It’s a long drive across Canada, but long drives are what we do. Over the pandemic we’ve been moseying around western Canada. But things are opening up and now we can mosey eastwards: over the Rockies and out overlanding the prairies on the other side. “But there’s nothing there!” they warned us in BC. So we go to see what ‘nothing’ looks like on the prairies. And on the way, Cuthbert finds a bit of tv stardom!

Alberta: Aliens and Bison

First province to cross is Alberta. Regular Cuthberteers may recall that we toured a fair chunk of Alberta last year and saw most of the province’s Gucci highlights. It’s famously home to the gob-smacking Banff and Jasper National Parks, but it’s full of fabulously quirky stuff too.

On last year’s tour of Alberta we thought we’d seen the ‘quirkiest of all things quirky’ at the Gopher World Museum (check it out, it’s blowing of the mind!). But no. This time in Alberta we visit a place that might just out-quirk the stuffed-gopher museum: a designated UFO Landing Pad. I kid you not. In St Pauls, Alberta they’ve actually gone and built themselves a place for aliens to land when they come to visit earth. And when the aliens get here, Gary the Green Guy is standing by to make a few bucks selling them some ice-cream. I know, this all sounds just a teeny bit incredible, but seriously… we couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried 😊

Also in Alberta, we went to see a bison or two in Elk Island National Park. Bison don’t roam wild in this part of Canada and it’s been a while since we caught them roaming back in the Yukon/northern BC last year. It’s worth the effort to rise at dawn to see herds grazing around the plains in the park, or at least we thought it was… until we later progressed to Manitoba where we saw shed-loads of them grazing in farm fields at the side of the road!!!  

Saskatchewan: I see no ships!

Moseying east out of Alberta is Saskatchewan: our fifth province/territory in Canada. The scenery couldn’t really be in starker contrast to what we had become used to in BC over the last few months. The Great Plains of the prairies stretch out for miles and miles… and miles. The distant views and big skies are amazing. It’s so flat here, locals say you can watch your dog run away for two weeks!

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Now… Saskatchewan isn’t famous for its big-ticket international tourist attractions, and we have no real ‘must see’ boxes to tick off our list here. But box-ticking isn’t really why we do this overlanding thing. We like to go at least a wee bit off the beaten track, and in Saskatchewan we learn that Alberta doesn’t have the monopoly on the curious, quirky stuff of Canada.

We avoid the tarmac highways and stick to the network of gravel farm tracks so we can slow down and take in the views. After just a few hours, we find our Saskatchewan quirky item number one: a lighthouse. Yup, a lighthouse. One of those things more typically found by the ocean to warn big ships off treacherous rocks. But here it’s over 1,300km from the coast. Baffling… but kinda cool.

Dead Sea

Equally baffling is the nearby Crooked Bush. These crooked cedars are well hidden deep in the prairies, but the reason they fail to grow upwards towards the light (like most ‘normal’ plants do) is apparently puzzling botanists. Hmmm… curious! 

Just down the road is the trendy city of Saskatoon. Say it again… Sas-ka-toooon (such an utterly cool place name!). The city has quite a great vibe and we enjoyed mooching around the shops and market there. Next, we pushed on to find another little-known wonder: a ‘dead sea’.

Years ago when we lived in the Middle East, we visited the famous Dead Sea between Jordan and Israel. The extreme salt content creates a freaky buoyancy and at the time we thought this phenomenon was unique. Pah! How little we knew! Canada has a ‘dead sea’ too, at Manitou Beach, Saskatchewan! It has a slightly lower saline content than its Middle Eastern brother, but apparently it’s classified in the same league.

We’d love to be able to post stunning pictures of a clear blue sky and a sparkling lake at Manitou Beach, but we can’t. That’s not to say it’s not a beautiful place, we’re absolutely sure it it’s gorgeous. It’s just that we’re unlucky with our timing: the sky is consistently grey and murky with smoke pollution from the forest fires many miles away to the north. The vast forest fires are themselves tragic enough, but the consequential degradation in air quality across vast swathes of the country is a secondary disaster for Canadians ☹.       

Moose King

Moving on south is the town of Moose Jaw. Now if there is a more classic Canadian place name than ‘Moose Jaw’, I’d love to hear it!! Moose Jaw is home to Mac the Moose: the world’s largest moose (Canada just loves a ‘world’s largest… whatever’). Mac stands proudly on the edge of town and is indeed a very large moose. But Mac’s accolade is precarious and he’s constantly looking over his shoulder at the competition. He was originally the largest, then Stor-Elvdal in Norway built a bigger one. Moose Jaw responded by finding some larger antlers for Mac and he’s now once again the Moose King. But for how long? It’s only a matter of time ‘til Norway hits back!

