Canadian Disconnect

Roncesvallles, or déjà vu all over again…part duex Eight years ago when we walked the Camino of Santiago we trIed to get to St. Jean Pied de Port in Spain, but through a vast series of circumstances/karma we never made it there…we started our journey where we were supposed to start…in Roncesvalles….Part Duex is that we are now in Flin Flon, Manitoba for another night rather than going to Thompson, our original destination. And again it seems that this is how it was supposed to be. It was planned as a 4 day road trip starting in Saskatoon to Flin Flon, to Thompson, and then two days to go down to Winnipeg, but………..after checking out of the hotel, I got turned around and had to go to another gas station much further away…while paying my bill and talking to the owner about young people staying/leaving such a remote place as Flin Flon, a man chimed in and asked where I was from: I caught your accent,” he said….The nerve of these Canadians…saying we have an accent… After pleasantries he asked where we were going and responded “Why?” to my answer…We’d heard this before about Regina, so we had a tendency to ignore it and say, “Well, we’ll find out.”…but further discussion and confirmation from lots of different sources indicated that we had better options…We were warned by many people, Anglos and Native first nation people who said you don’t go out at night, that all the stores have bars on their windows and there’s nothing to see except rock…. I try not to give into the “fear factor” in traveling…I adhere to the theory that nothing bad ever happens to me when I travel…just things I didn’t expect. But, in truth I wanted to go there because it was basically the end of the line here in Manitoba…you can fly or take the train to Churchill to see the Polar bears, but that’s a VERY high-end ticket, and besides, it ain’t snowing yet…the bears are elsewhere. So it also seemed stupid to go somewhere just because I picked it on the map…Carol will go anywhere with me, just as I will with her, so she had no objection, and willingly was into seeing what we would find. So, Greg, our naysayer told us to come to the “Orange Toad,” the local be-all, end-all for coffee buffs in Flin Flon and it indeed was a booming place…more or less the morning watering hole for lots of the 5,000 denizens of this border town with Saskatchewan. It’s called Northern Manitoba, and it certainly feels northern, but in truth, it is only half way. Greg knows everybody….he’s the town crier, booster, entrepreneur, and general font of local knowledge…without prejudice, he told others at the OT of our plans, and they all shook their heads in a disapproving manner or rolled their eyes, or just said: “Don’t go, it’s not a nice place.”…Others gave the same sentiment by saying things like: “Don’t go out after dark.”…. it is a frontier town in all sense of the words…it is the end of the line for the road, which is why I wanted to go, but it is so isolated that there’s very little to do in a positive manner. It is populated by first nation tribesmen who have too much money (government stipends) no work, too much alcohol, and people with an ax to grind…. With this knowledge we went to the local first nations tribal center, and they basically confirmed everything we had heard…..so these are the facts…now we get into the real dicey part…WHY?....and in all such instances…it’s complicated…leave it to say that there is enough blame, animosity, ill-will, and general tension between the first nations peoples and the European settlers to satisfy anyone’s desire for bad feelings…Whites are bitter that the natives get money for doing nothing, so why should they work….natives feel that they’re stuck on reserves with little incentive to improve and their heritage and lifestyle was taken from them… My Canadian friends will have a much better handle on all this of course, but every time I go to Canada, I am confronted with the same dilemma in the social structure of Canadian society…I asked several individuals whether there was a difference in attitudes toward the problem in the population centers like Calgary or Saskatoon as opposed to the areas where the problem is closer to hand…they all said yes…City dwellers see it as an intellectual problem, whereas those who live more closely with the situation see it up close and personal….It would take far more time than I have to really sort this all out in my mind, and I present it here, only in the spirit of telling you what I see….with no bias in any direction. But, in the end, we decided not to go….Greg had a friend who had a wonderful lodge overlooking a beautiful lake…I posted a photo on my facebook page….it was so incredibly picturesque and everything that Canadian scenery was all about….it’s so easy to see these kinds of places and forget the problems that I wrote about in the early part of this letter….He invited us over to his place for dinner and we had a wonderful evening talking and discussing many of the subjects that are very touchy to Canadians…social structure of Canada….Quebec