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.

Pirates of Saskatchewan

The Canadian comedy band the Arrogant Worms wrote a song about the Pirates of Saskatchewan as a joke. SK is about as far as you can get away from the sea. However, the mighty Saskatchewan river flows through Regina and though my geography is shaky, I know there is more than one great river in the province.

Laura and I drove along the long country roads singing along to this song much of the way to Rolleau (Dog River). (Apparently if I had a pirate name it would be Shark Bait, because I'm an Aussie).

On the way we went through Moosejaw, which apparently was a centre for Al Capone's bootlegging during the Prohibition years. It really did have a 1920-30s feel to the town. We stopped at the Giant Moose on the outskirts of town long enough to take some photos. My favourite, (unfortunately not in my collection) is Laura lying flat on the ground in front of it as if knocked out by a giant hoof.

Before we could get to a fake Gas Station from a TV show, real petrol became necessary and we stopped at a father-and-son style gas station in the area. Pops came out to fill up the tank and we both had a chat to him. He was relieved to find out Laura was not a Canadian from Ontario because "City Folk think their s**t don't stink" and was tickled by the story of how Laura and I became friends from Quebec city to Calgary.

I think it came as a surprise to quite a few folks that we would go all the way from our home countries to Calgary and then drive up to 9 hours each way for a weekend in the middle of nowhere. When I went in to pay for the petrol, the 16 yr old son lost all his polite and disinterested service staff manners when he asked me where we were from.

"Wagga Wagga Australia and Waco, Texas"
"Jesus!"
"Nah mate, just a couple of angels. Have a good day".


At Rolleau, we did find we were the first tourists for the day. This did not last long as a family of 4 generations of Nova Scotians turned up at the outdoor set.

There's no escaping Nova Scotians. They are passionate abut Maritime life but it doesn't stop them from spending time everywhere else in Canada. In this particular family, the adult son had recently graduated from the RCMP training school in Regina and his wife, his son, his parents and his grandmother were all in SK to make a weekend of it. Laura and I offered to take some group photos of the family on their cameras and the grandmother took a fancy to me, having travelled Australia. I was able to validate her claims to the family that yes, the spiders are most certainly that "big and scary".

Laura's suggestion that I have a photo taken with the Mountie graduate was met with an instant veto from me based on the polite and silent disapproval on his wife's face. Besides, he wasn't in uniform (My desire to get a photo of a real live Mountie was bordering on obsession until I saw them recently in the Calgary Stampede Parade).

Laura and I headed into town for a sandwich lunch at the local cafe, whose facade is the Mayor's office and the Dog River Public library in the show. There were signatures all over the walls from all over the world and we are proud to have added our names for posterity. We trawled around town taking photos of familiar places from the show and recounting episodes to each other.

We headed back to the Gas station for final photos before heading into Regina. A Canadian Pacific freight train was passing through the area at the time. We heard and saw the train a long way off. So we waited. And waited. And waited. More people are killed in train-related accidents than any other kind on SK each year. My theory is that with being able to see and adjust to the idea of an object coming from a long way away, you cease after awhile to be on alert for it until it's on top of you.

The train driver must have noticed us as we took photos of his train against the grain silo. Not long after we got in the car we caught up with the train running parallel to the highway and he tooted us about 4 or 5 times as we rolled down the windows and waved.

That was a definite first. I'd need to be beeped by an Air Canada pilot to top that. I don't even think they have horns.

Dog (River) Days

Corner Gas. I've mentioned it before and click on the links at the end of this post to get a better idea of what I'm talking about. It's a TV show set in the fictional "blink and you miss it" town of Dog River, Saskatchewan. It's a comedy about a town where nothing happens and Laura and I are big fans.

We are not the only ones. The Premier of Saskatchewan (SK) has had a cameo on the show, as has the Prime Minister. The best part is that it has made a province which is the butt of the rest of the country's jokes, into a winner due to being able to laugh at itself.

Regina, the capital of SK, is halfway from Calgary to Winnipeg. Winnipeg is far enough away for there to be a time difference. Laura and I were planning on going to the outdoor set of Corner Gas in a weekend.

Doing it was both a team effort and a credit to Laura's stubborness in planning and achieving goals.

We headed out of Calgary on a Friday night in late April after work, stopping long enough to leave a copy of my cardboard, partly handwritten, issued in Wagga Wagga international driver's licence with her car insurer. They didn't bat an eyelid, those trusting Canuks. Willie Nelson was put on the CD player and we were On the Road Again. We were Thelma and Louise that weekend, except Laura didn't shoot anyone and I didn't sleep with Brad Pitt.

Laura drove late into the night, which required some nerves of steel as not only were there no electric lights on the highway, there were no "cats eyes" reflectors on the road to mark the curves. The only illumination were the car lights and the stars above, which I enjoyed getting a good look at for the first time since I'd left Winnipeg in February.

We stopped for a late night supper at A&W fast food joint, which apparently make the best burgers in Canada and definitely the best root beer. Laura and I were the only ones in the restaurant with a couple of trash-makeup bored teens working there at about 9.30 pm. I was tired enough to ask Laura "What is root beer made out of?" Her lightening-fast comeback "Roots" and the two of us going into hysterics in front of the Osborne teenagers who worked there. However, it did merit a phone call to Laura's mum in Texas to ask, and she did not have a more comprehensive answer either, so maybe it's not such a silly question. Reader, if you can name the makings of root beer without researching it on Wikipedia, I may just have to think up a post-a-ble prize to send you.

