Wednesday, May 30, 2018

January 1, 2014

It seems that every so often I get the urge to just write something down for posterity. I don't generally share it with folks but it makes me feel good. This particular blog is about my recent trip to Saskatoon. I have not been to Saskatoon in the Winter for about 25 years so this was going to be a bit different for me anyway but it was definitely not what I expected. I headed out to Saskatoon on the Sunday before Christmas. There could not have been a more Saskatchewan type of day to be traveling there. By that I mean it was cold, and then there was the wind chill, typical. I had sort of thought that that was why I had left Saskatoon as far as permanence was concerned, not really but it was one of the reasons. And, I knew the weather was supposed to be fairly good in Calgary so not particularly motivated. At the same time I was going back to have a reunion with some people I had traveled to Europe with 40 years ago in 1973. That was my first trip without my parents and it made a huge difference in how my life has gotten to where it is today. In many ways it was one of the first times I was able to feel like a leader, respected for who I was as much as what I knew. It was with those thoughts in mind that I headed East. I had never taken the trip from Calgary to Saskatoon before so it was all new. Past the badlands to make me think of history, across the openness of the prairies; way too much time to think. So why did I leave Saskatoon? Too small? Too much prejudice? Afraid to be me? Hoping for a relationship? Wanting to feel safe and accepted? All of these and more and I knew I could not, ever, ever, go back. And yet, here I was, but thankfully only for a couple of days. I used to be a cab driver in Saskatoon so I knew the city like the back of my hand ... until I got there and realized I was going to a brand new city. I left a large town of about 125,000 and returned to a city of 275,000. I was in town for 20 minutes before I saw anything I recognized. Even the highway that circled the city had to be extended to make room for expansion. And, even before I got to where the reunion was I new I was in a new city, a different Saskatoon. Meeting my old traveling companions was fun. For the most part we were strangers who came together for an extraordinary event, 20 days in Europe, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Lebanon, Greece, Italy and Britain for 24 kids from Saskatoon who's largest school trip before was to Batoche (site of the Riel Rebellion for those of you outside of Saskatchewan). And all of them had been changed by the trip, just as I had. That night I stayed at my brother's place, in a part of town that did not exist when I left. The next day I went for a tour of my old town. I took my nephew along for the ride.

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