separatists….vis-a-vis the U.S….it was a very informative and interesting evening….we were glad that we’d stayed the extra night and had the opportunity to meet Greg and his wife Jan….I want to add that Jan is a retired social worker and Greg has an adopted first-nations brother who is mentally challenged…so we’re not talking some red-neck lumber guy with an agenda…they are very open and accepting people…it just shows the depth of the problem. Flin Flon itself was an amazing town of 5,000 people…it’s a mining town…nickel, zinc and now some gold…but it sits on what is known as the Canadian shield…the area where mother earth burped and left her deposits directly on the earth’s surface…the town basically sits on one huge pre-cambrian rock. To build the town, they had to dynamite the area so they could build on it…still water and sewer pipes run on the surface since it is impossible to get them underground….they have several pumping/heating plants in the city where the water is heated and continually circulated through the pipes because the winter temps get to -50 degrees…take your pick, Fahrenheit or Celsius…it’s just plain cold…We went to the hockey arena because, as you might guess, this is a hockey-mad town…and women were walking around the ice rink on the inside of the building…it was warmer in the building than outside. I missed a game by one day…drats…I love hockey and many BIG names were Flin Flon Bombers early in their careers…Bobby Clarke, Cam Neely to name a couple. I had a very cool flash back when I was here…we went a round-about way to get from point A to point B….we wound up by this lake (what else?) and there were float planes being loaded with supplies…I flashed on the time when my two drinking buddies, Duane and Bob, and I hatched a plan to go fishing in Alaska via float plane….and here’s the deal…I had just gotten my pilots license and it was decided that I would learn how to do float plane and we’d go do some more wild stuff….Obviously, it never happened, because if it had, I wouldn’t writing this…I’d have flown us in to some fog-shrouded mountain and we’d all have been killed…No Carol, No Marta, No Janet….I talked to the pilot who was from Belgium and there are all kinds high end hunting and fishing back in the real boonies that the big dogs fly into all year long…. Every time I had the opportunity, I asked people about the Thompson question, and were told over and over the same sentiments…”Don’t go there.”….So, instead we sat on our balcony….watched eagles soar, saw the beaver lodge under construction, watched the sun set and rise over the lake and simply had a wonderful extra day…It felt a little weird…as if I was just turning a blind eye to real life in favor of the beauty of Canada….my mind just does that….. Being in the hotel was a little strange…we were given the key to the front door by the owner…told where to get our room key and feel at home…there was nobody else in the hotel…I felt a little like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining,” as I wandered through the kitchen and lounge areas….nary a soul was to be seen….Luckily I was with Carol and not Shelley Duvall, so I kept what’s left of my sanity. Greg and Jan are going to become Servas Hosts and so we felt that we had made some very good connections, and as Carol continually reminds me…things work out as they are supposed to….it’s always been a hard concept for my Gillett mind to wrap around…but I’m always trying But now comes the rub…We arrived in Winnipeg and met a lady at an information booth in a mall and had a long conversation with her about Thompson…she just scoffed at the naysayers…she has a daughter who lives there, her grandsons go out at night and play hockey and she said it’s a very interesting place…..so once again I am confronted by the limited amount of real understanding I can gain about the places I visit in the short time I am traveling in/through them….I am totally dependent upon the people I meet, the experiences I have, and the conditions that exist in a given place at a given moment…I never try to state things as fact, I only try to record my experiences and how they play inside my head…. I’m not unhappy we didn’t go to Thompson…thoughts keep rolling through my brain which say…”this happened because for whatever reason you weren’t supposed to go.” We had a different experience with Greg and Jan, one that we wouldn’t have had if we’d gone to Thompson…but I’m again bedeviled by how much perceptions can differ when looking at the same situation…How could so many people of different persuasions….Anglo, First nation natives, women, men, young and old…see things so negatively if the truth of the matter was otherwise… I try really hard to discover the nature of the places I visit…but I’m often made painfully aware of the fact that, in the end, I know nothing. It’s a humbling experience, but I will keep asking questions, searching for answers, observing my surroundings, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get a picture of a very small piece of a very big puzzle.

