June 11, 2014

After a week’s break, getting back in the saddle requires some determination particularly when the road ahead lacks in the excitement department. I am heading into the Canadian Shield, which many people find very beautiful so I assume exciting, but I confess my ambivalence. I used to take the bus from southwestern Ontario to university which ran along the route I’m cycling now. I recall scenic sections around Lake Superior but the towns are so far apart and the Shield goes on and on. It will probably take me a couple of weeks to traverse.

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June 6-10, 2014

The second morning of my Winnipeg break I found myself humming the tune to The Finches’ “Goettingen, Du”. The lyrics a little jumbled in my head, it was as if my subconscience was seeking for a way to express the feeling of returning to a place of significance in my history, sort of a sympathetic vibration. The song touches on the longing for returning home, which applies to some extent, but it’s the reference to returning to a place from the past in the first stanza that got me humming. Read more

June 5, 2014

It has been about half a dozen years since my university days in Winnipeg but how quickly the memories return. Places forgotten or just covered over by the rest of life evoke people and events as if from yesterday though in an alternate universe. The relationship to our own recollections is a queer one. They feel so immediate but the me remembering is so much more, less, different…maybe another altogether. Read more

June 4, 2014

As I push further east, the French influences and settlements are becoming more apparent with names like Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes, Portage La Prairie, or St Claude. Officially Canada is bilingual but the frequency of bilingual signs noticeably increased the last few days. French Catholic and later French Métis communities were very important to what became the province of Manitoba. Louis Riel, rebel, politician, and founder of the province, being the most obvious example. The noticeably change in signage wasn’t in official road signs alone but local advertising and information. Coming into St Claude the sign for a dairy museum especially intrigued me. As in many other cases, it opens later in the season. My compensation for turning off the highway was another town statue attempting to encapsulate the local history. St Claude harkens back to a town of the same name in France known for producing tobacco pipes. A web search suggests the original St Claude has their own pipe statue, maybe more appropriately so. There was no indication St Claude, MB ever followed in the profession of its namesake. I didn’t have a chance to talk to any locals so not sure how bilingual the people were; the bilingual signage on everything from schools to stop signs could have been either an indictment or reflection of local culture.

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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.

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