Regina 2 - the Ledge and Wascana

Well, scratching the surface of those topics.
Wascana is a not very old, large lake and park that also houses the provincial legislature, the museum, the art gallery, etc. "The Big Dig" took place in 2003-4 to dredge the lake down to deep from the hand dug version, employing 2000 men in a make-work project in the 1930s depression/desperation years, that created the lake from a creek. Another bunch of money got thrown at the infrastructure in 2014 when Regina hosted the Canada summer games. Regina is the only provincial capital not built on a water way, rather a railway intersection, but Wascana fills the gap nicely.

yes, it's a pelican!

The Albert Memorial Bridge that spans Wascana Creek was another depression era relief project. King Tut's tomb had recently been discovered and all things Egyptian were in style, explaining the bridge design. The bridge is about 250 meters long to span the 20 meter creek and cost more than double the budget estimate. Hmmmm. Sounds familiar.

Kelly was our guide in the Legislature as visitors are not let loose on their own anymore. It is a gorgeous building with 34 types of marble and the chamber built for twice as many legislators as there are. Premier of the day Walter Scott, seriously, imagined the Regina and Saskatchewan of the future as grand and important and built accordingly.

marble from Cyprus

 

In the basement of the Ledge, there is an art gallery and the current exhibit blew me away. Wow, wow, wow. It is a large body of work with both large and small pieces, some are hands but the majority are Roughrider fans. But the skill.....!

self portrait, Belinda Kriek

And then there was the cafeteria, serving perogies that day. You would die if you ate this whole plate, we shared.

Regina 1

I don't care what the numbers say, Regina is bigger than Saskatoon.The Toon population must include every blade of grass and certainly they have counted the 30,000 U Sask students across the river. Regina feels like a city with the gravitas of the provincial capital and the business hub.
We've been here a week and have been exploring as usual.
Our first stop was the RCMP Heritage Centre adjacent to Depot Division, the training centre for every member of the RCMP. The date was Thursday, September 6, 2018 and at 3:00 on the parade ground we witnessed the installation of the first female commissioner, Brenda Lucki. Lucky were we to be there and we just kind of wandered over to a good spot, surrounded by red serge and invited guests!

bad cropping but you get the gist

We also may have solved the mystery of how Betsy's and my great uncle Jack got from the North West Mounted Police, to the Bloemfontein Constabulary in South Africa, to eventually be killed in WWI. I've always described him as a "rolling stone" but these story boards say, maybe not. It seems the NWMP were in demand as a well trained and disciplined force as are the RCMP now. 

Downtown Regina has a large public gathering space just off Victoria Park, City Square Plaza, with a couple of blocks of pedestrian only traffic radiating from it. It's going to have to be warmer than today's 6 degrees to get me to the farmers' market there tomorrow! Oh yeah, I brought long johns and a down vest!
All over the province we've been seeing laser cut metal art pieces for signs and decorative purposes.

at the RCMP Heritage Centre

a 3 layer one in City Square Plaza, Regina

a more traditional style, a HUGE grasshopper in Ogema

Moose Jaw

We only spent a few hours in MJ but it has a good feel.

outside Boston Pizza for pete's sake!

It was/is an important transportation hub with an intersection of the CN and CP railways and apparently used to have a direct link to Chicago.
We opted to do the Al Capone version of the tunnel tours for 50 minutes of 1920s fun. We weren't allowed to take photos because, of course, what goes on in the tunnels stays in the tunnels. Let me just say that a good bit of money had been spent on the interiors and effects, it's not a rinky-dink operation. Wiki: A network of underground tunnels connecting buildings in downtown Moose Jaw was constructed beginning around 1908 as an underground steam system that was abandoned. The tunnels were used to hide Chinese railway workers escaping persecution and entire families lived in the tunnels and worked at above-ground businesses in exchange for food and supplies. The tunnels became a hub of renewed activity in the 1920s for rum-running during Prohibition in the United States. Although no written or photographic proof exists of Al Capone's presence, several firsthand accounts from people in Moose Jaw who claim to have met him have been documented.

