To start where we last left off, after arriving in Winnipeg on the train back from Churchill, we had a great couple of days meeting some friends in Winnipeg and getting to see a little of the city. Our first impression of Winnipeg, during our taxi ride from the airport to the train station the week before, was that it was a small town/city with dumpy houses and not a lot going for it. After having a bit more of a tour around it the following week, we have discovered that it is actually quite a nice city with beautiful gardens and a bustling city centre. It probably also helped that it was a beautiful sunny day and about 15 degrees, compared to the sub-zero temperatures, clumps of snow and dreary grey skies that we had seen the week before!
We were met at the train station by mum’s childhood pen pal, Irene Flett, who is originally from BC but has been labouring in Northern Manitoba for the last couple of years. We had been hoping to meet her while we were up north, but as it turned out she was having a couple of months in Winnipeg, which worked out even better. She had arranged a family for us to stay with for the night, so she and her companion Bonnie met us at the train station when we arrived, gave us a tour around Winnipeg, and then took us to the house we were staying at. We had a great evening there, with a fancy ‘supper’ and birthday cake for Bonnie’s birthday. The family – Donovan and Nora Hills and their 4 kids – were great and we really enjoyed their company. While there we also found out that we had just become aunt & uncle for the second time, with the arrival of little Dexter Jay Mellor back in Brisbane! :-)
The next morning Irene picked us up to take us to a meeting close to the airport. She had also arranged for another family who went there to take us out to lunch. They dropped us off at the airport afterwards for our flight back to Edmonton.
The weekend after our trip to Churchill, we spent a weekend with some local friends, Jamie & Monica Affleck, at Monica’s parents’ place in Stettler, a couple of hours south east of here. They have a farm in a beautiful area of rolling hills and ‘slews’ (small lakes). Several of Jamie & Monica’s friends from Calgary were also there. The plan was that the boys would spend Saturday hunting while the girls made salsa and apple pies! This was meant very literally – we made a batch of salsa that involved 30 cups of diced tomatoes, 4 cups of finely diced onions and several cups of vinegar, to name a few of the ingredients! It was soooo good though – we ate quite a lot of it while we were there, and also brought a few jars home with us. Much of the weekend was spent eating, in between a scrumptious brunch that some of the girls cooked on Saturday morning, snacking on chips and salsa, and then a fantastic ‘supper’ once the boys had finished hunting.
Using plastic bag 'gloves' to chop up jalapenos!
The hunting trip was fairly uneventful - they tracked a few deer and coyotes, but mostly spent the day shooting clays and muskrats (little rodents that live on the edge of the lakes). Justin enjoyed the chance to let off a few rounds though!
A couple of weeks later Jamie & Monica gave us an impromptu invite to go to a college basketball game one Friday night. We had been wanting to check out a college sports game, since this is a typical North American experience, with some college leagues having as big a following as other major leagues. We saw the tail end of the Alberta Pandas women’s team, who won their game by a decent margin, and then most of the Alberta Bears men’s team. That game was a lot closer, but they still won fairly convincingly. We discovered after we arrived that the college’s ice hockey team was also playing that night, so we managed to catch about half of their game as well. Despite being the reigning champions for most of the last ten years, and being undefeated so far this season, they lost their game to the second ranked team in the championship.
Ice hockey is an interesting game to watch, and definitely the national game of Canada, although Canadian football is pretty popular as well (I just can’t help but laugh whenever I see footballers here though – there are some who train just around the corner from our house, and they look absolutely ludicrous in their bulky shoulder pads and shiny purple Phantom-style leotards!!). Ice hockey (or just plain hockey as it is generally referred to – I got laughed at once for saying ‘ice skating’, since over here it is never referred to as anything other than ‘skating’!) is a fairly impressive high-speed game to watch, and must take a lot of skill – I have enough trouble as a spectator even following where the puck is, let alone trying to skate after it! Most hockey players start from a pretty young age, and most Canadian kids seem to play hockey at some stage in their childhood. In fact, Bonnie & Shaun’s 2 year old son (more on them later) has recently taken up hockey, and is very cute running around with his little plastic stick and rubber ball, yelling “SCORE” every time he hits the ball! We haven’t made it to an Oilers game yet (Edmonton’s major league team), but at $140 per seat for the cheaper seats we will probably give that a miss!
The Bears mascot dressed up for Halloween:
The cheerleaders dressed up as zombies for Halloween:
We didn’t dress up for Halloween, since we didn’t have any real plans for the day, but at the last minute we did get asked to dinner at Steve & Amber Ramage’s place with Brendan & Marsha Prattley there as well. We didn’t do anything very Halloween-y ourselves, but it was fun watching the countless trick-or-treaters up and down their street, and checking out all the house and street decorations on the way there. We didn't get many photos since we mostly saw them driving around at night, but there were some pretty impressive ones!
We bought some pumpkins to carve, but since we ran out of time on Halloween we actually carved them the following day instead.
And our pumpkins...
As another traditional Canadian experience, we went to the Canadian Finals Rodeo, again with Jamie & Monica. It is held indoors at Rexall Place, the Oilers’ home stadium. The ice plant for the hockey rink is turned off so that the ice can melt, and nearly 400 cubic metres of dirt is brought in. It was the first indoor rodeo we had ever been to, and with over 16,000 people in attendance, it had a pretty fun atmosphere! One of the more unusual parts of the night was the ‘Cowboy Poker’ tournament, which involved a small group of cowboys sitting on plastic outdoor furniture in the middle of the stadium, each with a poker hand, while a bull was let loose! The last man seated wins his hand. It was quite entertaining, and the cowboys did their best to make it so!
Jamie & Monica
A couple of Sundays ago Dale & Joan Cronin organised a supper for us with some others from our meeting. It was a great evening, with lots of chatting and laughing. We will really miss these people! After having been to Brendan & Marsha’s place for lunch the same day, and eating WAY more than we should have, we turned up for dinner not even hungry, and then since the food was so good, ate another mountain of it until we could barely move! It took hours afterwards to even start to recover!!
Brendan & Marsha & Talia Prattley
Last weekend we had some special meetings, followed by an evening with Bonnie & Shaun Jordan (who we had met at the barbeque at Bonnie’s sister’s place – see our “Two months in Edmonton” post) and their two little boys Bentley (2 years) and Ryder (6 months), plus most of Shaun’s family – his brother, sister and her husband, and his parents, plus another young couple from the south side of Edmonton. Bentley kept us all entertained with his never-ending energy and hockey playing skills (or more particularly his hockey commentary!).
Overall it has been a great couple of months since our last post, meeting new people, getting to know ones we had already met a lot better, and having some traditional Canadian experiences. More very typical Canadian experiences were to come though… See the next post!
Wow, those carved pumpkins are excellent self portraits!! ;)
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely love the sound of Cowboy Poker!