to Moose Jaw and took in the Passage to Fortune Tunnel Tour. that tells the story of the Chinese laundry in the tunnels under River Street.  Chinese immigrants came to Canada to escape poverty in China and were employed on the railway, as servants, miners or laundry workers.  They lived in in the tunnels and most of their pay went to the ‘brokers’ who had arranged their travel to Canada, there was the Chinese Head Tax, and they would send money home to China, leaving little left to survive on. Prejudice against the Chinese was strong - one of the Chinese restaurants where people loved to eat the delicious food had its entire kitchen in the tunnels and the meals were sent up in dumb waiters to be served by white waiters!  Sounds like dumb customers, not dumb waiters.  Another opportunity for us as Canadians to reflect on our history and learn from our past.

Weiye Su, a filmmaker from Saskatchewan, has made a documentary, A Passage Beyond Fortune and is featured on CBC Radio’s The Morning Edition with Stefani Langenegger.  I’ll try and find the link for you, but most of my CBC friends will know how to do that.

We stopped for the obligatory picture with The Moose and one of the Snowbirds jets!  

Moose Jaw is home of Snowbirds world famous military aerobatics flight demonstration team of the Royal Canadian Air Force.  

I love the Snowbirds, my heart soars every time I get to see them fly over.  My dad used to take us to the Abbotsford Air Show to see them when their squadron performed aerial combat displays of their jet capabilities.

Continuing on my independent bookstore theme - Moose Jaw has an independent bookstore on High Street called Post Horizon Booksellers.  Bookseller Nelson deals mostly with good quality used books and knows of Mission’s very own Brian Murdoch!  He gave us suggestions for book shops to visit in Regina and Saskatoon.  

After dinner at Rosie’s on River we drove back through Buffalo Pound - omg, breathtaking is an understatement it is so beautiful.  It is geographically perfect for the Blackfoot and Plains Cree, traditional enemies, to corral bison and live in harmony with the cycle of the buffalo.  It is the first major lake the Qu’Appelle River reaches after leaving Lake Diefenbaker to join the Assiniboine River into Manitoba.  

The evening was filled with rich family stories - one of which was Sylvia’s Moose Jaw $5. bill story, which I’ll share when we get home $$$

I’m getting behind on things - sometimes it’s just so peaceful at the end of the day that I get little more than my journal done.  But I’m sure you don’t mind.

 

  

You’re driving across Canada in an EV ?!?

When we talk to people about our trip across Canada there are lots of questions about doing it in an Electric Vehicle (EV) I will try to answer some of them for you.

Driving in an EV across Canada reminds me of the planning that goes into a boat trip up the coast. How much fuel do we have, what is the rate of consumption, can we get to our destination, or is there a fuel dock on the way?

Part of our trip is finding and using Charging Stations and there is an app for that, actually a bunch of them, some used for route planning, and some for accessing a charging network. In BC we mostly use the BC Hydro charging stations, in Alberta we mostly used the Flo charging stations and in Saskatchewan we are mostly using the Co-op Connect charging stations.

Long Story: There are 3 types of charging stations:

        Level 1 (120-volt AC) delivering 1.3 to 2,4 kW or about 6 – 8 km an hour, 

        Level 2 (240-volt AC) 7.4 kW or about 30 km an hour,

        Level 3 DC 50 kW to 150 kW at 50 kW about 278 km an hour.

The problem with the above information is that the distance you can go will also depend on the weather, your driving habits, the speed you are travelling, how much you use the air conditioning or heater, if you are going uphill. Also, the rate of power an EV gets when charging depends on how full the battery is. If you start with a near empty battery it will charge near the maximum rate that the car will accept, as it fills up the charge rate slows down to a trickle when the battery is almost full. Our Kona starts lowering the rate of charge at approximately 73%. 

Short Story: Where’s the next charging station?

Janet and I talk about where we would like to go and plan a route based on where the charging stations are, what type of station Level 1,2, or 3 and the distance between them using either PlugShare or ABRP route planning apps.  Then we’re on our way!

