Mon Pays, C’est l’Hiver or Life is a River.

Much of this trip has taken me alongside and over some of Canada’s magnificent rivers, we are the envy of the world when it comes to freshwater but we squander. I've experienced the Skeena and the Fraser in the west, the Athabaska, the North Saskatchewan, the Q’Appelle, the Assiniboine and the Red in the central plains. This stopover in Winnipeg is all about water. Manitobans were prepared for this year’s floods and the Red River has crested and is beginning to drop but I see some houses alongside the river still sandbagged for protection and roads alongside the river closed. I hear about the hard work and camaraderie of the human chains who transfer the sandbags to the river’s edge. Winnipeg itself is protected from the worst of the floods by the Red River floodway, a large overflow ditch built in the 60’s and skirting the city on the east side, it too is full of water.

The other watery experience is a visit to Oak Hammock Marsh a vast wetland between Winnipeg and Lake Winnipeg and a stopping off spot for migratory birds and home to many others. It is named for a small patch of Burr Oak, apparently just enough to string a hammock. Today redwing blackbirds, killdeer, Canada geese, many species of ducks and coots are busying themselves on the open water but much of the marsh still has ice. I note that the Tundra Swan is an occasional visitor to this marsh. This bird evokes something for me, not quite sure what. I’d like to see one someday and feel a little closer now that I know our paths have crossed.

The marsh has a superb interpretive centre, built of limestone, that beautiful fossil filled Tyndall stone, it is roughly hewn not polished as it is on Parliament Hill. The building is nestled in berms covered with native vegetation. It also has a green roof and already a Canada Goose and a Killdeer are nesting on the roof. It will be a bit of a challenge for the goslings to make it to water but apparently with help of staff of the centre they will make it safely down from the roof and into the marsh. In the centre there are excellent displays and information on wetland ecology, a great contribution to eco-literacy for Manitobans and visitors of all ages.

We pass Stony Mountain Penitentiary en route for the marsh, I knew it was in Manitoba but wondered why a prison in the prairies would have such a name, well it rises like a grim grey stony fortress from these plains and reminds me how much the social fabric of this country is fractured.

Later that day I board the train and catch up with Mark from Melbourne who has become a Canucks fan. He is watching the game in the station and delighted that it ends before the train departs. The journey to Toronto is 36 hours and most of it, in the daylight hours, is through the most monotonous landscape of this trip. The train takes a northern track which is far from the shores of Lake Superior. It is the Canadian Shield, black spruce, jack pine, bogs and lakes. Today it is very wintry, in one nameless distant place there is fresh snow on the trees. We stop in Hornepayne and I suggest to my German travelling companions that a breath of fresh air might be a good idea, they reject the idea...too cold they say. I tell them of Gilles Vigneault’s anthem, "Mon pays, ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver. "

In the morning we are in the landscape often painted by The Group of Seven, white pine, lakes and granite boulders. There is no snow, but few signs of spring until we are close to Toronto. The train travels along the Don Valley one of Toronto’s famous green ravines , mostly parkland, and a river with an occasional glimpse or a more urban landscape on the edge of the valley re, it really is a very picturesque way to enter Toronto. Friends tell me that the Don now has salmon again and that some years they (the friends) participate in a spring river run in canoes. So many rivers and streams have been paved and destroyed in other cities. We come out of the green ravine and turn west towards the station, Toronto’s lakefront skyline a striking contrast to the Don Valley and much changed since I lived here over 30 years ago.
I spend my time in Toronto strolling in old haunts, working on ankle rehab at the downtown Y and visiting old friends. The highlight is on Sunday afternoon at Grace on the Hill, Bach’s Mass in B flat Minor, sung by Pax Christi, a Mennonite choir. Turns out I know 3 people in the choir and am staying with a friend who almost joined. Before the concert we are entertained by Howard Dyck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dyck) on Bach, numerology and the Mass.

Ah music, I dedicate this blog entry to two great Canadians, who write and sing with such passion of experiencing the Canadian landscapein the broadest sense of the term, Gilles Vigneault and Murray McLaughlin