“Cow on Your Side”?

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Today we finally get to see our beloved Emma again as we head north to Canada. Troy’s flying in from Oz today too, and we’ll be meeting up with him at San Francisco Airport en route to Calgary … so we’ll have the whole Sheehan family clan together again for the first time in more than three years. Yay! It’s amazing how much we miss something that we always used to take so much for granted. I’m getting goosebumps already.

It’s an early start. It’s been virtually a full day since Troy left Melbourne, most of it spent in the air, and he looks like a zombie. We collect our hire car from Calgary Airport and head off on the two hour drive south to Lethbridge. It’s the first time either of our boys have set foot in Canada. If they were expecting soaring snow clad peaks and stunning glaciers, I think they’re going to be disappointed. We love Canada; its highlights are absolutely spectacular, but unfortunately this straight, flat and largely featureless road across the prairie is not one of them. We pass the time playing games. I’ve never heard of “Cow on Your Side”, but Troy insists it’s a “thing”. I’m not all that convinced; the rules seem to get a bit fluid, particularly when there seem to be more horses than cows on his side of the car. Fortunately the whole thing quickly runs out of steam when we start to ask questions, and he then very conveniently drifts off into dreamland.

We stop for refreshments at that most Canadian of institutions, Tim Hortons, in the thriving metropolis of Claresholm … and as if to prove it, the door handles are ice hockey sticks (I think the word "ice" is redundant here when used in that context). It might look peaceful, but it seems Claresholm is infamous as the site of the 2011 “Claresholm highway massacre” in which an enraged gunman from Lethbridge killed his ex-girlfriend and the two blokes she was travelling with before turning the gun on himself. Hmmm. Maybe we were safer in San Francisco. Who would have thought? And what else do we immediately notice as we get out of the car - it’s warm … well a lot warmer than icy SF. So we’ve come to Canada to get warm. Who would have thought Mk II ….

We're greeted at the door of Emma and Michael’s Lethbridge apartment by our excited looking daughter and the family reunion is complete. These guys are now of course in full blown wedding mode, the great day being less than a week away. The six of us head out for Japanese.

We’ve rented an Airbnb for our time here. Lethbridge isn’t all that big, and we’re on the outskirts of the outskirts; it’s just paddocks fifty metres past the front door. And what’s the deal with the massively tall aerial in the paddock a few metres away past the end of the road? I’d always thought of the Canadians as being a fairly benign bunch, but the size of this thing suggests they’ve got to be using it to spy on someone. Whoever it is, I hope they don’t twig while we’re here. It’d be a bit unfortunate if we got caught in the crossfire and missed the wedding …..

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