Days 85-96: Motoring to Manitoba, Farming south of Souris, Squeezing the oilsand, and Riding in the Cariboo

(the last post...)

Days 85-86 (July 21-22): 2400km down (18,950km overall)
Yep, that's right, 2400km in less than two days-- so maybe it was a bit much, but I had to knock off the vast expanse of northern Ontario.

Having left Montreal late on July 20, I powered through northern Quebec that night (fuelled by an endless supply of hot St. Viateur sesame bagels) with the occasional stop (pulled over by police just north of Mount Tremblant-- seems that some teenager driving alone in an SUV from BC with Canada/Quebec flags is somewhat suspicious), before pulling over for an hour of sleep just beyond Val d'Or.

Stopping for the occasional double-double, I made great time into northern Ontario, through Cochrane (noted for its polar bears-- in pens), Swastika (hmm...), and Hearst (which, like a number of northern Ontario towns, was predominately francophone). The scenary, spread between miles of vastness, was littered with lakes and thick boreal. Through Thunder Bay I drove, finally stopping at a truck stop to sleep for the night, continuing the next day through Kenora (at peak fishing season-- an overwhelming sight-- with seemingly everyone trying to get a Tim Hortons sandwich, due to a gas leak that had shut down all restaurants in town), Dryden (where signs entering and leaving town encouraged residents to 'wear red on fridays to support the troops'... and where I stopped at a farmer's market to eat some pickling cukes), and some random diner/motel just east of Winnipeg to try one of 'Nelda's famous buttery cinnamon buns' .

Arriving in Winnipeg, I stayed for a day with my aunt's parents, who gave me a grand tour of the town-- Assiniboine Park, the Italian district, and the Golden Boy of the legislature -- and where I finished off my quest to try one beer from each province with the fine Fort Garry beer, before continuing west through the dry 35 degree heat along one of many gorgeous prairie highways into southern Manitoba (listening to a melange of the Tragically Hip's 'Wheat Kings' and CBC Radio's Cross Country Checkup-- where listeners were debating Stephen Harper's response to the Lebanese crisis).

Days 87-90 (July 23-26): 900 km down (19,850km overall)
While we had powered through the prairies on the way east, I knew that I had to spend some time sensing the vastness of the region-- and trying to understand the challenges (weather, international markets, sheer poverty) facing farmers in Canada's breadbasket (which itself is increasingly shifting away from grains, towards canola and ethanol).

I stayed on a relative's (two of my grandparents grew up in Manitoba) 10,000 acre farm (a very good sized farm) for four days, absorbing the setting-- including where my grandmother was born-- and discussing some of the major issues (world markets-- linking in with issues of US/EU subsidies-- he, Dan, resented the term 'corporate farm', but stood against Monsanto; Canadian Wheat Board-- how it monopolizes farmer's grain, giving them little choice in selling it-- and paying little or no premium for higher grade or organic grain (though on balance, he said the Wheat Board was a good thing, though it could better incorporate the farmer's voice); how farmers and environmentalists are often each other's enemies-- Ducks Unlimited, for example, had repeatedly hassled Dan regarding his wetlands, while Dan described ducks as plentiful and very dirty creatures; how many farms are closing down-- between erratic weather (this year= drought, last year= flooding) and unpredictable markets, it is very tough to make a go of it (each year, he said, was like gambling $2 million); the need to produce more 'value-added' products-- ie. rather than sell grain internationally, produce flour at a mill to sell on the markets at a premium).

It was a grand experience, and certainly one of the highlights of the odyssey. To meet families living a different life-- kids with ponies, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, and rifles by the time they're five, and helping dad work the farm-- and to witness how knowledgeable farmers really are: To make it, you really do have to be a jack-of-all-trades-- an agricultural scientist, an airplane pilot, a welder, a mechanic, a husband, a father and a farmer.

