I posted this last night, but it got lost after I went to bed.
This past weekend, I attended a Saskatchewan Roughrider game in Regina, Saskatchewan. Some thoughts:
-I know several friends from concerts who reside in Regina, and they have been bugging me for years to make the trip up to see a Rider game. The schedules finally lined up to allow me to make the trip up to see things.
-It is quite a long haul up to Regina. From the Twin Cities to Regina, using I-94, US highway 52 in North Dakota, and various provincial highways in Saskatchewan, it's roughly a 12 hour trip. It helps that it's quite normal to go freeway speed on some 2-lane roads, most notably US 52 northwest of Jamestown, but several provincial roads meet that description as well.
-Much of what I'm writing and much of what I know about this part of Canada comes from the combined volumes of Pierre Berton's saga of the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. "The Impossible Railway: The Building of the Canadian Pacific, A Triumphant Saga of Exploration, Politics, High Finance, and Adventure" is the volume as assembled in the US, and requires a rudimentary understanding of the Westminster style of Parliament to understand the first part. But it's a very well-written book, and I found the book quite fascinating.
-In this space, I've frequently ragged on North Dakota. However, the state North Dakota is a much more interesting state to drive across than us Minnesotans give it credit for, especially northwest of Minot. I know that Montana is Big Sky Country, but I really got the same feeling from far northwestern North Dakota. Hand in hand with this is the stunning lack of population. Many former railroad settlements (and that was a charitable description of them even in their heyday) are now outright ghost towns. And there are plenty of them. US 52 west of Fessenden follows the Canadian Pacific's (nee Soo Line) American main line that runs from Chicago and Minneapolis northwest to Portal and the Canadian main line at Moose Jaw. Most of these towns are tiny, and an entire county's worth of schools have K-12 enrollments in the low 100s or less.
-I've heard it said that the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul are the greatest twin cities in the world. The border towns of Portal, North Dakota and North Portal, Saskatchewan are several steps down in class from there. I drove around both towns prior to crossing the border, and the only reason why either town exists is the purpose of transiting people and goods from one side of the border to the other, be it the duty-free shops or the Canadian Pacific Railway bunkhouse at North Portal. Both are quite desolate and desperate towns.
-I didn't know that the southeast corner of Saskatchewan, around Estevan, was a coal hotbed. Turns out it is, and like it's sister coal field some 250 miles to the southeast around Bismarck, the primary extraction is low-grade lignite coal for burning in the massive Boundary Dam Power Station. This is removed by strip mining, then burned for transmission across the Saskatchewan prairie to power the Prairie provinces. It's a very dirty way to make a living, and the heavy truck traffic really beats things up. Also, you do see some oil wells in this part of SK (and ND). It's not quite the Bakken, some 100 miles to the SW centered around Williston, but it's not small change.
-Upon departure from the Estevan region, you emerge into the true breadbasket of Canada. And unlike North Dakota, Saskatchewan is board flat. The two hours of driving from Estevan to Regina features less profile than a wadded-up newspaper, as well sufficient wheat to stretch from horizon to horizon for two hours. The growing season at these latitudes is too short for the American staples of corn and soybeans, so diversification had to happen with desperation crops. Wheat is dominant, but oats, flax, canola, sunflowers, and rye are also grown in quantity. On an aside, if you were drinking whisky in the province, you drank rye. That's just the way it was.
-Roads in Saskatchewan are crap. As someone who works in the road construction industry, the reason why is that the provincial government doesn't mill off the old pavement before slapping new stuff on. One set of freeze-thaw cycles later and any cracks that were in the previous surface propagate right through to the top.
-The provincial capital of Regina (pronounced with the stress on the middle syllable) wouldn't exist it weren't for the aforementioned Canadian Pacific Railway needing a division point some distance out of Brandon. My friends that I'm staying with live on the north side of town, and after 12+ hours of driving I was ready for a shower and a beer.
-Regina has a booming beer scene, and during the evening we partook in several of them around town. One joint had a loud selection of classic country, including "Love's Gonna Live Here Again" by Buck Owens. My kind of bar.
-On Sunday, Regina turns green for their Riders. The amount of support from around town feels like that in Green Bay or Kansas City. We started our carousing at a place named Victoria's Pub. Very British pub (EPL footy on TV, Bass, proper English bitters, God Save the Queen, and all that). They had excellent brunch, and it made for a good base for the day of drinking that would follow.
-Later in the afternoon, we ran into several fans from Vancouver, decked head to toe in their neon orange BC Lions (the opponent that day). They were fine doing a healthy bit of ribbing, and have read for years that Regina was the place to go for a CFL game. Great atmosphere, reasonably priced (for Canada) food and drink, and a great in-stadium atmosphere. Also, since it was some sort of big event in town, the Grey Cup, Canadian football's championship trophy, was there. Yours truly added that to the list of trophies by which I have photos next to (I've also got the baseball Commissioners Trophy and the Stanley Cup)
-Speaking of the stadium, the brand new digs, Mosaic Stadium, opened this season. Replacing longtime home Taylor Field, it fits well with the crowd and is an excellent venue for CFL football. I did swing by the pro shop to bring some stuff back, and unlike in the NFL, CFL gear is priced to move. And in Canadian dollars (at the time of this printing, a greenback bought 77 Canadian cents), it wasn't bad at all. A lot of my money went a long way.
-On the first series, in which the Lions went two-and-out, the punt went into the end zone for a rouge. A ROUGE!!!!
-The subtle differences between Canadian and American gridiron football are noticeable immediately. The slot receivers can hit the line of scrimmage a-running at the snap, the goal posts are on the goal line in the field of play, the field is 110 yards long with a centre line, three downs, penalty markers are orange, and the hash marks are almost as wide as a high school field.
-Turns out that a beatdown in Canadian football looks an awful lot like a beatdown in American football. The Riders led the BC Lions 29-0 at the half, and went on to finish off the drubbing.
-Either I don't go to many stadiums in Canada, or Mosaic is the only place where you can get pulled pork poutine in-stadium. And it was wonderful.
-Regina Transit does a very good job of getting people away from the stadium after the game. They have a network of shuttle buses laid out to get people out to suburban park-and-rides. We had parked by one of these earlier in the morning and taken a city bus into town, but we were able to sneak out prior to the end of the game (on't worry, the home team was ahead something like 44-9) and not have to wait in a rapidly-filling queue.
-Clearing customs on the way back Monday morning was considerably more troublesome than going up. Going up Saturday afternoon, all I needed to say was that I was going to the Rider game, and I was through with minimal issue. I got the business in the customs office, got brought back with a car search, and as such it took a lot longer to get onto Hwy 52 south than I was hoping for.
-I was able to get back about 9 PM Central from my litlte adventure.
Hope you enjoyed it.
