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Pegged

Saskatoon to Winnipeg today, via Regina. We didn’t stop much: half an hour for coffee in Brandon was our limit, as we had a goal in mind.

Our day in Saskatoon yesterday was excellent for rest and visits. The weather was warm and the trees in leaf. Unfortunately, the trees often look like this in a prairie spring

and this would be why…

Brunch at the Broadway Cafe with Mari-Lou and Albert was for me a welcome ham and cheddar omelette with nice home fries and good coffee.

Supper at Prairie Ink, in McNally Robinson‘s splendid store, with Mary included her chicken salad with pineapple,

my cream of asparagus soup

some Jerry’s ice cream

and the amazing flowering tea. Followed by some brisk book shopping.

We left this morning in a Saskatoon drizzle

but the light was fabulous

the grain elevators occasional

and only a single teapot on the road.

We crossed into Manitoba which can be very flat indeed.

We were puzzled by a field of hay (in bales) that went on

and on and on and on. Anyone out there know what this was?

But finally, after 10 hours’ driving, we reached Winnipeg and had time to check into the hotel, clean ourselves up and scamper down to Dubrovnik, where the menu is pretty swish-standard Canadian, but the quality is exceedingly good, as is the service. We started with an amuse-bouche of seared tuna

and then had Mesclun Greens with goat cheese and fresh raspberries and blueberries,

Ruth opting for escargot with strips of fried portabella mushrooms

followed by poached sea bass with mango chutney

while I had free-range chicken (I hate to ask how free that might really be in a Manitoba winter) with duck mousse and dried cranberry stuffing,

surrounded by lots of interesting vegetables and hiding a nice peppery portion of scalloped potatoes. We couldn’t manage dessert, although it looked pretty good, and left without allowing our photographs to join the rogue’s gallery of celebrity patrons (Pierre Trudeau, Bill Clinton, Richard Gere, Zsa-Zsa Gabor and all that riff-raff).

Toonie time

Due to some unfortunate early morning coincidence, we both woke up a couple of hours before the alarm went off yesterday, and then decided to get an early start, so left Hinton on a gorgeous sunny morning at 7am,

and promptly blew our advantage by lingering over a couple of poached eggs and some salty spuds at a caff in Evansburg.

Richard, our navigator, contemplates the jam selection.

The rest of the day was just drive drive drive.

Saw some deer, but they all stayed off the road.

Decided not to go shopping.
And we got to Saskatoon about 11 and a half hours after we started.
On the way, of course we saw some grain elevators. Here is a mother feeding its young.
In olden times, the young were the same boxy shape as their folks, with the same woody complexion, and grew up sporting the names of their towns or sometimes interesting bible quotations on their sides.

Nowadays the young take after their parents who are rounder and harder and less interesting, and who have sought corporate sponsorship (much like today’s humans who prefer designer logos I suppose) so you can no longer see where you are from a friendly landmark.

Hope to Hinton

Day 2 dawned wetly and foggily, much like ourselves.

We crossed the Coquihalla in good time, surprised for no good reason to see lots of snow at the summit,

and then swanned down the other side, past some of my favourite landscape, around Merritt

and on to and past Kamloops, noting pine beetle damage

and on and on up the Yellowhead, through Jasper

and finally to Hinton where the L&W; Family Restaurant served us some pretty good greek salad, spanakopita and navy bean soup.

The sun has set

on bunnies large and small and so we hit the hay for another day.

Hope, pie and we-haul

A while back, Ruth happened to mention she was looking for another driver to help her move her stuff across this chain of Tim Horton’s we call Canada. And so I stepped forward as co-pilot, co-driver, menu scrutineer and chief gastro-whinger.

Before leaving I enjoyed a pleasant Victoria Saturday with Judy and Peg, drooling over the baked goods at Moss Street Market

and then being treated to a quartet of Ferris‘ finest rockefeller oysters…

Have left Anton, who has been doing a good impersonation of a living vacuum cleaner at mealtimes, to convalesce from his (successful) eye op in Sidney.

It’s all started well. Ruth left the lot this morning with the U-Haul van; my mission was to drive her car to her house; only her car refused to start for me (I think it was suffering some separation and relocation anxiety and plain just didn’t like me, as it later started willingly for Ruth). Not a problem though; the car needed to be hitched to the van once it was packed anyway, so I was able to just leave it in the lot and wander around while Ruth’s burly men packed her earthlies into a compact space. Which they did with alarming speed!

Then, ready to head off, there were some more fraught moments in the lot while the cheerful attendant could not find a database listing for the car model we wanted to hitch to the van (which would have meant we would have had to haul a longer, heavier car trailer instead of a dolly). But the heroic general manager finally sussed it out and gave us the all clear, and off we lumbered to the ferry, which we made in plenty of time.

We managed to get to Hope, where the mountains are wreathed in fog, so it was lucky we meant to stop here. After some veggie burger and spinach salad

a good ol’ meat loaf dinner

and a shared piece of lemon meringue

from the Home Restaurant’s justly famous pie case, we had a stroll round the local supermarket where they had proudly flagged Local Products (the cashier explained this meant products that had been packed in Burnaby, rather than in China or Mexico or someplace – hence you could buy “Local” almonds, dates, raisins and escargot seasoning!), and soon we will tumble into dreams, resting up for tomorrow’s haul through the mountains.

GM food labelling – the debate

At last, I thought, some coverage of the bill c-517 debate on national radio! But no, I later realised I was tuned to Village 900 which was broadcasting a May 22 episode of an excellent program from Kootenay Co-op Radio called Deconstructing Dinner.

It was fascinating to hear the politicians who voted down the bill try to explain why they had done so. Listen for yourself; despite numerous polls which show Canadians want to know what they’re eating, too many politicians doggedly maintain they think it would be harmful to Canadians to be able to distinguish between GM and non GM foods.

You can read the debates in the Hansard: April 3 and May 5. See for yourself who said what, and who said nothing. Pretty interesting reading. As was the email I received from my MP who assures me he believes “in using a precautionary principle with regards to genetic engineering”. Apparently this precaution does not extend to labelling those precaution-worthy food items, since he voted against the bill.

Anyone in the neighbourhood wanting to talk more about this issue should come to the Slow Food Vancouver Island discussion on July 9.

Clam spotting

A pleasant afternoon in Maple Bay today.

Had an enlightening walk on the beach at low tide revisiting some of the bivalves of my youth, and a newcomer.

When I were a lass, the Manila clam (Venerupis philippinarum) was everywhere we poked our shovels; I remember chasing their spouts to gather a bucketful. They are colourful, with gradations of colour on the outside of their shells, and a line of purple on the inside. Gloriously tender when fresh, but not really that native: accidental immigrants from Japan in the 1930s who hitched a ride into our waters on oyster seed.

The unimaginatively named and rather pale cousin to the Manila, the good and hefty Native clam (aka Littleneck or Steamer or Protothaca staminea) has a healthy presence in ‘my’ bay.

Another you don’t see much is the Cockle, Clinocardium nuttallii.

Butter clams – surprisingly large, their size reflected in their Latin name: Saxidomus giganteus – tend to live deeper than Native and Manilas.

A newcomer from Japan, another freeloader (arriving in BC in the 1980s, in the ballast water of ships), the Mahogany (aka Purple Varnish or Nuttallia obscurata) is more fragile and therefore takes a beating in winter storms. The purple of the inner shell is more prominent the more freshly departed the clam. Lots of shells on the beach.

And then there were the starfish,

the sunfish,

and the flowers.