LOTS OF BEAUTIFUL SPOTS!

            There were some advantages and some disadvantages to being a PK (Preacher’s Kid) following Dad and Mom around moving from one community to another and from one province to another every few years. Finding new friends and fitting into new schools presented challenges but on the flip side we got to see a lot of different geographical areas within the two provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

            There are 778 kms or 484 miles between Lethbridge Alberta, where the family started and Kipling, Saskatchewan, where I ended up. That’s a lot of area to cover with a lot of diverse topography in between. Even though the entire area is within the Western Canadian Prairie region the rivers, lakes, hills and plains give very distinct characteristics to the individual communities and the land that surrounds them.

I may have mentioned in a previous column or two that Mom and Dad loved to picnic and their kids loved to swim and play at the beach so we found our way to a lot of different watering holes over the years. From Indian Battle Park and Henderson Lake around Lethbridge to Shamrock Regional Park near Gravelbourg to Bisant Regional Park and Buffalo Pound Provincial Park near Marquis and Kenosee Lake near Kipling. Each spot was unique and beautiful in its own way.

This past weekend 50 members of Rose and Lowell Hubbard’s family gathered at one of those unique and beautiful places, Wakamow Valley in Moose Jaw, for our annual family get-together. It’s a jewel of a place along the Moose Jaw River ideally suited for that type of family gathering. There are a lot of fine facilities and recreational activities to be enjoyed within Kiwanis River Park at Wakamow Valley. You should check it out sometime.

I am fairly well acquainted with Moose Jaw, having lived only twenty miles north of the city for five years in the 60’s, I spent a year there in the 70’s while I attended STI and I have two siblings who settled in Moose Jaw so we still see the city quite often during our family visitations. I like all of the history of Moose Jaw and the city is very unique in so many ways and I’d have to say that it is one of my favourite places on the planet.

Like most cities and towns around it’s “street repair and construction time” so the access to the park was diverted through an area of the city that I didn’t even know existed. It was a rough ride over patchy streets and broken pavement, over the train tracks, through an old neighbourhood, along a bit of a gravelly road and then…boom…you drop down into this lush park. You’d be surprised at how many places there are like that in this province.

Travelling about with Mom and Dad and now traveling on our own we have been quite fortunate to have seen so many of these nice little spots. I’m going to keep on looking because I am sure that as many as I have been to there are probably twice as many that I haven’t.

“When you leave a beautiful place, you carry it with you wherever you go.”-Alexandra Stoddard-(1941-).