The road best traveled

Traveling has always been an intensely personal journey for me…I guess since I started so young, it just became who I am…but again on this trip, I’m struck by how much more value my trips have because I travel with Carol…she adds to, and never detracts from, the trips we take together…I see things I’d otherwise miss, I have a good friend to talk to, to experience, and with whom to share the things I do see…her artists eye has been the lens through which the photos of our trips become our lasting visual. She’s always been my best friend, and again I’m reminded how she is my best travel companion…. When figuring out our route from Calgary eastward, we told several people that we wanted to head to Regina, the capital of Sask…..their reaction was similar in many cases: “Why?”…….. Well, because we want to see it…that’s why?....As you can tell, it has the rep of not being a very interesting place to visit…and that may be generally true in terms of big city interests…Calgary and Edmonton have about a million apiece, whereas Regina is sitting on about 250,000….But in fact, it is a charming city…full of graceful old buildings and lovely lakes, and it seemed a very genteel city, quite in contrast to the hubbub and quick pace of Edmonton and Calgary. The main street into town is a delight of old style houses representing many different architectural styles….One of the houses was used in the movie “Just Friends,”…. Apparently Hollywood does a lot of filming here. Reginans (?) are very proud of their city in a way we didn’t ever feel in Calgary or in Edmonton…..Mostly they seemed places where they happen to live…they’d lived in several cities, and this was either the latest one, or the last one…depending. Reginans, on the other hand really love their city….mind you, I talking from the vast experience of some very limited time in any of the cities we’ve been….but I think that we all form impressions of our travels, with truth or fiction…who knows? Everything just seemed to move at a slower pace in Regina….the Albertan cities feel “business”-like…lots of trendy shops and eateries everywhere…lots of different tongues…They were “suit” cities…get it done cities…But Regina was a sit in the park and watch the geese in the pond city. We talked to one couple who were doing just that….she told us that the geese that didn’t fly south were airlifted out…looked that up, but couldn’t find anything…she sounded very authoritative on the matter however. Although we were advised to miss Regina…it was often with the following statement: “Spend more time in Saskatoon.” It has a reputation of being a lively, active city with a spirit to it….The vast majority of that, we think, comes from the University of Saskatchewan….The beginning of the academic year had just begun and as Carol said: “The students are swarming.”…..the streets were alive with activity…there seemed to be a real counter-culture atmosphere downtown…but I didn’t get a chance to explore that aspect as much as I would have liked. We found a little house that had 5 rooms with a shared bath…but they charged extra for wireless and parking…screw that….hopped over a little concrete wall and went to the place next door….postage-stamp- sized room…still shared bath but free parking and internet….give me wi-fi in my room and I’ll put up with a lot of shit…. Turned out to be a good move…right across the street from the University, we really felt the energy of the area…the next day, we spent the morning just walking around – checked out a couple galleries, talked to several students, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves….It had been a long time since we’d felt the energy of a setting like this. In addition, discovered how small a world it is, or how big the karmic connections are in life…choose one of the above…but while Saskatoon has always been on my list of places to visit…I mean, how can you not like a place named: “Saskatoon..” it’s a pretty cool name…but the deciding factor was that the brother-in-law of my old California buddy, Duane has a gourmet Peruvian restaurant just north of town…Very upscale, very busy…no walk-ins…reservation only…and this was to be our big splurge dinner- wise…turns out he was closed the two days we were there so we missed seeing Marta’s brother..it would have been very cool…But at the place we decided to stay Carol was talking to the owner, a Venezuelan , and it turns out that he is a friend of the restauranteur, and his first job in Saskatoon was at that restaurant…Nelson was called, but he was ill, so we still missed out, but it was pretty trippy. We also visited the Ukrainian museum which was fascinating….saw the whole assimilation process…both with fits and starts and setbacks (They were interned during WWI and had their land confiscated as did the Japanese in the U.S during the next big international power grab…sadly not the last one. Anyway, Carol was enthralled by the fashion displays, clothing, rugs, and the like..the collection of Pysanka…the painted eggs…..talked at length with a Ukrainian woman who has only been here 7 years….fascinating histories all the way around. People in Canada are very friendly and engaging ….like to converse and never seem to get offended when I ask my semi-invasive questions….you learn when to pursue a topic and when to back off…but if you don’t open the door then you never find stuff out and you just look at things….I still don’t know much about Canadians…but I know a lot about a few Canadians…that’s all I’ll claim.

