Storyline: Westward Ho!
June 2 – June 9
Although I have been in a few cities out west I have never driven (or sooner been driven) through the prairies before. We entered the prairies in Manitoba. However, I find the Saskatchewan landscape and roads quite different.
One can see miles ahead. Fields and grass. Much fewer trees and shrubs than in Manitoba. Same farm machinery scattered around the fields. Huge grain elevators and many more silos. Occasionally we’d drive by a long train for a couple of kilometres.
To calculate its length, we would need its speed, but with a few engines these trains are kilometres long.
Saskatchewan is the prairie province with espresso in every café. And they are many of them.
Given the fact that one can’t easily find espresso in many places out of the big Southern Ontario cities this was a surprise. They had cafés that serve espressos, cappuccino and all kind of other espresso-based specialty coffees in every little shingle (my word for a small town or hamlet). My first surprise was in a town called Moosomin. Moos what?
Moosomin and the prairies
Leaving Brandon MB relatively late, we had just crossed into Saskatchewan (SK) and thought we’d have lunch in a town some 20km from the provincial border. It was on the TransCanada Hwy thus a convenient lunch stop. Not so fast! SK doesn’t change to spring (daylight saving) time. So we gained an hour again, but this meant not many places were yet open.
It has a small-town feel. Main street lined with business establishments. Restaurants, pubs, cafés, stores
and even a Ukrainian pizza place. There is dental office, hospital, accounting, four churches, sports complex and many more.
Then there are the pretty residential streets, branching from the main one. Bordered with big trees. All green. Friendly people.
This was our first exposure to a small Saskatchewan town. To any SK town as a matter of fact. It was early morning for them. Not so early for us since we changed the time zone again. We are now an hour behind (two hours behind home).
Crossing the rail tracks, we parked Doranya on a side street by a grain elevator and walked. I was poking my nose into the little stores. One of them was The Crate House.
There wasn’t a distinct definition of this place. It was a food store, a deli, a café, an ice cream parlour, a gift shop, patisserie, and more.
Walking in I noticed an espresso machine. This is almost unheard of in any small Ontario town. If one wants a coffee, many go to Timmies (Tim Horton’s, the ubiquitous donut and drip-coffee chain – over 3,500 outlets here and another 1,500 or so elsewhere in the world) and get some kind of brew. But espresso? Aside from the big expensive chains Starbucks and Second Cup even in GTA it’ll be a hunt for an espresso shop. Thus, it was a surprise to me to find it in a small-town Saskatchewan.
The Crate House (The CrateHouse Deli and Ice Cream) is owned by Anne & Doug Creighton. They owned a grocery store before retirement. When they retired, their kids wanted to run a café with them. At first, they wanted to run a Starbucks franchise, however the space wasn’t part of a mall or big enough for Starbucks to allow it. So they opened their own café, patisserie and ice cream parlor. This is what we understood from our chat with Anne.
My cappuccino was served in a nice specialty coffee glass. Alex had the best lemon meringue – not too sweet – made by Anne.
The breads and other sweets were from the bakery from Indian Head, delivered twice a week. Took homemade soup with us. Aside from farming, there are two mining companies near Moosomin as industry to the local population.
Would have spend more time in this town; however we were in a race with the weather and another severe thunderstorm called for at our destination, the Indian Head campground. Having already been caught in one on the Manitoba highway we didn’t want to be in another.
Indian Head
Arrived at the campground around 12:30pm (we gained an hour, remember?). They checked us in anyway. It wasn’t busy.
Until later when another storm hit. At that point we were plugged in and safe inside. The tall poplars were protecting us. Nice campground. Poplar trees separating the sites. We read later that the Sundancer poplar was specifically developed by the Agroforestry Development Centre in Indian Head. It is fast growing and used as a windbreaker, for erosion control and for ornamental purposes in landscaping.
Paved patio under the picnic tables. The best feature of this campground though were the bathrooms and showers. We have never had such luxury in any hotel we can afford.
One of the buildings had baths/showers and washers/dryers on the first floor with tables for socialising and a games room on the second floor of a repurposed grain elevator.
The elevator, as these historic buildings are called, constructed in 1918, was located at the Indian Head Experimental Farm.
Now obsolete it was more recently moved to the campground and repurposed.
Because of the rains on and off we didn’t use the picnic table much.
Next day we drove to the attractions: the Bell Barn and the Indian Head monument, shopped at the grocery store, aside from the sweets got some ready-to-grill meat from the same bakery that supplies Moosomin.
They had breads, sweets, take home soups, some frozen too, and soup to eat at the place. Some meat and other food items. I guess in a small town one can’t just carry one product line.
If you’ve seen the CBC show “Little Mosque on the Prairie”, scenes from several seasons were filmed in this town.
The Bell Barn was recreated using measurements from the original one and traditional methods. A young lady offered us a tour and she was happy to tell us its story. In 1881 major Bell from Brookville Ontario arrived at the Qu’Appel area and impressed by it started a huge farming project. This was how the settlement of Indian Head began.
Most communities here are laid out in a north-south, east-west grid. But the streets here, while still perpendicular to each other, are offset from this orientation, we were told, because M. Bell wanted to watch the farm from his house. (Our Museum — Bell Barn Society)
The Indian Head statue was created as a tourist attraction that can be seen from the highway. It is not representative of any specific individual. Just based on a stereotypical image of a First Nations chief.
You can find in the city website why this town is called Indian Head. In a few words there was smallpox among the nearby First Nations community. Many of them died and were buried on the nearby hills. When the town was established, the idea was to call it Indian Head Hills, but there were no hills around. Dropping the hills it became Indian Head.
Our last day in Indian Head was for running household chores. Laundry, clean up and since it wasn’t raining, to do some fresh cooking.
Alex pulled the out the griddle and set it up for cooking (it connects to a large propane tank built under the van). For some unknown reasons though it wouldn’t work. There was no gas supply. He tried everything. (Methinks it was way too hot this day and some connections got stiff).
And so, we ran back to the town for late lunch. It was Sunday and many places were closed. Luckily the Veramako Pizzeria was open and they had all kind of items on the menu. We liked the Greek style pork chops.
Back at the campground, Alex packed the griddle and decided that he’d test it later with a small 1lb (450g) propane bottle. If it works it is not the griddle at fault, but something with our propane tank or connections and hoses.
And so we left the campground the next morning in sweltering heat. See you in Moose Jaw.
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