Having passed Medicine Hat and realising we were not going to make it as far as Swift Current (SK) by that evening, we settled for crossing the border for a village called Gull Lake. There we found the one family run motel- the Lazy Dee to settle in for the night. The Lazy Dee was a drive-in motel, with a clanker of a heater, two double beds, clean facilities and a decent lock on the door. We were set. We checked in, walked into the field across the road to check out the stars, winking over the numerous tractors and train lines, I gave Laura some coaching on talking in an Aussie accent (she's a shocker) and we went to bed.

I feel somewhat strange after that first night of sharing a room with Laura. Not because we shared a room (which we did) or because I forgot my toothbrush and ended up using one of those disposable finger covers which doesn't quite do the job. No, it was because the shape and state of my pyjamaed bottom was objectively assessed by my best friend here and has since been reported amongst our mutual friends. Fortunately my unsuspecting and half-asleep bum passed whatever North American test of proportion, applied by Laura that next morning but it was both flattering and disconcerting to be informed later by my other friends that I was apparently in alright shape. For the record, Laura is straight.

Somewhere along the way to Swift Current I forgave Laura for waking me up before 7am and putting me in the driver's seat for my first experience ever of driving in the left side of the car on the right side of the road. This was without so much as a cup of English breakfast to moisten my tired brain cells. I was promised breakfast later, which I got as a reward for not killing either of us on the road. The logic was that on a dual carriage highway on a straight road on flat ground, I couldn't get into too much trouble. I did ok, but my sense of spacial awareness is not good on the road at all and I appreciated the trust that went into putting me in the driver's seat.

We made it to Rolleau, the village where Corner Gas is shot by 11 am the Saturday morning on a clear sunny day ahead of all the other tourists. Certainly from Housten and Waco in Texas and Wagga and Canberra in Australia, we'd travelled the furthest.

I've linked a new web album for the weekend. The sky doesn't get much bigger than out there.

All things Canadian- Corner Gas

Late last year my friend Chris in Winnipeg started raving to me about Corner Gas. Like Tim Hortons coffee shops (a franchise which is seems to be more common than MacDonalds here) he could not quite believe I hadn't heard of Canada's No.1 TV program, which is a sitcom.

Now the Canadians are not big on watching TV unless it's the hockey being played live, and they are watching it in their local bar on the big screen and eating chicken wings with their own (pretty crappy) beer. I know this because especially since moving to Calgary and the Calgary Flames were on their winning streak which got them into the playoffs (semi-final rounds), I have been watching telly under the same circumstances.

However, I managed to find out in December last year that Corner Gas was screened on Australian TV- SBS (the foreign language channel) on a Friday evening and watched an episode. This cracked me up more for the fact that the Aussies were showing it on the foreign language channel (Corner Gas is in English) than anything else. The show itself did not grab me immediately.

Corner Gas is the name of a petrol station on a corner in the fictional village of Dog River in Saskatchewan. There is the gas station, a cafe, a pub, a police station, the mayor's office and not much else to support the neighbouring farming community. The whole idea of the show is that it is character-driven by all the funny day to day stuff that happens in a small town. You wouldn't think that there would be enough material to support one episode let alone 4 seasons of this show. Well it is still growing strong and amazingly has the support of the nation. Literally, the current sitting Prime Minister, Stephen Harper had a cameo at the end of the last season, weighing into the debate in one storyline on the show whether Dog River should build a Big Prairie Dog or a Big Gofer to draw tourism to the fictional town.

One of the things that amuses me the most is that with the popularity of the show, the province of Saskatchewan has been raised.

Back home many individual states get dumped on for being boring but if you think about it, in Aust every State and Territory has a beach (ACT has Jarvis Bay for those smarties playing at home), and usually something "interesting" about it.

South Australia has wine regions and sharks, QLD the Barrier Reef and island honeymoons, NT has Ayers Rock and crocodiles, WA has diamonds, emeralds, iron ore and Margaret River wines, Tasmania has cycling and forests and apple cider and King Island cream, NSW has Sydney, Byron Bay, Hunter Valley and Griffith wine and Lightening Ridge opals, Victoria has Melbourne, the Dandenongs, more wine and the Great Ocean Road.

Saskatchewan has fields. Lots of them. Flat, bread-basket country. No trees, no beach, no hills, no mountains and a landspace bigger than Sweden. Amongst Canadians it was (maybe still is) the country's joke in terms of the dullest place imaginable to live. Having a successful comedy about the place has been sweet revenge for the province of Saskatchewan.

So, I have since watched to the end of Season 3 on DVD and Laura and I have become a pretty big fans too. After The Simpsons, it is the funniest and cleverest show I've seen, suitable for anyone to watch. I hope it comes back to Australian TV so you can see what I'm talking about. Watch out on SBS for season 2.

In the meantime, Laura and I are planning a weekend trip to Rolleau, the village where the show is set with a stay in Regina, one of the big towns in the province. We'll be Thelma and Louising it on the Trans- Canada highway. There is something a little odd about a Texan and an Aussie being big fans of a Canadian show, but good humour is universal.

Of course I can't tell you when we're going, because it's the blog.

Check out http://www.cornergas.com/

In the meantime, here are the lyrics that open the show.


You could tell me that your dog ran away,
Then you tell me that it took three days.

I've heard every joke,
I've heard every word you say

You think there's not a lot goin' on,
Look closer and you're so wrong

That's why you can stay so long
When there's not a lot goin' on