The downtown area seems well looked after and people are friendly and helpful. There appears to be a concerted beautification effort and sister B thought we needed a new garden ornament souvenir; as though our garden isn't already packed! But she's right, and you'll find these birds in our courtyard the next time you visit.

On High Street we found McIntyre Hall, named for our friend John's father who grew up in MJ and who sat on the Supreme Court of Canada for 10 years.

There are (I know the "are" is not grammatically correct but would you really say "is" and think it sounded right?) a significant number of murals in the downtown area, mostly historical and mostly well done. Also in MJ, and dear to Canadians is the home base of The Snowbirds as well as a NATO flight training centre. Lots of clear skies in Southern Sask resulted in the creation of RCAF Station Moose Jaw in 1940 and it is still Canada's primary military flight training centre.

Beyond the Battlefords

It's no distance from Toon Town (thank you Cam Culham!) to the Battlefords (Fort B, B, and North B) and we headed out on Tuesday morning. We rolled into North Battleford at lunchtime expecting to visit Fort Battleford. The National Parks website said it would be open on September 4 and we organized our time to fit that statement. We showed up on site to find locked doors and a phone number to call for deliveries. Clearly not for us. I wasn't feeling my diplomatic best and gave "buddy" a bit of a hard time on the phone. He called me "young lady" several times not knowing I was about to reach through the phone and rip his throat out. Apparently NPC had not told Fort Battleford they were supposed to be open on the 4th and all the summer staff were gone. Buddy came to the door eventually, apologetic, but he was the maintenance man, not a ranger or interpreter.
Another carload of 6 people arrived on our heels to the same answer. I will be writing to NPC!

Luckily there is a Western Development Museum in North Battleford, one of 4 in the province. These museums are really well done and this one includes an outdoor village of 30 buildings, an elevator, and a train station. The contents aren't very different from the WDM in Saskatoon which is all indoors but the village setting gave context to the artifacts in a different way. Thirteen of the buildings are original and others were purpose built. So much in these museums was part of our normal childhood. It is amusing to see familiar items deemed to be historic but Saskatchewan is very young. For example, the school room is pretty much exactly what my elementary school looked like. NOT the hair curling contraption! Good grief!!!

It was windy which seems to be a theme.
On the way to Moose Jaw the next morning we stopped in Unity to look for a probably non-existent photo studio where our friend Don Rowlatt worked as a teenager. Mention Saskatchewan to any group of people and I can guarantee that someone has lived here at some point. At least in a western group. We stopped in a café and asked the server who asked her boss and a table of local women. Guess what? One of the women remembered Don's family and the location of the studio, now a realty office. So we took a picture of course. Keep in mind, this was 60 years ago - what were the chances? Apparently excellent! And the three women had a lovely time reminiscing about the old days.

Grain Elevators

Where to start on this topic without going backwards and sideways? Years of talk about the vanishing elevators had us not expecting to see very many so we've been pleasantly surprised to find that they still exist, sort of. The new ones are enormous and concrete but there are enough of the old wooden ones that they've melded into our brains as a real part of the Saskatchewan landscape. There are a very few still in use but most are empty, some in grave disrepair and the lucky ones turned into museums.

It took me a while to get the concept of the elevators, explanations seemed to stop with the first step, the producer delivery, but this is my version of what happens. Please feel free to chirp in with corrections...

Yes, that Dog River

1. The producer arrives with grain on a cart, drives up the ramp and into the elevator, onto a weigh scale built into the floor. There is a grate in the scale cover, with the metal vanes typically slanted so a horse sees it as a solid floor and doesn't spook. The cart either has a tilt mechanism or a shovel and the grain is emptied into the pit below. The grain is analyzed for moisture content and debris which affects the price. The empty cart is reweighed and the difference plus the other factors determine what the producer receives. Some elevators were modified to accommodate larger trucks (by cutting out some rafters!) but the system was the same. 

