Yes, we are well into the ‘rocks and trees’ chapter of our trip (i.e., northern Ontario), but the shock of cycling across the Prairies lingers. For someone who grew up in B.C., cycling through country scrupulously ironed of tectonic rumples was a daily marvel. No, there would not be any need for the road to bend around unblastable rock and mountainside, and no, there would not be anything taller on the horizon than a freak grain elevator.

The Red Coat Trail

Open mouthed, and not quite sure I was in the same country as the one west of the Continental Divide, I cycle-sailed through this flattened version of Canada on one of its lesser known roads – The Red Coat Trail (named after you know who) – from Pincher Creek, Alberta to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

A Trail through Time:  Alberta

Ducking off the Trans-Canada into Pincher Creek brought us into the westernmost beat of the Red Coats. Clearly a less travelled route and one

that would have harboured outlaws and tensions between the Indigenous and the government-sponsored settlers, the Red Coat Trail carved a no-nonsense path through the once unpoliced part of the prairies.

Realizing you are on a flat grid through a century of deeded settlement becomes immediately apparent upon leaving Pincher Creek. The school bus ahead of you will be visible five kms ahead, the next turn in the road, ten. The landscape becomes steadily drier and more inhospitable – the ‘Badlands’ are upon you. It was the Mormons, Hutterites and Mennonites that answered the need to irrigate these lands. Tributes from

yesteryear by various museums enroute shine a light on this particular pioneer heritage and at the sprawling museum in tiny Etzikom, Alberta, we learn how important the harvesting of wind was to this effort.

A Trail through Time:  Saskatchewan

Knowing other places in Saskatchewan had found their industry niche, it was haunting to cycle through a part of the province that had lost theirs. Abandoned garages, boarded towns (except for post office, grocery store and beauty parlours), suggest that this was a route that had been crushed by the changing fortunes of time. Tourism – the purported panacea to collapses in local economies – is still woefully untapped. Services like gas stations, restaurants, motels are few and far between; seven hours between pit stops for the cyclist becomes the norm! But a proud history lives on. Deep roots in its French, Dutch and Belgian heritage means that Catholic nunneries

peer from closed windows of schools, French signs are not translated on the highway, and razor-edged gardens and fields confirm the Dutch presence. Municipal campgrounds – lovingly maintained in broad parkland at the side of town – welcome the occasional traveller spring-fall.

Red Coat Trail Cities

The Red Coat Trail disappears under a snarl of highways, railway tracks and church steeples when it reaches the two populated cities on its route: 1) the metropolis (11,000) of Weyburn, and 2) the capital of Manitoba –

Winnipeg. In Weyburn, we enjoy the spotlight

given to travellers that have strayed from the Trans-Canada. Radio, newspaper, library, city campground – they become a speakeasies for our cause. Bless them.

On shoulderless roads , I approached the city of Winnipeg in winds that reputedly have overturned rail cars just north of us, and realize how understated the title of ‘Windypeg’ is. It is truly the last swirl of prairie wind and dust before the boreal forest takes over just east of it . If you wipe away its modern veneer of endless

traffic arteries and car lots and muffler shops, its prairie heart beats strong. Threaded between towering bank buildings at Portage and Main are the austere three-story brick buildings of the past – many now uninhabited, others now in the process of rebirth as inner-city condos, bistros and artists` enclaves. Once abandoned in favour of outlying suburbs and shopping malls, Winnipegers are gradually taking back their city. The Forks district at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers is now a popular waterfront area, with Winnipeg-brewed beer and paddle-boats on tap. The ‘Exchange district‘ – not unlike

Vancouver’s Main and Hastings area – was ‘rising up’ to celebrate the centennial of its proud proletariat roots (which had 35,000 workers walking off the job in 2019) while we were there. The full dimension of Winnipeg’s role in this region of Canada – geographically, culturally, economically – soon becomes evident to the visitor.

The quilt of Canadiana in the Prairies is thick with histories, from the T-Rex to the most recent wave of immigrants that are proudly calling this country home. Indeed, it begs the question: were ‘we’ following the Red Coat Trail, or was the Red Coat Trail following ‘us’?