Oh, Canada! The Tales of Visits of Yore

    In case you did not know, I very much enjoy and like Canada. I have been able to go there throughout my lifetime. I have mostly great memories of the visits and trips in the lands and sea ways of the "Great White North". My last visit up there was with my son. We drove up into Saskatchewan from a small border crossing in North Dakota. It was getting dark by then, but we watched and observed much of the foreign landscape while there was still daylight. 

    I say foreign landscape because it is. Not us, not the same. Canada is not the United States, it is different. It was interesting to me that the farms, houses, and roads of this province did indeed appear distinctively different than the miles and miles of the United States that my son and I had driven through preceding this mysterious and remote plains province. We had been to a small corner of it the year before, but now was out time to see and absorb more.

   Our destination, Regina, which has the uncomfortable sound of pronunciation as it is said, lay to the north a few hours. It did become very dark along that northbound highway. The fields and expanses to the west, on the left, and the east, on the right, mostly flat with rolling or undulating ridges and wide mounds of wheat and whatever else they were growing in these huge extensive hectares of croplands with the silos and barns were being worked by large, behemoth machines that looked a bit like large roving space ships, with gargantuan racks and rows of white lights illuminating the dusty air and earth-disturbed fields, going on and on into the horizon.

    This was different. Harvest time, with the huge mechanized, night-time operating monsters of the crops and grains. The road got weirder as we continued, with cement barriers along the way, the roads and shoulders of it showing construction and unfinished works for the road and its surroundings.

    Eventually we made it to the outskirts of the provincial capital, the suburban homes and neighborhoods agglomerating as we went towards the city center.  We needed some dinner; and then, we clearly knew we were in Canada: (with a crazed French-like silly tone and pitch), "Oh, yes! Mes amis! We are in the country of the poutine of the A and W, avec le Root Beer, the quite tantalizing frosty mugs, and the burghairs, and the most intoxicating cheese and fries, formage et pomme de terre tre fritte, ooh la la! sacre blue et tout les chose!"

    Followed by a Tim Horton's, because a certain driver drank some milk along the drive that caused a delay and pain in the nether regions, that required a special elixir or juice to lubricate the flowage of release. If you get my meaning. Tim Horton had the stuff. A berry type drink, through the drive-through, which eased my pains and difficulties, accrued across the Lower 48, if you will. I picked up my son in the heart of rural Pennsylvania, then we passed by through Ohio, camped two nights in Michigan, then broached Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the aforementioned North Dakota.

    Lots of ground. We were doing well, having fun, except for my discomfort.

    My son plotted out a nice lake-side beach in the suburbs. The Tim Horton medicinal (and delicious) raspberry drink has its salutary effect: within an hour of two of drinking my would be infection and pain had subsides.

    Canada and its go-tos had healing in its wings!

    Oh, Canada! Not my home nor native land, but close enough to it.

    Yes, this was a land of bounty and beauty and some kind of salvation.

    This was good for me and us.