Wanderung 29

Alaska or Bust

July 2014 - August 2014

3 Canada: Manitoba
Canada: Alberta 4
Index


 

July 9th: From Winnipeg to Yorkton, Canada

Bob:

Ever since we had crossed into Canada, our car's electronic display had been nagging me about "Maintenance Required!". So I checked the listings for Winnipeg and found that the local Toyota dealer, Birchwood Toyota, was just one exit away from our motel. Since we were headed into the sparsely settled western sections of Canada, I thought we should take a chance to get the inspection done while we had a dealer conveniently available. So we drove over at the crack of dawn, and much to my surprise they took us in first thing in the morning without an appointment! The service manager was sympathetic to our predicament of wanting to get back on he road West as soon as possible, so he put us at the head of the queue, telling us that a Tim Horton's was located just outside the gates of the industrial park and was a fine place to have breakfast.

We traipsed off and had a very cheerful breakfast at Tim's, and when we returned around 9:00 we found out that they had finished the maintenance 15 minutes ahead of schedule! Even better, the service manager had made extra calls to Toyota Canada to have the maintenance and oil change all done for free, which would have been the case in the U.S. but was not true in Canada. So we did not pay a penny, and just when we were ready to walk out the door, the lady at the desk ran after us and gave us a "Good Bye" present of a Toyota water bottle and insulated lunch box. Wow, was that SERVICE !

Monika:

Our car told us for the last few hundred miles that it needed maintenance. Nothing big, only the routine 25,000 mile inspection. Since we were in a big city, we thought there would be a Toyota dealer, and it turned out he was not too far from the motel and opened at 7:30. So that's when we got there hoping he could slide us in. And indeed, the service person we talked to was very, very helpful and told us it would be done by 9. I had seen a Tim Horton (the Canadian "go to" place for coffee and breakfast!) just outside this enormous conglomeration of car dealers in an industrial park---every make you might want---and the service guy told us how to walk there. So 10 minutes later we were enjoying breakfast with great coffee. When we finally got back by 8:40 our car was done, they even changed the oil. The service rep also had made a call to Toyota America, so that everything was free as scheduled maintenance. So we thanked the guy, and the woman from the desk came running to us to give us parting gifts, a water bottle and an insulated, foldable lunch pack. We both were just astounded by that much customer service.

We went back to the hotel, checked email, packed up and finally were on our way. We made one stop, when we saw a farm stand with cherries, rather dear $13 for a kilo, but very yummy. I asked about the fields of pure yellow we had seen all along and was told that those were canola or rapeseed plants. So now I know where canola oil comes from. The fields really stood out amongst all the green.

Bob:

My mother once told me that the brother of her father had come down from Minnedosa, Manitoba, to also try his hand at home steading in Moosomin Saskatchewan around 1900, but had given up and returned to Manitoba some time before her father died in 1905. But since my Mom was only 2 years old at the time, she got that information from her mother many years later, and she finally passed it down to me decades after that simply because she thought the town of "Minnedosa , Manitoba" had a nice alliterative ring to it.

I understandably did not have much confidence in the accuracy of that family legend, but when I found that Minnedosa, Manitoba, was directly on our route West, I decided "Wot the hell, Archie, wot the hell!" and took the exit from Canada 16 into the town, which lies in a pretty little valley. As we rolled slowly into the central district, I saw a stately stone building with a Canadian flag flying in front and stopped as it looked like a county courthouse, which it turned out to be. Although 120 years old, it was still an active courthouse but unfortunately housed no old records. However the staff girl called the local library and found out that they had a historical book for the region called "Minnedosa Valley Views" that covered regional history and stories of local people.

So we hied ourselves to the library and found the big , thick book, but it had no index! Fortunately Carol Ranson, the local archivist, was in that day and she did have an index. She looked up "Holmes" , and there on page 425 we found that my great uncle, O'Callaghan Holmes, had lived in Minnedosa from 1881 when he married Elizabeth Kemp, reportedly up through the 1960s. They had children and the latest descendant listed was born in 1970 , so there is a reasonable chance I have more living Canadian relatives!