2. A conveyor belt in the pit carries the grain sideways to a scoop/bucket system, the elevator, that carried the grain up and up to one of several bins. An elevator handled more than one product and a wheel was used to direct the product into the appropriate bin-in-the-sky. 

3. A train pulls up to take delivery and this is the part that was only sketchily described when I said was was still confused. It is so basic to local people they couldn't understand my blindspot so I'm winging it here. From the appropriate bin above, grain, peas, lentils, whatever comes down a chute onto another scale to be weighed. Then another conveyor belt and scoop/elevator rig carries the product back up high enough to go out the side of the elevator and down into the train car. And that, I think, is that.

Other interesting tidbits: 

• The elevators are built of 2x4s on the flat, stacked like a log house. Otherwise the weight of the grain would push the sides out. That's a lot of wood and all of Saskatchewan's plentiful forests are way in the north. The major structural elements are enormous so maybe came from BC.

• Grain is very dusty and the dust is explosive. More than a few of the elevators burned down. Apparently once an elevator fire starts it is impossible to stop so the effort goes into containment.
• There used to be an elevator every 8 miles along the train tracks, the distance a horse could haul a loaded cart in a day. Wiki says there were 6000 elevators back in the 1930s.

Way Off the Beaten Track

There are about 250,000 kms of roads in Saskatchewan, not all of them wonderful and a lot of them gravel! Everyone seems to own a truck.
When she heard we were going to Saskatchewan, one of our neighbours gave us a 2010-ish Readers' Digest Atlas of Canada. Every double page has a flip-out with a smattering of what someone thought was an interesting spot in that area. I spent hours with that book and we've spent hours chasing down some of the oddities. Our GPS didn't recognize them but Google Maps did! Jim and Betsy were less excited about these weird and wonderfuls but humoured  me and we had lots of laughs in the search.

Crooked Trees according to Wikipedia, The trees, prominent in Saskatchewan folklore, are dramatically different from the un-twisted aspens just across the road. Explanations have been offered which include various paranormal factors. However, cuttings from these trees, propagated in Manitoba, exhibit the same pattern of twisted growth, suggesting that the cause is rooted in genetics, possibly the result of a mutation.The trees' unusual appearance was noticed in the 1940s and has attracted the attention of tourists for decades. Jim's reaction? "Aren't all trees crooked?" We were on our way from Saskatoon to North Battleford and we added about 2 hours to the trip by going via Hafford/Alticane to see the trees. For all the hype, the grove is small and yes, decidedly odd. But it had an outhouse! 

Great Wall of Saskatchewan, near Smiley. No, you can't see it from space. The wall was a 30 year project, finished in 1991, self supporting without mortar, and about a half kilometer long, built from rocks taken out of a farmer's fields. What isn't mentioned in the references is how gorgeous the rocks are. These are not our jagged gray BC rocks, rather beautiful pieces of pink granite with some stunning golden lichen growing on sections. That's a locust on the windshield!

The Great Sand Hills is a 1900 square kilometer desert/dune area about 25 km on more gravel roads, from Sceptre. The visitor centre was closed because now it's after Labour Day, but there was a detailed map and directions posted on the door. Betsy's master's thesis was about the ecology of salt water sand dunes so she was adsorbed in looking for marram grass or other familiar botanicals.

The car has taken a bit of a beating on the back roads and there is dust in every crevice. Jim hasn't figured out how to get the locust remains out of the grill though in North Battleford the car wash had an "insect removal" wand. We have a following of wasps wherever we go, feeding on the grill carnage. 

And many miles to go....

I forgot to mention that going off the beaten track has so many bonus surprises! A herd of bison, I assume meat herd because they looked well fed and tended, and an abandoned Ukrainian church.

Hafford