Day 2 - Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba

Sunday May 10, 2009

Prairieland

An interesting thing about train travel is that when you wake up, you don’t know where you are. Assuming the train was on schedule we may have been near the Alberta / Saskatchewan border or right into Saskatchewan when we got up, which would have been at 5:30 am at the latest. So, you really don’t see much of Alberta on this trip!

This wasn’t the Saskatchewan prairieland I remember as a kid on family driving holidays. Back then we would drive across dead-flat, dry land and see nothing but grain elevators on the horizon which took hours and hours to reach. It was an excruciating wait to reach the next grain elevator where I always hoped there would be a town with a restaurant. But we were probably south of this rail route, and it was summer during those trips. I hadn't been through the prairies since I was 15 so I looked forward to this part of the trip through 'big sky country.'

Later in the season the fields might be covered with wheat or canola or whatever they are growing these days, but in early May most of the route through Saskatchewan looked fairly colourless with fields of grey and tan, and leafless black-trunked trees. Mile after mile.

When I was a kid I thought Saskatchewan had no water, so it sure came as a surprise to pass countless ponds and marshes pretty much through the entire province. Not only that but they were alive with ducks and geese. We saw a few hawks too. A fellow train passenger said that the ponds are from snowmelt and would mostly disappear later.

We had bacon, eggs and toast for breakfast. No lunch. The meal at lunch is as big as the one at supper so we soon learned to just grab a mid-day snack from the dome car.

Stops were at Saskatoon in the morning and Melville in the afternoon. Saskatoon train station area was bleak and neglected-looking but it's always nice to get out and stretch your legs. Sunny but cool. I watched water being drained out of each car. Melville, as with other stops along the way, had an older station that had been boarded up.

The train's service manager talked for quite a while in the dome car and told us that half the Via Rail budget had been cut by Prime Minister Mulroney. It's too bad that many of the older stations were replaced with newer, less interesting ones.

At the Saskatoon station

Old Melville station

We saw a coyote and a small herd of buffalo somewhere.

Nearing (or in) Manitoba we saw great mounds of potash. I realized I didn't know what potash is. We were told that it is used in fertilizer and China buys a lot of it. Once into Manitoba the terrain changed and we started seeing slight changes in elevation.

Potash (& marshes)

Qu'Appelle Valley

There is a Cree legend that goes along with the Qu'Appelle Valley. I’ve read many variations but it goes along lines of a brave who went by canoe to visit his sweetheart in another village. Paddling along he heard a faint call of his name. “Who calls?” he asked but only heard his echo in reply. Later when he reaches his sweetheart’s home, he learns that she died the night before. It was her voice he heard calling his name. Since French was the common language of the fur trade, the Cree word for “who calls” became "Qu'Appelle".

For supper Glenn had roast beef and I had chicken in port wine sauce with sun dried tomatoes. Both with mashed potatoes and carrots. We sat with the father and daughter from the interior of BC again.

I wonder what this little broom was for?

Winnipeg

Nearing Winnipeg we passed through a residential section of Portage la Prairie, hometown of my Dad. Here is a little trivia from the net:

• The name is derived from the French word portage, which means to carry a canoe overland between waterways. In this case the "portage" was between the Assiniboine River and Lake Manitoba, over the prairie.
• According to Environment Canada, Portage la Prairie has the most sunny days in warm months in Canada.

I missed the nicer shot of the rowing club on the river.

Winnipeg is where most of my family was from and some still are. I figured we would have a lot of time off the train with a three or four hour stop and thought I might phone an aunt and uncle in town. But we were held up getting off the train until sometime after 8:30 pm. We had to be back on the train within 45 minutes or wait an hour longer to reboard. The station is right by The Forks, and area of shops, restaurants and a riverside park so named because this is where the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet. Since it was a Sunday night and Mother's Day, there wasn't much open so we raced around and got back on the train within three quarters of an hour.

Winnipeg suffered another big flood this year. We were told we wouldn't see much evidence of it as most of it happened on the other side of town. The flood of 1950, which caused the largest evacuation in Canadian history, was the reason my parents left Winnipeg and moved to Victoria.

At The Forks

At least we found a caboose! You don't see them on working trains any more. What on earth do kids nowadays wave at on driving trips?