MOVING ON TO SASKATCHEWAN

As we left the cold streets of Flin Flon and entered Saskatchewan, we expected the road we were traveling on to be swarming with Royal Canadian Mounted Police looking for drugs and alcohol. Instead, we saw … no one. Just blustery grey skies with no cell phone service for four hours on an empty road covered with drifting snow and ice for hundreds of miles. Even Walker got a little concerned as the weather deteriorated and driving in this remote part of Canada got a little treacherous.

We finally broke out of the falling snow and the boreal woodlands into the sunshine in an appropriately named little town called Choiceland, SK. This hundred-year-old village is where the farmlands meet the forest and is the northern edge of the vast Great Plains stretching all the way south and west from here to the Rocky Mountains and northern Mexico. We were happy to be back in the sunshine after doing time in the deep freeze of northern Manitoba. The seventy-year-old Choiceland Public Library seemed to shimmer in the sun and snow and filled an important need for this small agricultural community.

We spent the rest of the day with Walker on assignment doing a news story on feral pigs in rural Saskatchewan. One of the reasons for me going on this trip was to see him at work. I came away with great respect for the professionalism and hard work he puts into his assignments. He even went knocking on farmhouse doors looking for people to interview. He scored big-time when he met a delightful and talkative farmer who is hired by the province to hunt this invasive pig species that is establishing itself here and destroying crops.

We ended our very long day in the enchanting city of Saskatoon. We really appreciated our first good food of the trip in a great little hipster restaurant in Saskatoon’s gourmet ghetto. This city quickly became our favorite of the trip, and we began to understand its nickname the “Paris of the Prairies.”  

The Saskatoon Public Library, however, was in a more depressed part of the downtown. I was shocked to see homeless people gathered outside the entrance of the library. How could someone survive sleeping outdoors in this cold climate? As I have seen in many places, the library itself is an oasis of sanity and hope in a grim social setting. The library contained a lot of material from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada which was trying to address the unhealed wounds of Canada’s colonial past and the damage to its Native people.  I hope my country will attempt something like this.

Inside the library, the signage attempted to deal with many difficult social issues of the present and the past.

Fortunately, plans for a new Central Library are moving ahead and the striking state-of-the-art design draws from traditional First Nation and Métis architecture. When completed, the new library will be a vital addition to the city.

Because Walker was off interviewing for his assignment, I spent the afternoon walking around Saskatoon. After visiting the Central Library I headed over to the Ukrainian Museum of Canada. It is a network of museums across Canada that promote Ukrainian culture life, especially the experiences of the Canadian Ukrainian diaspora. As I discovered on an earlier Library Road Trip, Canada has the third largest number of Ukrainians after Russia and Ukraine itself. This Saskatoon Museum is the oldest in the network, founded in 1941. Since Putin’s cruel invasion in 2022, the Museum has seen a huge surge of visitors and interest in the museums. It contained some very good exhibits and fascinating snapshots of Canadian Ukrainians over the last hundred years.  

Because Walker has so many travel miles, he sometimes is able to stay in very nice places. In Saskatoon, we stayed in the astonishing Delta Bessborough Hotel which one of the last, grand railway hotels and is now a historic landmark in Saskatoon. It reminded me of the famous Château Frontenac Hotel in Québec City.

After dinner, I finished my evening stroll on the snow-covered banks of the Saskatchewan River. It was freezing and exhilarating, and I managed to photograph a few interesting sites along the way including the Law Society of Saskatchewan Library in the snow.

Early the next morning, we needed to make miles for Walker’s work. Our rental car was completely covered with mud but we did manage to scrape off some of the grime so the license plate could be seen.

Because the miles were many and the time was short, we only stopped in the Saskatchewan prairie farming town of Eatonia. The grain elevators there were magnificent, and the Wheatland Regional Library (Eatonia Branch) was wonderfully situated in an old Canadian National Railway station. I literally jumped out of the car and into the shock of the cold. I quickly took a few photos, jumped back into the car, and then we headed out to our next stop in Alberta.

To be continued…