Spring Ramble
An RCMP cruiser with its lights flashing roared past us on Highway 2 north of Assiniboia, followed by two crew cab pickups with their hazard lights blinking. A minute or so later an ambulance flashed by, whooping its siren intermittently.
Up ahead a transport truck had driven off a straight stretch of road into a wheat field. An RCMP officer stood on the running board, talking to the driver, who was still in the cab and apparently OK. Two other emergency vehicles and a tow truck lined the side of the road. Men from the two civilian pickups directed traffic around the scene. Further up the road, more civilians were directing traffic coming the other way. The response to this emergency came together in a matter of minutes thanks to volunteers and professionals. We marveled at the coordination and competency they showed, and are thankful that they have our backs.
We had set out in the morning to ramble around the hills south of Moose Jaw, and our first stop was the Willow Bunch Museum, about an hour away. It's a three-story stucco-clad building on a field stone foundation, originally built as a convent for the Sisters of the Cross in 1914. The museum's most famous figure is Edouard Beaupré, aka the Willow Bunch Giant.
The eldest son of cheesemaker Gaspard Beaupré (5'8") and Florentine Piché (5'4"), Edouard grew to be 8'3", and 375 pounds. He was very strong, even as a teenager, and could literally lift a horse. He wore a size 10 hat and his specially-made shoes were size 22.
He was working for the Ringling Brothers at the St Louis World Fair in 1904 when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 23. An autopsy showed that a tumor on his pituitary glad was the cause of his unusual growth. His body was preserved and kept at the University of Montreal and sometimes put on display. It wasn't until 1989 that Edouard was returned to his family. His cremated remains filled two large urns.
From Willow Bunch it's a half hour drive west to the Fransaskois hamlet of St Victor. Just up the hill are more than 300 petroglyphs - rock carvings - dating back 300 to 1500 years. It's a sacred site for plains people, a place where rocks have a living spirit.
The petroglyphs are a culturally and environmentally sensitive site protected by a tall chain link fence, so this is as close as we could get. But there is a rather large rock accessible to visitors, with carvings "...similar in size and shape as the original carvings, but deeper, allowing you to clearly see the images."
The carvings were made using a hard stone to chip the outline of an image into the sandstone. Then finer wooden tools were used to gouge out a more finished design.
This is one of only five Canadian horizontal petroglyph sites east of BC and the only one on the prairies. It's not hard to see why it was chosen. The elevation at the top of the hill overlooking the petroglyphs is 848 metres (2,782 feet), high enough to get a panoramic view of the surrounding prairie just waking up from a long winter's sleep.
Another half hour on a pretty good road and we were in Assiniboia, home to the Shurniak Gallery, which we told you about in February (A Remarkable Gift). After a tasty late lunch at the gallery cafe, we took another walk through the exhibition rooms. The featured show for April is the exquisitely detailed watercolour birds of Avonlea artist Paul Geraghty.
LINKS:
Willow Bunch Museum:
St Victor Petroglyphs Provincial Historic Park:
Shurniak Gallery:
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