2,000 km and still in Alberta!

 

We have some catching up to do!

Day 8 - 

We washed the dust off the car from our Plains adventures yesterday - in a real live car wash!  Mint Car Wash in Lethbridge had a real live person come to our window, take our money and send us in, where a young person was standing holding a paddle reading ‘Stop’ and he ushered us onto the rails and got us rolling.  Wow, I almost went back through the car wash just to get pictures.  Reminded me of the car wash at 41st and Granville when I was a kid - we would get out of the car and stand behind a window and watch the car go through the cycle.  Guess they didn’t trust us not to open the windows 😂

It’s Mother’s Day, 1st in 44 years I haven’t been with my children.  

We headed south from Lethbridge for a day trip to Aisinai’pi / Writing-On-Stone, another UNESCO protected site.  We stepped out of our car and were immediately greeted by Laura and Dustin asking if we were there for the tour.  Tour?  Yes - of course we were!

We had a 2 hour tour through some of the most beautiful and peaceful places on Earth with 3 guides; Laura (Naturalist) led the group, very knowledgeable and a great story teller; Blair was our Blackfoot Interpreter who, with his knowledge of his heritage, brought us closer to the customs and traditions of the Plains people; and Dustin (Archaeologist ) provided with what all the information that archaeologists do.  It was interesting having each of their perspectives because the petroglyphs (carved) and pictographs (painted) are over a huge period of time and the style reflects that.  More recent ‘carvings’ are only considered graffiti after 1957, otherwise they are part of the story - it will never cease to amaze what moves people to add their name and date to something as sacred as this space.  

The Milk River runs through the area surrounded by hoodoos, coulees and grasslands.  The entire area holds great cultural and spiritual significance for the Blackfoot people who regularly camped in the Milk River Valley as long at 3,500 years ago.  We were surrounded by knowledge, history, and most importantly to us - spirituality.  The stories in the pictographs were interesting to me because they didn’t record things like hunting (buffalo-jump) or gathering, they seemed more about power, battles and horse raids with pictures of shields and animals.  And some represent visions of Spirit Beings and spirituality.  

Laura told us the story of Napi, the trickster, who gave his buffalo hide to Rock when he was too warm, and then took it back.  It is a wonderful story, told eloquently by Laura, but too long to repeat here, but a few highlights involved how the beaver came to have a flat tail, how the bat came to have a pushed in face, and how the ‘erratic’ in Okotokos came to be there.  Archaeologists will tell you it was carried there by a glacier, but the Blackfoot tell a very different story involving Napi, the trickster.  You will have your own interpretation of the story when you get there.

The Northwest Mounted Police outpost certainly put a different perspective on things.  The NWMP force was formed in 1873 to give the NWT a government presence, to ensure a lawful region for European settlers and to stop the liquor trade which was devasting the First Nations People.  The thought was that the trafficking of liquor would be easily enabled in the area of Aisinai’pi because of the coulees, easy and sheltered passage from the US; but instead the NWMP spent most of their time on tedious tasks of fighting prairies fires, herding American-owned cattle back across the border, and riding long patrols along the boundary.  Many of the bored Mounties deserted, some busied themselves with carving their names into the sandstone rocks and using the cliffs as target practice.  

We shared an intimate few minutes with two mating Bull Snakes outside the interpretation centre - they are constrictors, the only constrictors in Canada.  These guys are huge, one of the largest/longest snakes of North America, reaching lengths of up to 8 ft., they’re yellow and spotted.  

I certainly could use another few days with Laura the Naturalist, that’s for sure - so many

Day 9 - 

Taber:   We left Lethbridge with a pretty full charge and headed east toward Medicine Hat - but not without a stop at Taber, Alberta!  We wanted to top up our charge and drop into the Taber Irrigation Impact Museum, we were curious how these miles and miles of farmland for as far as you can see got their water, and Brenda at the museum had all the answers!  

It all began with Tank 77, (located 77 miles along the CPR track from Dunmore to Taber).  The tank fed the steam engines that carried coal mined at Coal Banks (Lethbridge) to Medicine Hat..  

