THE EXPEDITION Chapter 15: Small Towns, Large Extremes, Short Rants, and Deep Stuff (Section 2)
- Ann Cognito
- May 4, 2022
- 6 min read
In which Ann meets the only Trudeau fan on the Canadian prairies?
Date: June 9 2019
Grenfell to Broadview 27 km
We set out for Broadview in the morning with cleaner clothes, a cleaner bod, and a cleaner perspective. A storm poured a huge bucketful of rain over the highway ahead of us, but not on us. We were actually astoundingly blessed in terms of weather for the entire trip, multiple ways. Storms usually missed us, and once we spent an entire day sandwiched between two storms, neither of which came near us. The only times we got truly soaked where times when truly good things happened as a result. Unlikely as it sounds, not a single tornado threatened us even though we walked right through the middle of where they happen during that entire season.
Typing that last sentence makes me shake my head. I’m 52 as I write this. When I was in my early twenties, a tornado struck my hometown of Edmonton. I didn’t live there then but was as shocked as everyone else – those things simply didn’t happen up here, only down in the States. Now it’s become normal every year all across the Canadian prairies. It should have taken millennia for change that rapid.
This day, the weather took pity I guess, or maybe it was just helping. Tailwinds took us to Broadview without wrecking me nearly as badly as the previous couple days, and with plenty of time for sorting out ourselves and the evening.
Phil of Trail Campground fame had recommended a few places here to eat and to stay at here and the next town, because he’s from hereabouts. He also highly recommended the railway museum, having been a career railway man, and I wish I’d had an extra day in my pocket so I could have stopped there. We did have a lovely dinner though, and the ladies there are good people. The proprietress and I had a very good and interesting conversation and it would have been so nice to have had time for more – dinner and talk! We took our time, but finally thanked her and went to find the campground.
We didn’t make it as far as the next intersection before a conversation with a passerby resulted in the kind offer of a big beautiful treed backyard to camp in, with a shower and laundry. It was awfully kind, and a lovely yard with plenty of room for Mr Myrtle to run, but the best part was the wonderful company. He and his wife are awfully sweet, and are also deeply troubled about the future. We talked that evening, and longer over early coffees on their deck in the morning, and I wish we could have talked so much more.
Date: June 10 2019
Broadview to Whitewood 25 km
Then I found the local supermarket, which, as they’d promised, had quite a few good healthy packable things. I picked some different bars, and apples, and I forget what else, and then had more great talks with a few locals before getting back to the highway. It had taken a while but we’d been up early, and it would have been more than worth it even otherwise. Whitewood was 25 kilometers; a shorter day than the past few chunks of road had been.
Or it would have been if we hadn’t gone back and forth first trying to find the campground, which I somehow missed on the way in and then couldn’t find anyone at to ask about staying, then in to the newspaper office where I had an interview, then back to the campground, where I still couldn’t find anyone , then farther the other way again to the only place I could find something other than fries to eat, and then to the campground again, where there still wasn’t anyone except the young guys staying there. It turned out it was an honour box system… I think the mention of it online has been updated now.
I should have stayed at the truck stop where we’d eaten. This place only allowed tents in a small strip of grass right on the main road into town. I broke that rule and put us where I felt alright. The maintenance folks who turned up as we left in the morning were not amused. I wasn’t either, by then. The bright lights had been on all night. The whole place smelled. The shower was filthy. The washroom was worse and had no paper. The maintenance folks were rude. I admit I didn’t pay. I left a note instead.
It was quite a town. I didn’t even see most of it but did more mileage backing and forthing than I would have if I’d taken a tour. I had my head very thoroughly and dramatically bitten off by a Trudeau fan who believed that he and his hairdo are the best things to hit Canadian politics (and women) in, well, forever. She loudly told me all about how stupid I was to disagree, and to have the nerve to try to do what I was doing, as I abandoned any attempt at reasonable conversation and left.
The reporter at the paper more than made up for her. She was brilliant and interesting and interested. We probably could have talked all night, and she wrote a great article which I’ve lost the link to and can’t read because it’s paywalled. That opened the can of worms in my head about media irresponsibility, and how and why something as simple as news has become a lucrative and theatrical business instead of what it is – news.
To be fair, there were several journalists along the way who did really good articles and interviews, and honestly, most of them were great. Some were amazing. They all knocked my socks off for being interested and for caring enough to do the story well and get my message out there.
But in general, the media has bailed on us. Instead of providing real information, they make money and promote politics. This is, of course, most dramatic in the west. We ought to be getting daily summaries and updates regarding the ongoing collapse of the environment, the increasingly hyperactive weather, and the accompanying deterioration of everything else. Instead we have live soap operas to distract us and keep selling the impossible materialist delusion. Elsewhere, things are different. In the UK, the Guardian publishes daily local climate crisis information and updates. It’s a bit minimal but it makes the crisis part of everyday reality, and it’ll get more thorough. It’s better than the weather reports we have here, with weathermen being psychotically happy about unseasonal heat waves, and treating fire season as a normal thing, and never once mentioning the reason for the increasingly extreme weather.
Here, though, I loved talking with Elaine.
The people at the truckstop where we had dinner were great too. The staff were interested in my story and my mission, as were several customers. I’m pretty sure a lot of places made our orders a little bigger, or added cheese or whatever, being helpful to us that way, and we never had a meal that wasn’t really yummy. Here they happily made us breakfast for dinner, and let us have a good break. They even sent us off with extra peanut butter for Mr Myrtle.
Date: June 11 2019
Whitewood to Wapella 24.5 km
I figured we’d reach Wapella later in the afternoon, and we were making decent time so I let us take a break to wander through tall grass and flowers. Mr Myrtle loves doing that, and always wore his hiking boots and plenty of good tick repellent. So did I. It’s made of essential oils because the commercial chemical solutions make us both sick, and because this works better anyways. Mix up peppermint, eucalyptus, lavender, cedar, geranium, lemon, and fleabane if you can find it… beats the heck out of anything else I’ve ever used, and it’s healthier for planet, puppies, and people. Once during this trip, I was out in the bush with some people who kept putting on their extra strength heavy duty deet- and etc-filled brand name stuff. They reapplied theirs every half hour or so, and picked dozens off ticks off each other. I put our concoction on Mr Myrtle and myself three times – he got two ticks, I got three, and I got rid of them before they dug in. We each only got a couple more the whole trip..
Ticks aside, I can’t stand killing bugs. It always made me physically squeamish; now it makes me morally squeamish, and in light of the insect apocalypse, ethically squeamish too. This concoction doesn’t kill them. It keeps them away.
I must have hundreds of photos of trees and flowers and weather and I added more this day. I kept adding the seeds to the collection, too. It’s tucked away safely. I considered using all the receipts form the trip to make a big papier mache seed bomb, but then it seemed like maybe that sort of paper would have too many chemicals not conducive to growing healthy plants.
Even with our break, it was early afternoon when we rolled into town.
4Just by the way, maybe don’t put small peanut butter packets in pockets on sunny days… sometimes they explode.
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