Winnipeg and Folklorama 2014

I am writing this on the road just leaving Winnipeg where we have spent the last three nights.  Mike had to attend a two day business meeting electronically.  It worked better than it did last week.  Out of our first seven business days on the road he had four days of business planned.  I must add that I didn’t hear about any of these days until just ahead of time.  The two days in Northern Ontario didn’t work out because of poor internet and cellular reception.  As the eternal optimist I believe that it is coincidence that the four business days were in the first two weeks of our vacation and that it isn’t really a trend.

We were very lucky to be in Winnipeg for their 45^th annual Folklorama festival.  I believe that it is quite similar to Toronto’s Caravan Festival which is an event that has always intrigued me but I am crowd and line-up adverse and have never  been.  Folklorama had pavilions spread across the city representing 43 different countries.  Each country had some sort of cultural display, local food and drink and a 45 minute show.  There were three showtimes every evening.  We went two evenings and visited six countries.  We saw the Philippines, Africa, Germany, Spain, Slovenia and Hungary.  The picture at the top is from Hungary where the women are swirling about with wine bottles on their heads.  The second picture was taken of the children in the Philippines show.  A lot of the shows used children and local dance clubs.  Some of the pavilions had professionals imported for the event.  It was a great time.

Between Mike’s work and Folklorama we hadn’t seen much of the City of Winnipeg.  Before we left today we went to the National Park in the heart of town called “The Forks” which is set at the joining of the Red River and the Assiniboine River.  If you are ever in Winnipeg on a nice day it is a lovely place to visit.  It has bicycle paths, walking paths, kids bike and skateboard parks, boating, stores, restaurants and is about to open a brand new museum.  Mike couldn’t remember what the museum was called although we had seen it recently on the news.  I asked if he wanted to visit it and not just photograph the outside.  His response was basically no.  Although he couldn’t remember the museum name he did remember that the news article made it sound very socially redeeming and there were better things to do on a lovely summer’s day.  It turned out that it isn’t open for a few weeks and it will be called the Museum of Human Rights.
Some of the walking trails in The Forks have been closed since June 20^th due to the floods.  Apparently there was one campground closer than ours to the centre of Winnipeg but it was also closed because of the flooding.  Although the waters have receded the site is still unusable for camping.

Our weather has been spectacular the entire trip so far.  We have driven through the odd bit of rain, often for no more than a minute or two.  A couple of nights it rained.  We have never had rain during the day when we were outside.  Sunshine and cloudless skies have been the norm.

Mike is driving and just said “Wow, a bend in the road”.  I guess that tells you the kind of land we are driving through at the moment.

We are heading slowly towards Fort McMurray.  We are taking a more northerly route than the Trans Canada highway and will end up missing Saskatoon and Regina.  We don’t mind.  We enjoy seeing the smaller towns in rural Canada.