For this trip we did something highly unusual. We woke and packed the car in a reasonable amount of time. I remember one year we were embarking on a trip to Arizona it took us so long to get going, it appeared that we might not get past St. Pierre Manitoba. That day we had a late lunch at Mitchell Manitoba about 6 miles from Steinbach. Not a great start. This year was much better. Far from perfect, but much better.

Our packing this year was suspiciously efficient. Christiane and I are not famous for being efficient. Something must be wrong. This time both of my two bags and Christiane’s 2 bags were not full!  Moreover, the car was not full either. Have we missed some urgent items?  Are they large ones? Any other explanation seems highly unlikely. Even the bulky walker we packed for Chris does not eat up all available space.

As we drove down the Trans-Canada highway we marvelled at the Canadian scenery.  The beauty of Canada is stunning. Some friends have actually said to us that there is nothing to see between here (Steinbach) and the east coast.  This is also insane. It is not Canada that is boring. People who think that are boring. They are boring.

We saw rocks and trees and lakes in endless combinations of beauty are that are never repeated and are boring only to the boring.

The golden phragmites beside the Trans-Canada highway in some places were a gorgeous unique white gold. The leaves of trees were just starting to turn colour. That is what we were hoping for. We expect to be about 6 weeks on this trip, going right through the leaf season and we want to soak it all in.

One thing I found frustrating about this trip and I noticed it within about 2 hours of the trip.  That was that it is very difficult along the Trans-Canada Highway to stop and take photographs.  I had purchased a new camera recently, since I had accidentally smashed it earlier in the year in Arizona. I wanted to take a lot of photographs.  I was still learning how to use the camera. But there is very little room to stop and take photographs on the highway. It is basically illegal in most places. More importantly, Chris gets easily annoyed with me and my frequent stops. So I did my best not to make too many stops along the way.

As a result I have no photographs of the historic Winnipeg River.

I had taken a book along as sort of a guidebook. An unusual guidebook. It was Exploring the Fur Trade Routes of North America, by Barbara Huck and had many interesting illustrations and photographs. Some of the photographs were taken by my friend, and great photographer,  Dennis Fast. The cover of the book invited us to “Discover the Highways that Opened a Continent.”  That is what I wanted to do.

At Kenora we crossed the historic Winnipeg River. Huck’s book had some interesting information on this river I had crossed many times:

Dropping from Lake of the Woods in the Canadian Shield into Lake Winnipeg at the edge of the Manitoba Lowlands, the voyageurs knew was a wild, beautiful waterway that traversed Earth’s most ancient mountains.  Eric Morse, historian and discriminating canoeist, called it “unquestionably the grandest and most beautiful river the Montreal Northmen saw on their whole journey from Lake Superior to Lake Athabasca.

This meant this was a fantastic river to cross in the first couple of hours of our journey.  What a great start. We were ready for adventures.

The book went on though in its description of this grand and beautiful river as she called it:

“Over its 225 kilometres length it drops 100 metres and was once a river of spectacular falls and rapids. Today, though tamed by eight dams along its length, parts of the waterway still invite even challenge, paddlers.”

 

What a pity. I love waterfalls and photographed many of them on this trip, but not the Winnipeg River. There were none to see from the highway. All gone in the dubious name of progress.  I have photographed the river on other occasions in many places, but not on this trip.

This also sums up our trip. The best of times the worst of times. We saw the good, the bad, and the ugly of Canada. We saw places of splendid beauty. We saw places of desolation.  we saw Canada rising and we saw Canada in sad decline.