From the thrills of Grasslands National Park, it was a half-day’s drive to our next planned stop, Moose Mountain Park, near Kenosee Lake, Saskatchewan, not far from where my grandfather and later my uncles had farmed from 1905 until the 1970s. As it turned out, we wouldn’t stay on Moose Mountain, but continue on to Moosomin where my Uncle Alec and Aunt Iris live now, and where I had lived from 1946 to 1950.
We chose to continue along Hwy. 18 and to enjoy the sparsely populated flat lands. Stubble from last year’s crops lay unplowed, and, as I was to learn from Uncle Alex, not about to be; back in my youth it would have been yearning for burning. In our times it will most likely be seeded over directly by equipment like that shown below in an earlier post.
Unfortunately, as we took few photos on this stage of the trip, I’ve had to link to/borrow some Internet images to illustrate highlights of this day.
At Mankato, we decided to change our route and head north to Hwy 13, which would take us across to Weyburn and through southeastern Saskatchewan’s oilfields.
At Lafleche, a small village that celebrated its centenary in 2013, where we bought some pastries at a small cafe-general store, we discovered that our left front tire was leaking air. We’d had a similar problem before much earlier in the Spring — a slow leak that could be “fixed” for several days by simply adding air. When we couldn’t find a place in the village with an air pump, we headed back to the highway. And there we found a huge implement repair/machine shop, Jason’s Agri-motive Parts Supply, staffed by a single employee, a gentleman who insisted on putting the air in himself and refused any payment for the service.
As we continued east, it wasn’t long before the tire warning light lit up again and we realized we had a bigger problem than we’d assumed. We managed to reach Assiniboia, 45 km from Lafleche, a welcome change from the tiny hamlets we’d been driving past.
Assiniboia is a thriving town of 2400 whose commercial district along the highway stretches over a kilometre and includes all kinds of farm and travel-related businesses. We found a Subway for lunch and a Kal Tire* to repair the tire (which they did right after their lunch break, with great efficiency and good humour. While we did not take the tire guy’s invitation to visit their “world famous art museum,” he made it sound very impressive. We left this town with in high spirits and a great appreciation of the progressive side of small town Sask., even though we didn’t expect to be able to fulfill his farewell “See you again!” We’ll remember this bustling place. (Curiously, Wikipedia’s write up of Lafleche is more than 12 times as long as Assiniboia’s, even though both are about the same age and Assiniboia has had an exciting history. The decaying, old villages seem to be all about remembering. The newer, burgeoning centres are much more about growth….
* I knew Kal Tire as a BC company only. Finding one out here was a great surprise, so I looked the company up on Wikipedia, where I discovered: “Kal Tire was started in 1953 by Thomas J. Foord and Jim Lochhead with the goal of servicing the commercial logging operations that operated in the Okanagan Valley around Vernon, British Columbia and Nakusp, British Columbia by building customers’ trust. Kal Tire was named after Kalamalka Lake, the prominent “Lake of Many Colours” landmark in Vernon. The company is still based in its birthplace of Vernon. Since 1953, Kal Tire has expanded steadily. Kal Tire comprises 165 company-owned branches, 49 independent associate dealers, 11 mining/industrial/commercial locations, 10 retread facilities, one OTR plant and four distribution warehouses. The business covers a market that includes British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northern Ontario, parts of Southern Ontario and Quebec, as well as mining operations in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, South America, the United Kingdom, Ghana and Australia.” Who knew?
Pardon the digression. From Assiniboia we continued onto Weyburn, a much larger city of nearly 11,000, a regional centre in the heart of Saskatchewan’s oil country.
Weyburn can promote itself. It was of interest to Nana and me for it’s “famous people,” including, according to Wikipedia:
• Pat Binns - former premier of Prince Edward Island
• Graham DeLaet - professional golfer
• Shirley Douglas - actress; ex-wife of Donald Sutherland and mother of Keifer
• Tommy Douglas - Baptist preacher, politician, recipient of The Greatest Canadian award in 2004, strongly associated .....with Canadian socialism and the introduction of medicare in Canada
• Eric Grimson - former Chancellor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Brett Jones - professional football player
• Guy Gavriel Kay - writer
• Trenna Keating - actress
• Brendon LaBatte - professional football player
• Jackie Lind - Emmy Award-winning casting director.
