Prairie skies

Not too long ago the phrase ‘ Land of the Living Skies’ was added to the license plates in Saskatchewan. At first I didn’t like it because my sister had submitted an entry with ‘Sunny Saskatchewan’ in the contest and I had liked that better.

I found the expression Land of the Living skies very fitting this past week as I got to witness some spectacular sunrises while riding my bike along the river. I didn’t bring my camera until the end of the week because I know my father carries his camera around religiously and I am trying not to act too much like him.

Another scene I saw was the field full of Canadian geese as I biked up towards the University of Saskatchewan. For some reason I found it cheering and comforting to bike past flock of geese, maybe because if they are still there means we’ll be getting a few more days of nice weather.

Celebrating Saskatoon history

Last Friday was an exciting day in Saskatoon because there was a celebration for the 125th anniversary of the founding of the city. A re-enactment of the meeting between John Lake, the commissioner of the Temperance Colonization Society and Chief Whitecap, the Dakota First Nation chief had been planned. The mayor and town council in period dress came down the river in canoe and Chief Darcy Bear the current leader of the Dakota First Nation rode up to the riverbank on horseback to meet them.

I only caught a glimpse of the canoes and horses as I rode my bike across the Broadway Bridge to meet up with my parents at my dad’s office. As soon as I go to the street corner I jumped off my bike and ran up announcing that the Dakota were coming with some of the passion that Laura Secord might have had. We then quickly started walking towards the Victoria Traffic Bridge. We missed the official meeting, but had a chance to listen to some of the speeches and later watch a number of dance performances on the new River Landing Amphitheatre. It was a beautiful fall day.

Between the speeches and the dances we decided to check out the food stands on the bridge. A lot of other people had the same idea at the same time and in order to try and save time my mom joined one hamburger line-up and my dad joined another one at another stand on the opposite end of the bridge. My role was to be the go-between and pull one person out of line when the other was shorter. The situation was a little ridiculous and even more so because in the midst of it all I ran into a friend and I had to tell him that I didn’t have time to talk because I was busy being a messenger between hamburger line-ups. In the end we didn’t even end up eating until later. As the evening drew to a close I ran off to go and volunteer at an International Peace day event, but crossing back over the bridge I stopped for a few minutes to watch part of the fireworks display. I love the excitement of fireworks.

Job hunting, sort of

I am still in a bit of an unknown, awkward space right now. I am feeling more settled back in Canada, but I still don’t know what I am going to do. I have had a few temp jobs lately that have been far from interesting. For two weeks I felt imprisoned in a dusty, windowless basement doing inventory and data entry. The positive side of that experience is that I now feel a strong urge to work harder on my job search because I cannot do work like that for the rest of my life.

I had one very unusual interview that was done via videoconference. The whole experience was a bit of a gong show because I’ve lost count of the number of miscommunications there were on the time, location, etc. At the first interview attempt I was led to a room that one might call a meeting room with a few extra computers and a large television. I was told the interviewers should appear on the screen because they had remote access. However after patiently waiting for fifteen minutes for people to magically appear at any moment on the television screen I decided I should try and phone them. Of course it was too old fashion to have had the room equipped with a phone and the only number I had connected me to voicemail on which I left a polite, but confused phone message.

A couple days later on the second interview attempt there was temporarily a little confusion on the location, but we eventually figured things out. As I sat down in front of the camera I suddenly felt like I was doing a television interview as the TV screen was split in four. In the top left and bottom right corners I saw images of myself and became very conscious of my appearance. I found myself leaning forwards towards the flat microphone positioned in the center of table, and as most of the questions were asked by the men who appeared to me in the bottom left corner of the screen I noticed I spent a lot of time looking down. Since it appeared I was staring at the table I tried to smile a lot to compensate.

The other challenge for me during the experience was that the sound would sometimes cut in and out and a couple of times I was barely sure that I had understood the question, so I started my answers by repeating what I thought they had said hoping that they would understand me. Maybe this is the way of the future?

