Saskatchewan- the sublime to the ridiculous

Many Canadians, (particularly from rival city Saskatoon) will shout me down, but Regina is a gem of a little city. Full of planted elms, it is elegant, shady capital for a scarcely populated province. Many of the buildings are Victorian, but with a small "v", not as overwhelming or grand as Melbourne or London, more of an afternoon tea with scones than a full roasted goose dinner with trimmings.

Or maybe I'm just writing in food terms because I'm hungry....

My afternoon with Laura in Regina seemed to pass in something of a blur, we packed quite a bit in. We visited the provincial legislature and took the tour, a lovely building and that chalked up my 4th provincial legislature building I'd seen (British Columbia, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan).

For the unitiated, Regina is not named so because it rhymes with something naughty, or because Saskatchewan is also home to a village called Climax. It is meant to refer to Glorious Regina, (then, Queen Victoria) now Queen Elizabeth II or the "old boot" if you're a republican. However, Laura and I did spend a lot of time speculating on these names and they differed from the masculine- sounding towns of Red Deer and Wayne in Alberta. For the record, the Mayor of Climax (who I have seen on TV) is a 40 something blonde woman in good shape who likes to wear tennis skirts.

We attempted to see the RCMP museum, which is home to all things RCMP and I think would have been a fascinating look into the history. However, they had closed the old museum in order to finish building a newer, bigger facility so we missed out. Thwarted again in my attempt to get close to Mounties !!

Not to be deterred, we went to the Natural History Museum where Laura proudly brought me face to face with a stuffed moose (they are huge and very intimidating), wolves and all sorts of Canadian wildlife. Of course my wail of "But I wanna see one LIVE !!" showed me up as an ungrateful tourist and I'm sure Laura toyed with the idea of leaving me there as punishment.

It was an environmentalist's nightmare and a taxidermist's dream. I found the experience educational AND creepy and in future, will stick to zoos.

Onwards to the MacKenzie Art Gallery, where Laura stopped in the carpark, struck by the spring leaves budding on the trees that I was about to stomp past in my quest for "proper culture". The closeup photos that we both took capture the best of springtime in Canada and I learnt a good lesson about noticing the little things of beauty.

The MacKenzie modern art gallery is well worth a look- see. I particularly liked the exhibition showing groundbreaking archiectural designs from every province in Canada, making the most of the natural resources in each area to maximise the energy and environmentally-friendly features of homes, offices and community centres in each province. There was a design for a community centre in the Northwest Territories that was designed to blend effectively into the barren snowy lanscapes around it so it didn't detract from the overall look of the area.

Downstairs to the gift shop and Laura found me agonising over whether a person ever actually needs a minature curling rock (smaller than the palm of my hand) as a momento. Answer- no.

From the sublime of art to the rough and tumble of Canadian Football we then did a drive-by for photos at the Saskatchewan Roughriders Stadium. Roughriders fans are arguably the most rabid in Canada, and their fiercest opposition are the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. I admit that it was more to stir up my Winnipeg mates that I have photos of me smiling from the Roughriders stadium but I'm sure the sting of it goes out based on these facts;

- I still, to date, have not seen a Canadian Football game
- I support the Calgary Stampeders anyway.

So in Regina we were able to find almost anything we wanted except a toothbrush for me. It became very Monty Python-ish, racing around town, fruitlessly searching for that $3 bit of plastic with bristles. Finding the legislature and art gallery was easy. Finding a toothbrush was a medium-sized nightmare. We started at a Canadian superstore, which didn't have them, but had all the bathroom furnishings you could imagine to keep a toothbrush in, to eventually a petrol station, where, I bought two toothbrushes for good measure.

It was then back to our accomodations to get ready for our Saturday night out.