Monika:

At noon we stopped at the courthouse in Minnedosa. Bob remembered that his mother had talked about an uncle who had become a Mountie in Minnedosa sometime before 1900. The very friendly person in the courthouse send us to the library, where we found a book of the history of Minnedosa and a helpful archivist who found a paragraph about the Holmes brothers (the Mountie and his brother, Bob's grandfather). Score! I now have more ancestry searching to do

Bob:

We also stopped at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police museum in Shoal Lake, Manitoba, later in our drive that day. The museum building is a faithful recreation of a Mountie frontier outpost from the late 1800s, and had many interesting exhibits about that period. Unfortunately, they did not have records of the active Mounties in that region, so I was not able to confirm or disconfirm that my great-uncle was also a Mountie on the frontier before 1900.

Monika:

We went on, and when Bob saw a sign for a Mountie museum, we had to go there. It did not have any archives but had a nice selection of exhibits concerning life as a Mountie.

July 10th: From Yorkton to Lloydminster, Canada

Bob:

We had a small star-shaped crack in our windshield due to a bad hail storm just after we had crossed into Canada, and I wanted to fix it before the crack propagated across the windshield (much cheaper that way!). So I bought the repair kit in Winnipeg and then took some time the next morning at Yorkton to fill the chip will a clear, quick-setting resin. (Although it seemed rinky-dink at the time, the repair lasted for our entire trip to Alaska and back.)

As a result, we didn't leave until after 9 and barely made it all the way across Saskatchewan by 5:30 that afternoon, finally putting up in the border town of Lloydminster for the night. The river valleys in Saskatchewan were mostly flooded due to heavy rains, and some of the roads were closed. We had to detour over 20 kilometers North due to Trans-Canada 16 being closed at one point. River ferries were also closed, and we were on roads where all but one lane had been washed away and traffic had to alternate in each direction. I had to sympathize with the unlucky farmers who probably lost all or a good part of the year's crop due to flooded fields!

Monika:

Our day started with Bob fixing a small crack in the windshield. It had to cure for an hour, so we had a leisurely breakfast and played some more on our Ipads. But then we forged on. Our next big target was Saskatoon, but halfway there we hit our first snag, a 20 mile detour because of the floods. Even on the road we were on, we twice passed a place were half the road had been washed away, so traffic alternated. We were a bit incovenienced, but the poor farmers were losing income because of the flood.


 

Bob:

There was a bumper crop of mosquitoes due to all those flooded fields, but correspondingly a bumper crop of big black dragon flies to eat all the mosquitoes! I tried to drive to avoid hitting the dragon flies because they eat a huge amount of mosquitoes and I am firmly of the opinion that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend!". Plus, the dragon flies were large enough to make a real mess on the windshield if I hit them!

Monika:

The fields were mainly planted with Canola plants, which gave us stunning views of deep yellow fields that glowed in the sun. Driving around Saskatoon was a pain, since the 4 lane circle drive had stoplights to slow down the traffic. But once out of the city it got almost boring driving through rather flat prairie, whereas before Saskatoon we were driving on a two lane through rolling hills with the aforementioned flooding in the valleys. However there were old barns and new silos to liven up the scene.

Bob:

The scenery across Saskatchewan varied from truly flat prairie with only sparse copses of trees, to a rolling pasture land , and once even a large oil field with the small pumps and small black crude oil storage tanks dotting the landscape. The local refinery, complete with a cracking tower and a flaming vent tower where they burn the waste gasses, was located on the eastern outskirts of Lloydminster.

Monika:

We crossed the Saskatchewan and saw to our surprise a couple of orthodox churches. I had not expected that. We forged on to the border town of Lloydminster a small town with lots of rather pricey motels


Copyright 2014 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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