It became apparent that the millions of acres of grassland could be used to grow crops and Alberta Rail and Coal Co. were to sell the land for a good price it would need to be irrigated.

A call was put out to the L.D.S. Church headquarters in Utah offering the 30,000 acres of land at a cost of $1.00 per acre if they would come to Alberta and build an irrigation system.  Pioneering families flocked to Alberta, and that’s how Taber got its name - the Mormon settlers suggested the place be called “Tabernacle”, and Taber it was!  As series of irrigation canals were built and farmers book their day(s) to water and the taps come on, rain or shine.  There is a great relief map of the whole system in the Taber Irrigation Impact Museum.

Brenda tells us that Taber is the Corn Capital of Canada - a claim to fame they will have to duke out with Chilliwack!  

The pioneers did well: 

* Taber is: 

- the largest producer of Beet Sugar refined by Rogers Sugar, still the largest employer in the area

- provides the potatoes for McCain, Frito-Lay etc, McCain still has their plant there

- home of Lucerne (which I thought was dairy?  Another Question!)

- Spitz sunflower seeds 

- Westons

- EV charging station at the Museum!

Brenda directed us to visit the Coulees in her favourite park along the Oldman River, where we picnicked in a huge stand of cottonwood.  

Medicine Hat:  Back in the car and on to Medicine Hat, which we loved so much we stayed for three full days!  

Not much open today because it is Monday, and like a lot of towns where the shops are owner operated, they enjoy 2 days off in a row, but lots of good window shopping and the commitment to spend the day in town tomorrow.  There are lots of wonderful murals and a really cool park beside the courthouse that has a giant chess set noted in the Guinness World Records in 2009 as the largest chess set board.  It was sponsored by various community groups, including Rotary of course!  And a wonderful Rotary ping pong table as well.  And no graffiti!  Across the street is the Esplanade Centre with a statue honouring the Germans from Russia and all the Pioneer Settlers in Western Canada.

The day was hot, and the shade welcome with a breeze coming up off the South Saskatchewan River. 

We booked into the Medicine Hat Villa, a wonderful boutique hotel right in the heart of the city, we can plug into the trickle charge and spend the day walking everywhere.

Day 10 - 

As promised, we’re staying downtown Medicine Hat today and exploring, especially River Bee Books, the new independent bookstore in town. Bridget and her husband have put together and lovely space in Railway Ave. and she sold out over 1/2 her stock in the first week! Guess Medicine Hat was ready for a bookstore!  Bridget’s yoga teacher was kind enough to give me a lesson on “tagging”, Instagram and a few other unfamiliar things which I hope I will remember!  I would love to get all of these independent bookstores linked …. 

We explored a fully loaded, elegant kitchen store called Sunday Dinner, had coffee and a scone at  The Station where the owner ?Jake gave us all sorts of information on what to do in Medicine Hat, and a lesson in Disc Golf!  While we were having dinner at the “Local” we watched a large team of mostly male youth all wearing blue t-shirts with a yellow logo picking up litter - it is a skateboarding club and they do a downtown cleanup once a year.  Very Cool.  And who knew skateboarders had clubs!

We visited the century old Medalta Potteries (Med being Medicine Hat, Alta being Alberta), in the Historic Clay District where pieces were produced that everyone of us would recognize, Centennial pieces, cowboy hat ashtrays, familiar dinner ware and of course the Medalta bowl, I have the one my mother used to make bread every week (and my cat Sweetie Pie later slept in when it lived on top of my fridge!).  There are 3 huge brick urns on the site, which now serves as a museum, and also site of a contemporary ceramic arts residency program.

We wrapped up the day with a real treat - pedicures by Hailey and Morgan.  This was Roger’s 1st and definitely the best! 

The smoke is beginning to roll in from the forest fires and our family in Hay River are packed and ready to go on a minute’s notice, and in the meantime they’re watering down their house. 

I was thinking this blog would take us out of Alberta but there are still things we want to see and do before heading to Saskatchewan so we’ve decided to stay an extra day.