Craziness in Canada

It’s not just in Spain where you find strange and curious customs. I have noticed we have a few in Canada too. Maybe it is the extreme weather or the large amounts of space and wilderness that we try to fill that lead to some original ideas.

Last weekend, which was a rather arbitrary long weekend for ‘Saskatchewan day’, a day created to have a long weekend in August; I drove my youngest sister to Edmonton to catch her flight to Mexico. One might say it is a short 550km or 5&1/2 hour drive away. On the trip we made a short stop in Cutknife to see the world’s biggest tomahawk, one of the many ‘giant’ sized sculptures that dot the country. I now have a small series of photos from my travels, which include the giant Ukrainian Easter egg in Vegreville (Alta), the giant Moose in Moose Jaw (Sask) and the giant Canadian goose in Wa-wa.(Ont). http://www.roadsideattractions.ca/province.htm . In a similar theme we stopped at the ‘world’s largest entertainment and shopping centre’ or West Edmonton Mall to meet a couple of my sisters’ friends for supper.

We may not celebrate carnival, but people still like to dress-up. My middle sister was recently preparing a costume for a Harry Potter pub-crawl where she met up with a group of friends dressed up as characters from the book. They were shuttled from bar to bar in a little yellow school bus. I think usually pub-crawls are fundraisers, but this one was just for fun.

On a side note, while in Normandy I heard about the 7 km ‘Foulées des bistrots’ in Caen, which is a race that involves elaborate costumes, drinking and running. The friends who told me about it had entered dressed as Vikings and ran with a rather large cardboard boat, so if you like to run and would like an interesting trip to France, mark your calendars for the end of June.

Other fun things you’ll find in Canada are real, live and dangerous wildlife. (have I convinced anyone to visit yet?) Last week I went to visit Beaver Creek, a nature conservation area just outside of the city with a series of nature trails. As we started pushing the door to the nature center a cougar warning sign caught our attention. The next few minutes my friend and I spent memorizing the guidelines. Don’t run, talk to the cougar in a calm voice, carry a walking stick should you need to fight it,etc.…while inside there were some furry ponchos for dress-up and my friend put on one and pretended to be a cougar so we could ‘practice.’ Sadly we did not meet any cougars, and only heard a bit of rustling from small animals in the bushes from time to time. I would never really like to meet a cougar, bear, wolf, etc, however talking about the possibility of meeting them made the hike more exciting.

Return to Canada

On July 27th it was a long day of traveling which stretched over about 24 hours from my step cousins house in Sheffield to my parents house in Saskatoon with stops in both the Manchester and Calgary airports. Stepping off the plane in Canada we were given a very warm welcome from smiling seniors in cowboy dress driving golf carts to greet and assist visitors on their way to the passport control. I thought it was a nice example of customer service whereas my sister thought it was to show off the Calgarian love of cars. The long part of the trip was the eight-hour wait for the connecting flight to Saskatoon, however the Space Center was fun to play and when I finally got to Saskatoon there was an amazing prairie sunset to greet me.

It’s interesting having a sense of perspective on your own culture. One of the first things I noticed as I quietly fingered the ‘ new’ Canadian coins to buy a card was that things seem to be more expensive. I got that impression because of the lower value of the currency and then because of the ‘ surprise’ tax that was added on at the end. I also noticed that people smiled a lot and were very friendly.

Back in Saskatoon right now it is as if I had never left, that I had never traveled and that all the other countries and cities I have been to sort of feel like a part of my imagination. It’s ten years this year since I graduated from high school and it seems now people have grown further and further apart. In some ways I felt I was ‘successful’ with my grades when we graduated, but now the mark of ‘success’ seems to be being married, having kids and a house and I don’t really fit in. I generally do things to try to be different, but sometimes it seems like it would be easier to be more the same. Right now everything is a little confusing and I don’t like people asking me about my plans for the future because I don’t have a very good answer yet. Poco a poco or little by little, I have to remember.

End of travels in England

Arriving in Britain from Spain what I first noticed was the abundance of rules and the frequent reminders of these rules through witty signs and announcements everywhere I went. ‘ No roller blading in the station’ was what I heard as I walked into the London King’s Cross to catch a train and then when I went to look for a ‘litter bin’ I could only find signs warning that there was a 75 £ fine for littering. In order to throw my banana peel away I had to ask a ‘Bobby‘ to help me find a man cleaning, who had a cart and finally a litterbag. In France they have also eliminated garbage cans in train stations for security reasons, but in their place they have shallow cardboard boxes on the floor that are a little bit easier to find. The best sign I saw was one warning you not to spit out your chewing gum because they threatened to do DNA testing, find you and fine you.

It took a little while to get past the white bread, excessive butter, copious amounts of tea and the need to plan every minute of an outing, but in the end I had a very nice visit with my British family. I have family in England because when my grandmother was young she decided that after having worked as a nurse and mid-wife in Sheffield during the Second World War that she set out for adventure to Canada. I am intrigued by how she first decided to work in a hospital in Kenora, Ontario, courted an Irish-Canadian through correspondence and then shortly after traveled to live with him on a farm outside of Delisle, Saskatchewan and there had three children. Unfortunately the marriage did not last and my grandmother will always tell you it is her greatest regret that she had to leave her children behind when she left. She did try to bring her kids with her, but could not because they were Canadian citizens. In any case she later remarried and we have been adopted by our step family in Britain.

For the first few days of my visit I stayed with my step aunt in Hull on the East coast. Since my last visit she has become involved with a project providing aid to the small town of New Yundum in Gambia and for the first time in her life had the opportunity to travel outside of England. The project http://www.newyundumgoodwinlink.kk5.org/ has changed her life as much as it has the village and it was wonderful to hear all of her stories.

Arriving in Sheffield I caught up with my family and also with British television. It probably made up for all of the television I didn’t watch this year and I now know that some people can get quite excited while watching darts. One afternoon we went to the Butterfly house (a site just outside the city which is a little overrated), another day we were off to Leeds to visit the fascinating Thackray medical history museum and while in the city we had a quick peek in the posh shop of Harvery Nichols, really looking more for celebrities than clothes and then before we left we took my grandma to tour a few art galleries.

It was sad to say good bye to Europe, but sadder yet to say goodbye to my grandmother not knowing if we would ever see her again as she is turning 89 in the fall.