Our week in Medicine Hat was filled with wonderful activities and surprises. Some highlights included:
- A local artist explained his technique for his carvings of the Twelve Stations of the Cross out of bricks as well as other magnificent murals throughout the city.
- A tour of beautiful City Hall overlooking the South Saskatchewan River. The building has won a national award for architecture and design. We unveiled a plaque of Friendship Force visitors with our club engraved on it.
- A trip to Fort Walsh in Saskatchewan where we learned about the origin of the Royal Canadian Mounties and the tragic history of the First Nations People.
- Medicine Hat is the sunniest city in Canada, thus it is a major producer of vegetables, grain and beef. We toured greenhouses and a vegetable packing plant. We were able to pay it forward by helping to chop vegetable “seconds” at Prairie Gleaner. The produce is packaged into dried soup mix and shipped all over the world.
- We tried our hand at geocaching, set up a Teepee and had an old-fashioned wiener roast.
The Medicine Hat Club members were especially warm and friendly. All journey activities are open to all club members so we had the pleasure of interacting with many members. We made special friends and hope they will journey to Western North Carolina so we can reciprocate their hospitality.
On to Calgary and the Canadian Rockies…
We began this leg of the journey by having dinner with several members of the Calgary FF Club. The following day we had a private bus tour of the beautiful city of Calgary. Then we began our week of exploring the magnificent Canadian Rockies. WOW!!! Spectacular scenery! Highlights include: Jasper & Banff, teal green glacial lakes, a float down the Athabasca River, walking on the Athabasca Glacier – burr!!, a ride up the Banff Gondola for spectacular views, learning about the Canadians devotion to hockey (some of our members even scored goals on the ice in full uniform), met a Royal Canadian Mountie and visited a dude ranch. It was a bonus to meet others on our bus trip from around the world and share our Friendship Force experiences.
–Lynne Cigal and Susan Harvey, Co-Journey Coordinators
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