A town by any other name

I love Canadian names for their towns…they are so descriptive even if I don’t understand the origin…we passed through Medicine Hat, Swift Current, Moose Jaw, and I had to bypass “Old Wives,” a small town here in Saskatchewan….it was one of those situations that was rife for problems…so the best thing to do was to press down on the accelerator and “Don’t say anything Jim…keep your smart-ass mouth shut.”….sometimes I can actually remember to do this before I speak instead of afterwards. There were so many possibilities with a town named “Old Wives”…it was just so easy. All of them would have been fun for the moment, but then there would have been hell to pay. I’m sure you can come up with your own responses if you were to see the name of the town on the mileage post. We also passed the town of “Findlater,”…but I think maybe I won’t. To get here, we headed out of Calgary and went to a fascinating area where many of the world’s great Jurassic discoveries were made…A town named Drumheller with the world’s largest Dinosaur marking the tourist information outpost…and did I mention gift shop selling everything imaginable with dinosaurs on them….key chains, baby bibs, rubber pteredactyls, fuzzy claw foot slippers and other things which I didn’t even want to look at. We did get good information from the gal at the desk, so it was worth the marketing ploys. The Royal Tyrell museum is one of the most complete and well organized museum on dinosaurs and Precambrian (I think) period fossils…very interesting, and I wished my grandsons were here to enjoy it with me…..They, like a lot of boys, are very big on this stuff…of course, I’d have probably never have gotten them past the fuzzy claw foot thingies without forking over some foreign exchange. We stayed the night at Medicine Hat with the world’s largest Teepee….getting the picture here?....Alberta is “Big” on big…we have, in addition to the aforementioned items, the world’s largest Easter egg…the world’s largest bone, the world’s largest “loonie” (the $2 coin) and others “World’s biggest” that I mercifully passed without seeing or knowing about. The only way we could get to Regina from Medicine Hat was to start on the Trans Canada highway…which is a great road with the exception that it is utterly boring….long straight stretches, so flat here on the prairie that you could shoot a laser down the center line and it would stay true to its line and height….How Flat is it: “I can see Russia from here.”….okay, that’s a bit of a stretch, but one should never miss a chance to rag on Sarah Palin…I passed on the “Old Wives,” and there is a limit to how much I can be silent about. The Trans Canada was really not what we were looking for, as we prefer the small roads and out of the way places…yes, Mom, I found some more “black” roads. We cut south a little and it made a tremendous difference…no longer straight no longer flat…just 20 miles south we were in twisty rolling hills for over 100 miles….it was a mixture of wheat fields and cattle grazing….the land having so many dips and hollows allowed water to gather at the low spots, and we were amazed at how many there were and the size of them…I found an old farmer working the irrigation line on his ATV and pulled over…we had a great conversation and I learned much about how things work…he’s only got 500 acres left that he works, since he is 72 and walking on two artificial ankles….I didn’t even know they did that…knees, hips, yes…but ankles? Anyway, found out that his water table is just 6 feet below the surface, and that he pumps 85 gallons a minute from that….below that it is solid granite…so that’s why even now at the end of the summer, the ponds still have a lot of water in them…it’s got nowhere to go. Saw another farmer working on his combine, so I pulled over and went over to him…we talked about 20 minutes on farming in Saskatchewan…turns out he’s just really small potatoes, or wheat, since he farms 1,000 acres of organic wheat…..one “family” farm totally owned and run by one family has 48,000 acres ….almost 20,000 hectares for those using that measurement…. He told me that the Chinese were buying up Canadian farm land at a rapid rate, and there is some concern that Canada is losing its farmland to food-hungry China, and that they may not have total control over their land…. Another farmer told me that the Hutterite colonies are expanding rapidly as well….it used to be that they didn’t have a colony closer than 25 miles to another Hutterite colony, but now, it’s down to 5 miles apart…..it was really fascinating to talk to the two men and it gave me a much better understanding and appreciation for what we are seeing mile after mile after mile. If you get confused as to which direction you are traveling, just look up at this time of the year…the geese are all getting out of Dodge in a hurry, and the flocks are becoming more prevalent and larger each day…They’re all literally headed to greener pastures….south. All along the way, if you see trees, you know there is a house there, and they really do need windbreaks…this is productive farmland and not designed for beautification projects…this Prairie farming is the real deal….The combines and harvesters work day and night…the man with 1,000 acres says that it takes him a full two weeks to harvest….the machinery looks like something right out of the “Tholian Web,” for us trekkies. They cross and weave their way around the land leaving clear and distinct markers of where they’ve been and where they’re headed…fascinating to be here at this time of the year…yesterday it was 88 degrees, and for once, the farmers aren’t bitching about the weather…the extra warmth has extended the harvest and taken the stress out of trying to get it all done before the weather gets nasty. We passed the “Riskan Hope Farm” down by the road aptly named “Elevator Alley.” All along the prairies, the grain silos/elevators have been getting more frequent, the clusters have more silos in them, and the size of the silos has been getting taller….now we’re into industrial grade grain elevators, and now into the real grain country…Wheat, barley, oats, canola and who knows what…Many people told us that it would be extremely boring, but we haven’t found it so…quite the opposite…the land has a beauty of its own…okay, it’s not Banff or Jasper, but it doesn’t need to be…it is what it’s supposed to be…the prairies. Stay safe everybody, and always remember to live large…we are. Carol and Jim

The Whiddens of Calgary

Things are getting very different, very quickly…the mountains are behind us now, and the flat of the eastern side of the Rockies has begun…just as you drop down into Denver and from there east it becomes the flat plains of the U.S. so here, the prairie provinces begin to take on their character…. It’s harvest time on the prairie…large, strange looking machines work the land….cutting, raking, baling the different crops….Huge round bales of hay and alfalfa sit like fat checkers sitting on their sides in the extensive fields….rows of plants for canola oil dry In rows waiting to be swooped up and separated by large combines…..the wheat is tall now, has turned golden. and dances in the wind waiting for just that moment for harvest. The late summer skies are filled with clouds which blow in off the Rockies and scatter themselves across the landscape in a continually changing array of white puffs….The shadows of the clouds slowly work their way from hay section to hay section. At one point some creative farmer began to put hats on fence posts…mostly baseball caps, but others of all styles from fedoras, to cowboy hats, to some that got left behind by the red hat ladies…they now string every 8 feet for over 2 miles, and add to the interesting drive. “The wind comes sweeping o’er the plains,” as Rogers and Hammerstein tell us, and they have put up the wind turbines to harvest that aspect of life here on the edge of the prairie….all this has just been a primer for what is to come because we will hit the heart of it in the next few days…everybody tells us to be prepared for boring mile after mile of wheat and crops..but this is what we’ve come to see, so we await that with anticipation, just as we did the mountains. We’re staying with another wonderful Servas family, the Whiddens here in Calgary…it has been a really nice fit for us here…John is an elementary school teacher in a very diverse school…there are 26 languages spoken in the homes of the students in his school. He’s taught everything from kindergarten to 7th grade. He has a quiet demeanor which is very becoming and he and I had great conversations about a lot of different topics…He is very patient and even when the his teen-age daughters are bickering. He keeps his cool and just finds non-confrontational ways to solve the issue..His kids adore him, and he takes time to be with them from playing volleyball with them in the street , to reading to them as he has all their lives…it’s a nightly ritual, even when there are strangers in the house. Colleen is the family busy-bee…she’s a university professor of music at the University of Calgary and has done musical productions at the university, as well as community choral productions…It’s a family affair…the girls sing in the productions…John played Nanki Poo in the Mikado. . She’s flits here and there with auditions and rehersals and she has an exuberance about her that is infectious, and I know her students would follow her over a cliff if she asked them to.

