(Message sent Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:34:41 -0700)
Hi everyone. I am in Winnipeg, smack-bang in the middle of the continent. I'm staying with Victoria, her husband Jon, and their daughter Rory. They are proving to be most excellent hosts.
For those of you who don't know, Victoria and I have been email pen pals for ten years, drawn together initially by our mutual interest in Xena. More recently I have also been corresponding with Jon, who is into roleplaying, science fiction, and all that good stuff. And of course Lucy Lawless - something of a requirement in this household :-)
When I got back from India I decided that the time had come to finally meet them, and so that is why I chose Canada as my next destination.
I was expecting to arrive to very hot summer weather, so it was a bit of a surprise, on first seeing Winnipeg from the air, to see just how leafy and green it is.
Victoria and Jon live in a nice quiet suburb with lots of trees. It could be a suburb somewhere in New Zealand, were it not for two things. Firstly, there are no fences, certainly not between any house and the street, and frequently not between houses. Secondly, many streets have no footpaths at all, or only have them on one side. I guess this is part of the cult of the car.
Victoria&Jon's daughter Rory (actually Aurora, aged 2) is a complete delight. She's a very happy kid, very strident in expressing her desires, and disarmingly honest ("Rory - did you hurt the cat?" "Yes!"). She's an irrepressible bundle of fun.
The weather has been by turns hot and fine, and cold and rainy. This has worked out well, as my days are falling naturally into "out and about" days and "museum" days.
In the center of town is an area called The Forks (despite the fact that it's actually the confluence of two rivers) that has been occupied for at least 6,000 years. In its current incarnation it's a nice spot, with lots of greenery and riverside trails, and a neat market building. (This last used to be a vast stable - the stalls having been converted into little shops.)
A recent footbridge across the Red River apparently caused some controversy. Me, I think it's brilliant. It's a suspension bridge, with much of the weight held by a soaring metal spire, looking like a 1950s vision of a rocketship. Thick cables, clad in white, run from the spire to the deck, their ferrules embedded into great chunky lumps of concrete.
On the other side of the river from The Forks stands the St Boniface Cathedral. The previous incarnation of this building burnt down in the 60s. Rather than bulldoze the ruins, they shored up what remained, incorporating some of the structure into the new building, and leaving the main facade as a free-standing wall. It makes for a striking feature, my favourite aspect being that you can see the sky through the vast round hole that used to be the stained-glass window.
A promenade stretches out from the facade towards the river, then crosses a road and goes down a series of steps to a small dock. This is clearly a popular wedding spot, as one riverside wedding was underway and a second waiting in the wings while I was there. (The St Boniface fa‡ade is at N 49 53.352 W 097 07.311, with The Forks due west across the river.)
I find it difficult to come to terms with just how much things change here in the course of the seasons. I took a sight-seeing cruise on the river, and the helmsman made what was to me a remarkable statement - by summer his job is to drive sight-seeing boats on the rivers, by winter his job is to drive a zamboni (a machine for grooming ice for ice-skating) over the very same stretches of river!
Yesterday I visited the Manitoba Legislative Building. Victoria had clued me up to a theory that this magnificent building was constructed with all sorts of measurements and proportions of Masonic and occult significance encoded into it. The central room - the curiously-named Pool of the Black Star - is certainly very peculiar. It's the sort of room a set designer might come up with if commissioned to build a pagan temple.
The room is circular, and around the inside wall stand a row of columns which seem to server no purpose beyond looking all temple-y. Inwards from the columns are three concentric steps, taking you down to a marble floor. In the center of the floor is an eight-pointed star with a wide circle around it. Everything is done in white and black marble. All you need is a ring of people in black hooded robes and ominous chanting.
And in fact there was ominous chanting! While I was there this strange, modulating, not-quite-earthly sound was coming from all around. "What's going on?" I was thinking, "Are they trying to freak me out?" Eventually I discovered the source of the sound. On the floor above was a display about breast cancer survivors, and a perpetually looping video was playing survivor stories. This sound, bouncing around repeatedly within the marbled building had conspired with Victoria's suggestion of Mysterious Goings-On to produce creepy chanting.
More to tell, but that will do for now.
Hope everyone is well and happy. Love Joff.
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