Walking for Hope

This morning my mom, my aunt, my cousin Charlene and I took part in the 5km walk for hope for Ovarian Cancer. It was a small way to remember my grandma Florence McBride who passed away in May, 2005. The message of my hope that I pinned to my back was for more cancer survivors because too many people are getting the disease these days.

Adventures at home

While travelling I am often asked what is typical Canadian food and I always have a hard time thinking of what to say. Pemmican (a mixture of dried meat and berries), bannock (similar to fried biscuits), caribou stew or bison burgers are probably the most native to Canada, but not things my family usually eats. I thought I would describe a meal we had with some family friends not too long ago to give another attempt at an answer.

Before we left the house I took a picture of the desserts my mom had prepared. On the left is a blueberry torte with a meringue topping, next to it is an apple crisp, then there is a rhubarb torte and in the front some of my mom's popular toffee-chocolate-almond crunchies (or oatmeal cookies). I think we also brought a mango spinach salad because it is quite popular. When we sat down I remember thinking there was an awful lot of food for supper. There was a roasted turkey with mashed potatoes, carrots and gravy, a potatoe salad (similar to the Spanish Russian salad), a tossed salad and then in true Saskatchewan style a jelly salad.

Thank goodness that is not how we eat everyday. Supper is usually the biggest meal of the day and is eaten around 6pm. A typical spread at my parents house usually consists of a casserole type dish (i.e. Spaghetti squash & sauce), two vegetable dishes (a tossed salad and boiled peas) and dessert (a cookie or a piece of cake). Not everyone eats like us and instead of saying my mom likes to cook it would be best to say that she likes to try new recipes. Like yesterday for example she was preparing some Habanero jelly because it was a new recipe she found in her Canadian Living magazine.

Sometimes I try to help, but last week when I made a cheese cake I broke the egg beater. Really it would be better to say I melted it because it started to smoke while wrestling with the cream cheese.

I am including a photo of the cook, but this time in one of her fixing up the house projects. This one was trying to replace the broken tracks on the top drawer of my old desk. After several detective trips to various hardware stores and a lot of imagination we thought we had it solved by fitting in metal tracks used for hanging shelves, but the result proved to be a very tight fit and the creation of a new safety deposit compartment. In the photo you see my mom trying to open the drawer. After I gave up my mother pursued and fitted one side with a small piece of wood, so for now it works. I guess my childhood furniture is a little out of date and I need to work on my manual skills.

Labour day

My great uncle used to like to say things like ' I wish someone would cut off my nose' when it would run incessantly and that's how I felt this morning as I was attacked by yet another allergen in the air. Today is Labour day, or more commonly known as the September long weekend during which you should soak up lots of sunshine to prepare yourself for the arrival of the 'W' season. I took my parents on a long walk through the 'adventure' trails accross the river and just barely got away without a sunburn. We got to take the new walkway under the Circle Drive bridge. Lately it has become a bit of an attraction along the riverbank. I've even seen it used for wedding photos.

Anyways I was thinking about my eventful summer that has included two weddings, two babies, a funeral and lots of travels. Though I have been in Saskatoon for past month I don't really like to stay at home and sit around. The first week back I was out volunteering at the Fringe festival. I 'worked' four shifts and in the end saw ten plays for free. I find it hard

to call ushering work because after you take the tickets at the door you get to sit and watch the show. The next week I was out volunteering at the Peruvian pavilion at Folkfest. It was a bit more work selling passports, serving food and helping set things up, but a very good excuse to speak Spanish. Finally, my latest volunteer project is to help at the Global Gathering Place which is a drop-in centre for new immigrants. For a little while I was feeling a little like a new immigrant back in Saskatoon, but that's a bit of a silly thought because I grew up here.

I am still at the figuring out what to do next stage of my job search, so I can't really say much about my upcoming plans. To reconnect with my prairie roots I took part in a couple of 'prairie' summer outings which have included a barn party one night at a farm near Rosthern and then a couple days at a cabin at Martins Lake. It's nice to not always be in the city. I hope this is not an Adieu to summer, but we'll see what September will be like.