Aleida, 15, is quiet and beautiful, and has a very calm demeanor. She doesn’t say much, but she reminds me of my friend in Uzbekiistan, Nigora, who also has a lot more going on inside than she lets out. But she’s quick on the uptake and can hold her own in repartee with anyone, even an old man from the south. However, Twyla who is 13, is the pistol of the family, and reminds Carol and me so much of why we enjoyed teaching middle school. She’s Kim Genschmer all over again, and that’s not a bad thing to be, certainly. She is bright ,energetic, full of life and herself…all a joyful combination of the exuberance of life. Last night’s entertainment was a visit to the Goodwill Store…Twyla found a wedding dress that she “Just had” to have…half price, at $35 dollars…she had the money..John and Colleen just shrugged their shoulders and let it be…We were regaled by the fashion show upon returning to the house…Twyla, so tiny, with this huge wedding dress with long train….Carol helped her see the loop which helped hold the train up while the bride dances. She also brought out another dress that she had bought previously for her princess costume for Halloween… We’ve been invited to stay another day with them and will gladly accept to be a part of their lives a little bit longer….Servas people are so open and generous…we look forward to meeting more families on our trek across this vast and beautiful land. John and Colleen have given the girls a wonderful jump-start on life by taking them on world tours of 4 months each over the past three years…to Europe, S.E. Asia, and to the Middle East…they took time off work to do this for the girls, and traveled by the “chicken bus” across the lands, giving the girls a true picture of life in these countries as lived by real people, not just the movers and shakers of society…I admire them greatly for what seeds that they have planted in their daughters….they are amazing young ladies…so mature and will do so well in life because their parents have given them a gift that will remain with them always. Twyla was just 11 when they made their first odyssey. Yesterday we went to the “head-smashed-in buffalo jump.” It is the area where the “first nations” (native populations) drove buffalo over a cliff where they would harvest the animals. For my friends overseas who don’t understand the importance of the buffalo to the native tribes of North America, the buffalo was the lifeblood of their society providing meat, clothing, shelter…all aspects of their lives were dependent upon the presence of the buffalo…many theories contend that the tribes of the American west were never defeated militarily as much as they were starved into submission by the killing of the buffalo herds which deprived them of their way of life. Anyway, it was very well presented, with indigenous people explaining the process and a well-done video presentation…Fort Macloed also gave us a picture of early life on the prairie….as the North West Mounted police (eventually the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) took control of the land in a much more peaceful manner than the blue coats to the south… Calgary was a far more cosmopolitan setting than I expected….lots of new skyscrapers going up (can you say oil money?) with some very interesting and unique architecture…lots of languages being spoken on the street, and a feeling of vibrancy. Carol says it isn’t just the famous “Stampede town” that she remembers. It is really a sprawling city…it builds out not up, with the exception of the oil buildings down town…Edmonton had it’s “Petroleum Club,” high rollers only please, and I’m sure Calgary has the same…there’s money here folks…and they flaunt it….there are mile after mile of upscale housing developments…3 car garage a minimum with 4 very prevalent….it just goes on and on and on…John said that Calgary has a bigger footprint than New York city….that really boggled my mind, especially when he said it had a population of just one million…I was figuring minimum 3 at the sprawl…. We said our farewells this morning and let the family get back to their routine..Aleida gets her bathroom back and their lives will smoothly glide from step to step again…but we will always be fond of our time there…our spirits are taking good care of us and guiding us to people who add greatly to our lives… We’re on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan in Medicine Hat…but that’s another story.

