In the past two years we've been spending significantly more time in Manitoba. This coincides with my mom and step dad buying a cabin not far from Riding Mountain National Park. It's a four-hour trip, but it's worth it.
While trying to keep our minds occupied on this now-frequent trip, we keep noticing the little things that make Manitoba different from Saskatchewan. Most people might assume things and people are pretty much exactly the same across the line. They're not.
We have some close friends in Steinbach. Their common refrain, when asked about these differences (at least the negative ones) is "It's the NDP government's fault." That's funny, because I heard that from Saskatchewan people for years when we were compared to Alberta.
We've taken many routes to get to the cabin, and one thing we've consistently found is that Manitobans keep their yards and farmyards immaculate. On one trip we noticed every single yard had its grass perfectly cut and groomed, and they went through the effort of not only cutting their own yard but a large part of the ditch, too. Saskatchewan? Not even close.
Driving those many routes has also revealed something else. With the exceptions of Highway 1 and 75, nearly every Manitoba highway we have driven is awful. Beyond bad. Horrible. They make Saskatchewan highways look good. Highways 1 and 75, near Winnipeg (figurative and literal centre of the Manitoba universe) are paved with thick concrete. They always seem to be paving this concrete in one direction or another. Last week it was south of Winnipeg, north of Morris. But the rest are paved with neglect and disrepair.
What really stands out is that almost all Manitoba highways do not have a paved shoulder, even large portions of the TransCanada Highway. This is nerve-wracking when you have a wide load coming in the other direction on a two-way highway. Where do you go? Where does he go? Take the soft shoulder at any sort of speed and you are likely to end up upside down in someone's nicely mown ditch.
While in Winnipeg last weekend we were surprised by the lack of mosquitoes. Generally a Manitoba summer has enough mosquitoes that you need to worry about small children being carried away like a large eagle hauling off a lamb. But this was not the case. The answer? Nerve gas, or something like it, that kills the bugs. So don't worry. If you're not inhaling the skeeters, at least you can inhale what killed them.
But don't worry about the bugs. There are larger vermin to worry about. It's the taxis that I noticed. For one, everyone I saw was a Prius (bad sign - it's an indication of a nanny state dictating environmentalism). They all have a strobe light dome on the roof behind the taxi sign. They look like the strobes you now see on school busses. There is a very noticeable bumper sticker on the back saying something along the lines that if you see the light on the roof blinking, call 911.
So not only is there an interior shield, akin to that in a police cruiser needed to protect cabbies, they now require a distress signal to cry out for help?
Wow, that makes me feel so very safe in Winnipeg.
Oh, Manitoba has lots of lakes, and the people are friendly, as the license plates say. But it strikes me the province is under a similar malaise Saskatchewan was after long-term socialist governments. Why are they still a have-not province? Good question.
Our friends have often suggested we move to Steinbach, which is arguably one of the best places in all of Manitoba. It has negligible crime, good services and close proximity to Winnipeg. The cost of living in many ways is also considerably lower.
We politely turn them down. Besides, who knows if a moving truck could even make it there without losing a wheel in a pothole?
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
