June 3, 2014
On my first encounter with the prairies, it seemed a despondent and lonely place as far as I could tell. With so much space and apparent emptiness between everything, I could only imagine everyone longingly looking towards the city for comfort, connection, and belonging. I came to the prairies for university and so my first time on my own. A good deal of my perceptions were most definitely good old transference. Nevertheless, I required a few years to appreciate the beauty and vitality where I thought none could exist. No longer did it seem self evident or even likely that people in the prairies would feel any yearning for the city.
I left the prairies with new eyes for its beauty and on this trip too I continued to be taken in by the landscapes and people that flow past. For example, approaching Souris, a small town with paved streets and well kepts lawns, you see the church tower breaking through the trees from a distance; turn off the highway and pass through town you come to a tranquil river flowing through Victoria park. To all appearances a content and nurturing place, children walk or bike to school alone or in groups without parents hovering nearby to insure their safety. I stopped to take a picture of their swinging bridge, reportedly Canada’s longest, and a bunch of boys with school bags were idly chatting and playing their little games, not particularly concerned about getting to their destinination. I was reminded of our own dawdling especially by the creek when my family lived in a small village in Ontario. You don’t see kids going to school on their own in the city. Equally bucolic was the village of Wawanesa where I took my lunch break. Hidden in a valley from the highway, I was wary about whether the detour would afford me lunch or a climb back to the highway on an empty stomach. I found a surprisingly delicious British/Canadian fish and chips place, well delicious for being so far from the sea. The cook and apparent over was British by his accent.
The Red Coat Trail is littered with various curios of the variety I’m after. Today I encountered a few of them like Sara the camel in Glenboro and the swinging bridge already mentioned and the town of Holland and it’s windmill. The last one seems a little obvious but for the fact that the town is named for an early settler and postmaster Frank Holland and not the European region!
Road Report: 133km
Without a shoulder, you have to hit the gravel on occasion to let trucks pass but otherwise acceptable. This is Manitoba after all and notoriously skimpy on highway shoulders as every cyclists who has passed will tell you.