Helen

There are times in life when one can step back in time a little and glimpse a period of life that has long since gone…Life as it was…. before what we know today seemed the norm….a time when life was simpler, goals were easier to define, and when there truly was a pulling together to reach common ends…that’s not to say it was easier, it wasn’t, but things seemed to be more clarified and easier to explain….. We had such an example of this through our Servas contact here in Edmonton..Helen Ready….like the singer only spelled different, as John Coffey might say. Helen was born in 1932 and grew up in a small coal mining town named Cadomin, which got its name from “Canadian Dominion Mines”….There were no roads into the area, and the only transportation was the twice weekly train. Her graduating class from high school in 1951 was 6 people…She spent an extra year as a senior so that she could take the required classes to enter nursing school, and the school was so small they didn’t offer them all the same year. When Helen found out we were staying in Hinton, she told us we were close to the town of her youth, and so we decided to drive to it and see it for ourselves…It is now a shell of the once-bustling town of the 30’s and 40’s….but she told us that she still had two friends from her youth who lived there still and ran the only café and store. An hour’s drive on gravel roads brought us to the hamlet, as it is called, a stretch of scattered homes, some quite nice, some is disrepair…Helen gave us the address of her “cabin.” We found it, took photos, and saw that the store was open so we stopped and went in. When asked how they could help us, we said that we were staying with Helen and the faces lit up…”Agnes, these are friends of Helen.” Agnes turned to Lois and announced: “They know Helen.” And so we sat down and listened to tales of days gone by and a life which no longer exists. The mine shut down in 1952 and since the mine owned the town they gave everybody 60 days to get out….no compensation…no golden parachute….no severance package…..just get out. And so they did, but some owned land not controlled by the coal company, and so life was kept alive in Cadomin… A booming town of somewhere between 1,200 and 2,000…Louie said officially there were 1,200 people in town, but he always says there were 2,000…then he adds “But, I’m a fisherman..” and by definition they exaggerate. Sports were huge in the area and if you were a good baseball player or hockey player, the mine company would give you a job, and in the depression a job was a job, so they always fielded good teams. In a small town so isolated, sports reigned king. During WWII, the mines a were critical national occupation, and so the miners did not go off to war, but stayed in Cadomin and worked the mines. The town was an eclectic mix of many nationalities…Welsh, Scots, Italians, Serbs, Slovaks…wherever there were mines in the old country, people who came to Canada could work in places like Cadomin…”Everybody got along,” they told us…there were no ethnic tensions…”We were all in it together,” as they said…when there is no distractions, people find a way to find common ground. “We could call each other ethnic names, which today would be incorrect, but nobody took offense,” Helen said. I asked them to tell me “A Helen story,” but they couldn’t recall any because she was always such a nice person…very pretty and so liked by the boys, but also very popular with the girls….The big mischief in town was knocking over the outhouses (outdoor toilets)…..and hoping nobody was inside…they all laughed at this story because it obviously evoked a time when mischief was just that, like the old days of Halloween where we waxed people’s windows as mischief, but did no real damage. The ladies chimed in that the boys knocked them over, and the girls put them back right….for the girls the really mischievous activity was raiding people’s gardens and running away with purloined potatoes to be roasted and eaten on the mountainside, while giggling and feeling like they had done something really bold. Ukrainian weddings were always a highlight of life…2-3 days of drinking, partying, dancing and drinking…did I mention that alcohol was involved…Helen’s father used to ask her if she drank at these affairs and she would reply…no, just rum and coke…In a town like Cadomin, when there was a wedding, it was a community affair and everybody was invited, and naturally everybody came. Helen’s father had a stroke and the only way they could get him to the hospital was to put his bed in a box car on the train and transport him in that manner….and that was the incident which led her into nursing at the same time as the mine was shut down…but her roots, her youth, and her real being were all Cadomin and so she bought a cabin where she goes often to sit in the café with Louis and Lois. The first road was punched through the forest and over the hills in 1946 from Edson nearly 80 miles away....A huge event when the first car came to town…It had to be pulled by tractor through the muddy spots….It was a town holiday…School children sang and everybody turned out to see it. There were cars in town, however….shipped in by rail, they could go from small coal town to the other similar towns in the area….nobody had driver’s licenses, nobody worried about that..you couldn’t really go anywhere….and nobody could come in. Of course, it was a coal mine, and tragedy goes along with that aspect of town life…the cry of the whistle sent chills down everybody’s spine as they rushed to see what had happened…Helen lost a very good friend who had quit working at the mine, but was asked to do one more shift before leaving Cadomin…a cave-in claimed five lives, including her friend whose luck ran out before he did. Frank is the financial success story of the town…He got a job cleaning chickens, worked his way up, bought a store, bought another one, and now owns 15 supermarkets scattered around Alberta….”He’s our millionaire,” Helen says. Margaret and Chuck moved to B.C. but came back and bought the store after retirement…it’s a “If you need it, we’ve got it,” sort of place….literally a mom and pop enterprise. They couldn’t make it by catering to the minimal population but they are Cadomin people and that’s where they want to spend their lives, and so today, they fix breakfast in the café part of the store…four tables in an area about the size of an average kitchen…the local gathering spot where the coffee pot is always on…serve yourself, and find out what, if anything, is new. Agnes and Frank come down from Peace River to take care of their house there and keep the connections open and alive…Only 29 post boxes are active and 34 people live there today, but they couldn’t kill the spirit of the town or its inhabitants. They have had big reunions and everybody always shows up…they may reside somewhere else, but they will always live in Cadomin. Small, isolated towns like Cadomin had a profound effect upon the lives of the hardy people who came and populated the remote areas of Canada…they came from all over the world and found their niche in this vast land….The U.S. has been dubbed “The melting pot,” but Canada is no less so….and Cadomin was a fine example of that….there are no exotic, tropical areas of Canada…no Southern California beach boardwalks….no Texas panhandle…but it is a remarkable land where hard work and perseverance made the country what it is today…and places like Cadomin played a big hand in forging that identity. We were really fortunate to get up close and personal with it….thank you Helen, thank you, Servas, thank you,Canada.