• W. O. Mitchell - writer
• Mark Steven Morton - writer
• Humphry Osmond - medical researcher
• Derrick Pouliot - professional hockey player
• Dave "Tiger" Williams - former professional hockey player
Many of these names are familiar to Canadians of a certain age, like yours truly. We stayed long enough for the driver to take a short nap in a pleasant park. I’ll remember it as a quiet, almost sleepy town, but that’s on me, not the local government and Chamber of Commerce….
We continued east through the still active oil fields surrounded by farmland, somewhat behind schedule, but still with plenty of sunshine, towards our first camping experience since the near washout at Waterton Lakes. Past tiny villages — Forget (probably For-zhay, originally, not For-get, but now more the latter than the former), Kisbey, and Arcola to Carlyle, a town of 1500 at the foot of Moose Mountain Provincial Park. After “dinner” at a DQ, headed north on Hwy. 9 for the short drive up into the pond-pocked park.
(Click map to enlarge image in a new tab.)
On the screen door of the campsite office, I noticed a rather large number of caterpillars. Inside, as I enquired about the campground, another man came in and engaged in a rather heated discussion with the office attendant about the threat of the tent caterpillars, which, I learned for the first time, were not only ravaging this park, but had spread across the prairie provinces. According to the man, who had just driven down from Yorkton, 165 km north,and which we would visit on our way home from Winnipeg, Moose Mountain park was about to be destroyed by these “worms” if the park didn’t do something! —spray — immediately! The attendant explained that she didn’t make policy, that she was sure the park authorities were dealing with the issue, and that she would pass his comments on to them. In the meantime, I had reluctantly decided we didn’t want to be dealing a carload of tent caterpillars for the rest of our trip.
What we saw here, May 30, 2017, wasn’t this extreme, but it was still enough to leave us unwilling to take ’em on!
This report was published five days later on the Discover Estevan website:
Moose Mountain Taking Steps Against Tent Caterpillars
- Category: Local News
- Written by Emily Kroeker
Moose Mountain Provincial Park and the Village of Kenosee Lake are taking precautions against the invasion of the forest tent caterpillar.
Joan Adams, Parks Manager at the Moose Mountain Provincial Park, explains that the park and village had an aerial application of Bacillus thuringiensis (BTK) in order to keep the bugs at bay.
“They did the whole park and the village on Friday.”
She adds that BTK is a bacteria, not a chemical.
“It’s absolutely not a chemical. We don’t allow chemicals to be sprayed in the park. And it has no effect on anything but the caterpillars, so even if a bird comes and eats the caterpillar, it wouldn’t affect the birds. It doesn’t affect humans or pets or wildlife.”
And the spray has seemed to work so far.
“We were told to expect a moderate to severe infestation but the spray from all accounts, has really helped to knock the numbers down. It’s not going to get them all and we’ve been told that it’s a one to three year cycle and last year was the first year that we’ve ever had tent caterpillars in the park. We still have some but I was just in the campground and it’s actually looking pretty good in there.”
She adds that campers can also prepare for the caterpillars as well. “If campers are going to come, there lots of homemade applications like oil or water mixed with a little soap. If they want to bring a spray bottle when they are in their campsite and they see some, go ahead and spray them just like you would at your residence or at your cottage.”
So much for birding in this area! Even birds don’t like to eat these larvae! Soooo, we called Uncle Alex and Aunt Iris to tell them we would be arriving in Moosomin a day early. They very graciously invited us to stay with them. Family hospitality at its finest! Nana was greatly impressed. (Staying with family, in many cases, just doesn’t —can’t —happen in the small homes of urban Japan, and she had no rural family connections for comparison. My guess, however, is that many of the farm folk I knew of in Hokkaido would have responded in a similar fashion). Fortunately, my aunt and uncle have a spacious two bedroom apartment. We had, as I wrote in Part 3, a wonderful visit with them — despite the fact that their part of Moosomin was also plagued with creepy-crawlers trying to invade their condo!
birds & musings 