Pulp Trucks and Grain Towers

Day 5-6

Leaving Quetico park I headed by Atikoken. Which claims to be the Canoe capital of Canada. Besides having the worst maintained roads in any town I've been in yet there were canoes on every other street corner. I did also see a dome home there, and met Robin of Robin's Donuts. She didn't say much but just waved at honking motorists and invited them to come on by for a coffee and a donut. You see in northern Ontario, although you will see the odd Tim Horton's, Robin's Donuts is the dominant coffee chain. They sell "Robin's Eggs" instead of "timbits" which are slightly more egg shaped.
I drove on through Fort Francis and Emo (yes the town is emo). I realized in Fort Francis Which is a major pulp and paper mill town that all the transports carrying small trees up the highway were actually known as pulp trucks. Hence, all the pulp truck load check pull-off's all along the highway. These loads shift and need to be checked every so often to make sure they don't let loose. All these stripped trees which are small (ie the diameter of my GUT) are processed for pulp not lumber. But i was shocked at how many trees were there in Fort Francis. About 6 times the amount in the photo in a huge holding lot on there way to be ground up for raw fiber. As you might know you must add fresh pulp fiber along with recycled paper because every time you recycle paper the fiber gets smaller. until you end up just being able to make toilet paper and then i guess it's back to the circle of life. You just had to be there standing in front of this 4 story tower of logs that stretch for a mile next to 6 other piles just like it. I just imagined how many years it took to grow these trees.





I made it to Manitoba, Finally after 5 days of driving. I camped for a night in the most mosquito ridden place i have ever been and I am told that all of Manitoba has this problem and that they even pesticide dust the downtown core of Winnipeg. I headed into the downtown the next day to see some great art and visit the Winnipeg Art Gallery. WAG had a show of the Royal Art Lodge which a great artist collective from the mid 90's who made some really quiet and humorous work. I bought a cataloge of paul Butler's collages checkout (the otherpaulbutler.com) and a book of collage work by Beck and AL Hanson (beck's performance artist grand dada). Then I headed to Regina to see my Aunt and Uncle who are both professor's at the University of Regina.
Tomorrow i will be leaving for drummheller to see dinosaurs, and a UFO landing pad in St. Paul Alberta.

P.S. - prairie dogs outnumber seagull's at Mcdonalds in Saskatchewan. They like McFry's.