I'm liking this place

The three-hour drive from Revelstoke to Banff Park was a delight in itself…..the highway planners seem to have designed the road to race directly towards a massive outcropping of rock and then at the last second curved it around the base to give you a view of yet another of the spectacular Canadian Rockies…which I think are far more impressive than the ones south of the border. We arrived in Lake Louise at the visitor’s center and “village,” an overrun-with-tourists place in which to stand in line for anything to eat, and shop in stores who seem to know you were coming….We drove up to the actual lake where our hotel was and began what turned out to be what can best be classified as “One of the best travel days in all our trips.” To start with, we are staying at the Chateau Lake Louise….the iconic hotel of the Canadian Rockies….it is THE classic hotel, and I have seen photos of it from behind with the turquoise-colored lake in the background all my life…..I never dreamed of staying here, but you can’t travel or work as a travel agent without seeing that photo innumerable times….So here I must say that I didn’t pay what we “In the trade” call, “Rack Rates.”….I am too cheap to pay $450 per night, plus tax, when I can still visit, stay someplace else, and avoid the credit card shock at the end of the month….But there are things in the industry called: “Travel agent rates.” Places that still see the travel agent as a positive tool in the travel business…so to put it mildly, we got a deal. We drove up to the hotel and were met by the valet parking guy who explained that we basically had two options…we could use valet parking for $35 a night or we could park it ourselves for $30 a night…there is an unsupervised lot about ¼ mile down the road…I was saying I didn’t want to leave my new Prius down there, when he said: “Oh…sorry, I didn’t notice that it was a hybrid….The hotel offers free valet parking for hybrids…”…I’m liking this place already. At the front desk the clerk said that our room was ready although it was still very early, and that we were booked into a room with a premier view of the lake…no hillside or your back window here…but a full-on, front view smack dab in the middle of the lake view. She looked at the rate and said…”Oh, and they gave you a really good rate too.” I smiled…I was about to cough up the $15 per day internet fee when she said if I filled out a form (1 minute’s work) I could have the internet wi-fi in the room for free….I’m really liking this place. And so to our room where as we threw open the curtains…there it was, one of the most spectacular views right in front of us…so close you feel as if you could touch it….The eye is drawn to the color of the water, it is absolutely mesmerizing…but at the end of the lake is the mountain where there are 6 glaciers, some can be seen from the room, others on various hikes. The turquoise color of the water comes from all the “rock flour” as they call the ex-rocks which the glacier has ground to a fine powder…this silty deposits in the water absorb the light spectrum with the exception of the blue and violets which are then reflected back out of the water…hence the color. There is a path which weaves along the one side of the lake…tree lined and forested …it is a refreshing walk and is quite popular with walkers of all ilks, while the other side of the lake has a stupendous view of the rock slides which have wiped out the trees at various times…you can tell which were the most recent by the scarceness of vegetative growth. After a while, things come back and it begins being forested again…at the end of the lake, there is a sign to a trail which leads to the “Teahouse of the 6 glaciers.” We decided to take the plunge, or the climb, as it actually was….we got incredible views of the hotel and lake getting smaller and smaller as we climbed the 1,000 ft (350 meters) and got further away. It is to be a 4 hour hike and we were right on schedule for getting back to clean up for dinner when it suddenly dawned on us that we had crossed into Alberta and experienced a time zone change….So we cut short the last few hundred meters and hustled back…I didn’t like doing it, but we had no choice…I’m not big on stopping short of set goals on these things…but we’re glad we did it for the joy of doing it…”It’s the journey, Jim, Not the destination.”….How come I can’t remember this at times? Dinner turned out to be the perfect end to the day….Sitting in front of the lake as the colors of the evening were like a moving palette of ever-changing nuances. The food was excellent and well served, everything you would ever wish for..and no, you don’t get a “deal” on dinner…you pay the freight and enjoy the experience…see, I can remember sometimes And so ended a memorable day…one that was captured on film, but the clearest picture is in our hearts. Total bliss. Carol and Ji