RCMP

East from Moose Jaw is Saskatchewan’s provincial capital: Regina. Now… by way of background to this bit of our story, I’ll come clean and disclose that I have a dubious history with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).  The RCMP are the only police force in the world to have ever done me for speeding, and I have driven in many countries of the world! It was Nova Scotia in 1986 (not that I’m still bitter or anything)!  Okay, I’ll admit that I was indeed speeding, so it did serve me right.

Skip forward 35 years, we’re passing through Regina and have the chance to visit the museum of the training centre attended by every single Mountie who has ever served. So that guy who nabbed me in Nova Scotia way back in 1986… here is where he learned how to nab me! Anyway, enough about my crime-ridden past… the museum is really worth a visit, a great insight into this iconic police force and the challenges they face policing a country as huge and diverse as Canada 

More quirkery…

Another of the many quirky things we’ve found is the Eiffel Tower. No, we haven’t upped sticks back to Europe. This Eiffel Tower stands proudly in the Saskatchewan village of Montmartre (get the connection? 😉). It’s a bit smaller than the original, but hey… who’s measuring, eh?

Nearby, there’s more of the ‘world’s biggest’ malarkey in the village of Kipling. British readers might be expecting us to find the world’s largest ‘exceedingly good cakes’, but no. Kipling is the home of the world’s biggest… wait for it… paperclip! It’s here because in 2005 some guy bought a red paperclip. Then over a period of just one year he traded it up gradually, first swapping it for a fish-shaped pen, then a door-knob, a snowmobile, a cube-van etc, etc, etc, to finally convert the ownership of a paper-clip into a house!     

TV Stardom

As we were leaving Saskatchewan we received an email from Ryan, a tv news presenter in Saskatoon. He had seen Cuthbert back at Manitou Beach and wanted to feature our story on his morning tv show. This is the third time in our travels that Cuthbert has featured on the telly and we were chuffed to do a Zoom interview with Ryan. Click here if you want to watch it. After broadcast we received some lovely emails from people around Saskatchewan offering us generous hospitality (they’re sooo nice those Canadian people y’ know 😊).    

Manitoba: Prairie Life

Further east, the Great Plains continue into our province/territory number six… Manitoba! Our first stop here is with the lovely Stephen, Michelle and their son, Liam. We were fascinated to learn from them about farming life out on the prairies. Their super-cute and ultra-adorable kid goat Monty was a bit curious about Cuthbert and just managed to jump up the steps to investigate us. We’ve often thought about getting a small dog for overlanding, but Monty got us thinking how cool it would be to do ‘goatverlanding’ with a miniature-breed (just kidding! 🤣).

Parks, Elevators and Heritage

The scenery across Manitoba doesn’t vary hugely from that in Saskatchewan. As we were warned back in BC, there is indeed a great deal of nothing. But it’s a glorious ‘nothing’ and we loved driving across it. The open plains, the big skies, the views that go on for ever… it’s marvellous. It’s what a trans-Canadian road trip is all about. Can you even say you’ve ‘done’ Canada until you’ve driven the Great Plains? 😉

In between the ‘nothing’, Manitoba does have some great parks with beautiful lakes. If your life is on the prairies, these are no doubt an oasis of calm to escape to for holidays. But we’ve done a lot of sitting by beautiful lakes in Canada over this pandemic. We’re sure there is much more to this country than nice scenery, so in Manitoba we skip through the parks to find things that make Canada tic.  

We visited a grain elevator to learn about these iconic buildings that dot the prairie landscape. And we visited the communities around Lake Winnipeg to learn about the heritage of immigration from Iceland and Finland. And across Canada we have visited the major cities to learn about their food, industries, architecture, history and governance. This kind of thing we never learnt in school.    

In between the prairies is some city stuff

Half way

Finally, in eastern Manitoba we reach the half-way point of Canada. It’s over a year since we were at the far western extent of Canada, in the Yukon at the Alaska border. Now just east of Winnipeg is the mid-way point.

On we go heading east. It’s just a mere 4,000km to go to the eastern point in Newfoundland. Standby for tales from our province number seven: Ontario!