Our Winnipeg adventure:
July 11, 2019
Thursday morning when we got up the temperature was already in the low 20s with the prediction that it would go to about 29 so we thought we had better go for a motorcycle ride before it got too hot. We decided to go visit some of the small towns in the area. The first that we did went through was Mitchell and I looked for any reference to you Dorothy and Richard. Didn’t see any but then very well may have missed it. We stopped in Steinbach for fuel and saw a sign for a Route 52 diner. Since we had ridden Route 66 in the US and stopped at a diner there, we thought we should take a quick break.
They make their own ice cream so I had a wild berry milkshake and Greg had a orange float. So good. We then headed back out to see other villages and managed a 200+ km ride. We had hoped to do more but the wind gusts were getting stronger so we headed back to our RV in Ils des Chenes, another small town about 20 minutes or so from Winnipeg. On our ride we decided to stay another day and do some more sightseeing. Luckily that was not a problem. We got ready to go meet our niece Margaret MaGee for dinner and discovered that Winnipeg was under road construction too. We had a great meal and a wonderful get together. It has been more years than I can remember since we have seen each other.
There was a tornado and severe storm watch so we headed back early to our respective homes to await what was to happen. We had some rain but the bad weather didn’t come our way. Greg went off to take pictures of the clouds that were building and saw a very large double rainbow. I tried to encourage him to go to the end of rainbow to see if he could find a pot of gold. Instead he came home and made some plans for tomorrow’s adventure.
July 12.
Our first adventure was a 2.5 hour city tour with the Winnipeg Trolley Company. We saw over 90 sites in the tour such as St. Boniface, the exchange district, Assiniboine Park, Legislative buildings, Osborne Village, Portage and Main etc. etc. One of the highlights for us was a stroll down a back lane to look at pictures painted on garage doors by a well-known artist.
Apparently she was planning to paint a picture of a northern animal and wanted to practice before she did it for “real” so she painted the picture on her garage door. Her neighbours loved it and she said she would paint a picture on their garage for free if it was a northern animal and if they wanted something else it would cost them $10,000. Needless to say everyone chose a northern animal.
On a different note we also saw the place where the Guess Who used to practice before they became famous as well as the childhood home of Neil Young. Keanu Reeves is also from Winnipeg. A bit of comic relief was that the famous writer Matt Groening of the Simpsons fame named Homer after his father Homer Groening who was from….you guessed it, Winnipeg. We had no idea that a huge part of downtown Winnipeg is comprised of dozens up dozens of heritage buildings. After the tour we explored the Forks Market. It was neat with all sorts of bread, baking, and different foods.
8 stories to the observation deck.
After this we went to the Museum of Human Rights. The special exhibit was on apartheid and Nelson Mandela. Very powerful. Another part that was meaningful for Greg was the exhibit on the Holodomor (the purposeful starvation of the Ukrainian people by the Russians where somewhere between 3.3 to 7.5 million were killed). The silence surrounding this activity by the press and other nations was highlighted which is why the number who starved and were killed is so vague.
We recognized soon that we could have spent the whole day here and still not explore and look at all the exhibits. It never ceases to amaze me what we can do to each other and what is worse we often think it is justified. Not sure we have learned anything over time in how to treat and be with each other. I think everyone should try and visit this museum. It was interesting to learn that Canada has signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women of 1979 but Quebec by choice still buys its crude oil from Saudi Arabia and forces the Maritimes to do the same by doing everything in their power to block the distribution of Canada’s own oil.
The rest of the day was spent doing laundry and getting ready for the next phase of our trip … Saskatchewan.
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Considering what’s going on in the world, these blogs bring to heart the major human rights issues of today.
A lot of progress has been made, but there is still a long road ahead. I think that everyone should see the Museum of Human Rights.
Hooray! Looks like you’re homeward bound! Love the sky pics. Glad you know how to read the clouds – a lot of micro-storms (?) and weather events across the prairies, lately. Happy trails!!
Still a few more weeks of travel. We are heading for the other coast or it won’t be a coast to coast trip. Will probably be in Calgary in a couple of days for one night. Possibly Monday?
We have taken the highway around Lake Superior and know how long and lonely it is. Amazed at how large the lake is. Also have visited visited the Forks Market and ate there. Winnipeg was an overnighter and just visiting a friend so didn’t see everything you did. Wish we could have seen the Museum of Human Rights. Safe trip on to Calgary.
We had originally only planned for two nights and added on a third so we could go to the museum etc. It is hard to know what to see and skip and one needs to fit in a down day too just to not do anything. Hard to believe that as of tomorrow we will have been travelling for 2 months.