m

Ka-boom

So we’re off on our long-planned drive across Canada. With the Prius, this seemed to be a good time as any to see the “Prairie provinces.” Living in southern Washington afforded us the opportunity to see something of our adopted state on the way to the big Maple Leaf to the north…. Since we see Mt. St. Helens every day on our way home…well, at least on the days when there is a clear sky…we drove to the north side of the mountain, into the “blast zone.”….30 years after and the devastation is still so very evident…Spirit Lake is still clogged with logs and trees either stand bare of life like white sticks pointing skyward or strewn across the landscape like some giant game of “Pick up sticks” had been played by the gods. We stopped in Randle for lunch at the Big Bottom restaurant…Naturally, the name intrigued me…I was going to ask how it got its name when the wide-bodied waitress came to the table…I demurred…much to the relief and probable surprise of Carol. Randle sits about 25 miles directly north of the mountain, and the waitress said that the sun was totally blotted out by the ash and it was so dark, you literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your face…It was like that for 48 hours, and everybody had to go to shelters in a town safely away from the falling ash and pumice…When they could return, there was 8 inches (24 cms) of ash covering everything, which was like ice when it got wet and slippery… Turns out the Big Bottom got its name from the fact that it is bottom land between two mountains, and it is big…hence its name. Randle is a combination cattle area and logging…the lone patron of the restaurant/bar was a member of the former who sat on his bar stool staring at his drink. His black Stetson hat never left his head and his boots klunked on the foot railing while the two big eyes on the back of his shirt seemed to be continually staring at me. The drive gave us ample indication of the varied scenery in northern Washington…lush forests, stark desert-like nothingness of the Columbia River gorge, and the fertile lands of the Wenatchee Valley, which proclaims itself to be the “Apple capital of the world,” and I wouldn’t dare to doubt it…..every other block of town and seemingly every mile of the highway is littered with signs which say: “Fruit Stand ahead.” Or “Fresh fruit.”…etc….Huge packing sheds dot the landscape, and at this time of the year the trees are loaded with fruit….literally thousands of poles support the overladen limbs of the trees to keep them from snapping. Further along there are mountains looking like huge boulders of primordial ooze which seemingly were belched from the depths of mother earth. 10 hours of driving and lollygagging along the way put us at our goal of Pateros, Wa. A lovely stay with a lake-side room and a very nice meal put us in a good mood for our day’s efforts…The following morning drive was highlighted by the border town of “Oroville.” We had lived in Oroville, California while I was growing up, and I delightedly got to call my mother to proclaim that I was in Oroville….Three times she said to me…”Okay, now tell me where you really are.” Always fun to tweak the iron lady….something I’ve been doing for 65 of my 71 years. Crossing the border brought a renewed energy….sort of a “let the adventure begin,” feeling…. The sign said that the border crossing wait was 10 minutes, and it’s good to see that even the border control people have a sense of humor…30 minutes later we crossed into Canada after insuring the Canadian official that we didn’t have firearms, weren’t carrying any packages for anybody else, didn’t have over $10,000 cash (we counted to be sure we were under the limit…LOL), and were then told to proceed…Carol remarked….”remember the old days when you just showed your driver’s license and were waved through…” Indeed, they were the old days. Welcome to the new world. Immediately, I remembered why I love Canada….there is a pride in civic presentation…flower baskets hang from city lampposts to brighten the walk around town….fields planted with crops have never-the-less had the highway side of the field planted in colorful rows of black-eyed-susans , all to make the drive more colorful, and the general neatness of everything…from the front yards, to the roadside stands, to the city streets….Helpful people giving advice as to directions, pleasant shop attendants from all around the commonwealth made our entry into our neighbor’s land of the north a most welcoming morning. We noticed how much more active the Canadians were, immediately upon crossing the border there were hordes of bicyclers…serious types with team racing jerseys to families just out riding along, training wheels included…runners dotted the paths along the way, and it just seemed much more alive and relaxed than just south. But mostly, I remembered how I like the Canadian sense of “self.”…they don’t carry the swagger or self-importance of their neighbors to the south…they don’t think the world revolves around them…to be sure, they are a proud nation, proud of their heritage and their land…but it is just toned down a notch, much to my liking. So we begin our Canadian journey..one that we’ve looked forward to….let the adventure begin. It won’t be exotic like Mongolia…it won’t be wondrous like Uzbekistan, but it will, I’m sure, be filled with great people who we can, and will, exchange our ideas with and from whom we have much to learn. Let it roll. Carol and Jim