Exploring some of my heritage (a windmill with my great grandfather Edward's name on it-- from whom I get my middle name), playing hide-and-seek in acres of canola with the kids, sharpening blades on a swather, preparing for harvest, riding in an authentic 1914 model T, preparing a crop duster for flight, wandering the International Peace Gardens between Manitoba and North Dakota, hoping that the coming hail storm would miss us, and photographing some of the vast open spaces (Dan, whose wife Mandy comes from Aldergrove, described rural Langley, BC, to me as "too crowded")-- just some of the high points.

I've got no shortage of black and white photos from my time there that I can't post here-- but I have great prints of them all.

After saying goodbye to my relatives, I hit the road, travelling across the gridded prairie landscape, north through Brandon and Dauphin (where the high school advertised Ukrainian immersion), and on into Saskatchewan, reaching Saskatoon by daybreak.

Days 91-96 (July 27-August 1): 3200km down (23,050km overall)
Awed by the nine bridges crossing over the Saskatchewan river in Saskatoon-- nicknamed the city of bridges-- I spent my morning wandering up and down the river, across to U of Sask, past a sculpture immortalizing the meeting of Wilfred Laurier and John Diefenbaker (the former, as Prime Minister, noted the wit of the latter, then a paperboy), through the Mendell Art Gallery, and past 'Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan', before hitting beautiful Hwy 40 through lush rolling valleys west towards Edmonton.

I met up with my mom and dog (who'd flown out from BC), and we spent the final three days exploring northern Alberta and central BC-- the first day driving nearly 500km north to Fort McMurray (for me, seeing the phenomenon of the Athabasca oilsands-- what is shifting the economic and political power west from Ontario to Alberta so quickly-- was key, no matter how dull the 4.5 hour drive north, nor how mundane Fort McMurray itself was (consisting of the main town centre, then on the other side of the Athabasca river, perhaps thousands of nearly identical houses that had nearly popped up overnight, row-upon-row, in order to house the tens of thousands of oilsands workers). Though I could write for hours about the oilsands (and surely will elsewhere), there were a few notables-- the Oilsands discovery centre was first rate, giving a sense of the science, politics, and environmental impact of the oilsands, which, with open pit mining technology (essentially a BIG truck and shovel working together to scoop the oilsand, which is then treated with boiling water to release the bitmus-- then easily convertible to sweet synthetic crude oil); discovering how costly the oilsands really are-- $10/barrel with current technology (so, before world prices were as high, it hardly made financial sense); observing the environmental impact-- huge swathes of boreal forest ripped out, and while the main companies Syncrude and Suncorp spend millions on 'reclamation projects', few think that the land is truly recoverable; the huge numbers of workers migrating into the two main sites (nearly 3 buses per minute of workers into the Syncrude site); and how little 'oilsand' is removed with open pit mining (only 2% of reserves)-- the rest, buried deep underground, requires 'in situ' methods (technology still isn't perfected, but essentially sending a pipe with hot steam to 'melt' the bitmus, which is collected by a second pipe). With billions of barrels recoverable at the largest oilsands in the world, it seems that the windfall won't stop anytime soon (and, unfortunately, the environmental impact-- the pits, the carbon dioxide emissions (a very inconvenient truth), won't either).

From there, the farthest point north I had ever been (nearly 58 degrees north), we drove south, taking in the beautiful northern sunset , camping at Smoky Lake , taking in the Lamont Rodeo , cruising through Elk Island National Park (Canada's first) , and-- in vicious contrast-- wandering through the spectacle of West Edmonton Mall (just another big mall-- with some waterslides and flamingos).

Over the last couple of days, we hiked through Jasper and Mt. Robson-- from where we began our journey back through BC (which, as our welcome sign said, truly is 'The Best Place in the World'), from the headwaters of the Fraser down to its might in Hells Gate-- and spent a day horseback riding on a ranch in the Cariboo on Green Lake.

Buying fresh fruit all the way back, we cruised through the Okanagan and back down into the Lower Mainland. Like that, after 96 days, I was home .

The odyssey complete.