June 5, A Week Later: Reflections on the Trip

Random thoughts about the trip…

• Canadians were very polite and hospitable, despite all of the insults (51st state) and aggravations (tariffs) perpetrated by our president.

• Canadians are a very clean and neat people. Their city streets have little to no litter; the same can be said for their roadsides and countryside. Their bathrooms are always clean, regardless of where we went or which building we were in.

• They have a strong environmental ethos.

• The Canadian Rockies are simply gorgeous. No matter the time of day, no matter the day of the week, no matter the weather conditions: I could look at them all of the day. And I could not stop myself from taking picture after picture after picture.

• I suppose I am easily entertained, because I was not bored by visiting Fargo, nor Winnipeg, nor Jasper, nor Banff. I was not bored by the scenery of the Canadian countryside. I spent many minutes observing the geography, the landforms, the housing and human structures, the plants and bushes and occasional animals we observed from the trains. I suppose if I lived or stayed in any of these locations for more than a week, I may not be able to say the same; but we did not stay that long in any one of these places, so I did not get bored with them.

• Although Winnipeg does not have the size or reputations of its larger sister cities – Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Halifax, Quebec, Montreal, or Edmonton – I believe it is worth visiting, in its own right. (This is Doug’s opinion, not necessarily Patrise’s.) The Canadian National Museum of Human Rights is worth a trip all by itself. However, Winnipeg and Manitoba’s unique place in Canada’s history has so many stories worth learning more about. The stories and challenges of the Metis – neither European nor Indigenous – provides a of lot material to explore, for the traveler unfamiliar with their history.

• North Dakota is clearly a less populated state.

• Southeastern North Dakota, in and around Fargo, is very flat.  It was also hot and windy in the days we visited. Apparently, the level of the heat was unusual – 94-degree days, when Atlanta was 64 degrees – but the wind was not so unusual. North Dakotans experience a frequency of warm days and high winds that often lead to forest fires. (I don’t know that “forest” is an appropriate adjective, since there are so few trees around.)

• The Bison Discovery was out of the way – 90 miles west of Fargo – but since we had lots of time, it was a worthwhile ½-day trip.

• Fargo is on the North Dakota-Minnesota border. Moorhead, Minnesota is its twin city. The metro area is Fargo-Moorhead and the chambers of commerce use the slogan “There’s Far-Mor to see in Fargo,” to promote the metro area.

• The central western area of Minnesota is much more hilly than eastern North Dakota. It also has more rivers and streams and is more green than its western neighbor.

• Passenger rail for leisure in Canada is okay. However, it will never compete as a true challenger to the plane or automobile for commercial travel, simply because it is too unreliable. You cannot set your watch by it, nor plan a tight travel schedule using it. Since the passenger trains must always yield to freight trains – and there is a LOT of freight rail traffic in Canada – the passenger trains will always be delayed from arriving on time. If you take a rail excursion across Canada, remember to focus on the “excursion” aspect and be patient.

• Bring a lot to do when riding the VIA or Rocky Mountaineer trains. Reading only carries you so far. Bring board games, cards, knitting or sewing, or other such activities by which you can entertain yourself.

• So many good restaurants and so much good dining. Even the dining on the trains was above and beyond. Some of our more memorable dining experiences were:

              Rosewild in Fargo

            Randy’s University Diner in Fargo

            The Peasant Cookery in Winnipeg, Manitoba

            The Grizzly in Jasper, Alberta

Bellagio Café in Vancouver

The Coal Harbor Club in Vancouver at the Harbor

            Coast in Vancouver

            Bard and Banker in Victoria

• Kurt, the Delta driver and Kaden, the Delta pilot, performed heroic acts, above and beyond the call of duty, when we were traveling from Fargo through Minneapolis to Winnipeg.

• It was a wonderful moment in time for us, to travel to Alexander City, Minnesota, to have dinner with Patrise’s brother, Josh.

• Canada’s universal and widespread effort to reconcile with its horrific historical treatment of Indigenous, Inuit and Metis people is admirable and frankly, enviable. We can’t even have a conversation in the United States about how badly Indigenous, Asian, and other non-European peoples have been treated in this country. Hell, we don’t even want to acknowledge the evils of slavery forced upon generations of Africans and their descendants. We witnessed this national effort in Canada, when we traveled to the easter provinces (New Brunswick, Prince Edwad Island, and Nova Scotia) in 2022. We saw it consistently, when we traveled through the central and western portions of the country in 2025. We are not naïve to believe that all Canadians feel this way. They are subject to the same spectrum of human prejudices and evils that we witness in the United States. Still, it seems that there is deeper, more widely held acknowledgement of the wrongs of their collective past, than we have ever seen or witnessed in the United States. (George Floyd really didn’t die because Mark Chauvin put a knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes. Or at least that is the lie that some people on the far right are trying to perpetrate these days.)

I guess these are a sufficient number of observations for now. All of these are Doug’s observations and thoughts. Patrise may add to these in the upcoming days, but for now, this is the end of our wonderful 2025 trip to North Dakota, Central and Western Canada.

We started our Canadian journey in Winnipeg (center of picture in green colored area) and ended in Victoria (far left in salmon colored area)