Nancy and I arrived into Winnipeg on Thursday in order to visit Newdale in Manitoba for the towns 125th anniversary. Why visit Newdale - a town with a population of 100 people, which is located over two hours drive west of Winnipeg. Some might say that Newdale is in the middle of no-where, I wouldn't say that but no-where isn't far away. Not only were we there to be part of the celebrations, but also to see the place where Bob was born and brought up.
Newdale was originally named by Edward Cook, the area's first postmaster and it's derived from "new" meaning new district and "dale" meaning the low ground south of the little mountain (mosquito hill). The CP rail line came through in 1885 and the town moved to its present location to be near to the railway.
With Wendy and Brenda, we arrived into Newdale on Friday afternoon and checked into the only motel. Lets just say it was not the Hilton, but it was all part of the experience. We also visited a number of Bob's relatives who still live in the local area, including some of the people that attended our wedding. A highlight being a visit to a farm, meeting the livestock and the biggest tractor that I have ever seen - check out the photo. We also saw the house Bob was born in and the old Marks family farm. Friday evening events included seeing a local band and the fireworks display, which was much better than expected - although our expectations started off very low.
Saturday we enjoyed the free pancake breakfast, homecoming parade and then in the evening the dinner/dance in the local ice rink. One of major highlights for me was playing Manitoba soccer, which involved two fire engines, long fire hoses and a football. Basically I had to use the water pressure to move the football across the opposition goal line and the opposition can spray you if you step over your line. My game turned out to be a goal less draw, but it was great fun and I got soaked. The downside of the trip was the bug bites and mosquitos, at dusk I was bitten to hell - they seemed to like my fresh English blood!
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2 comments:
The other night I had the perfect match of tennis - 6-0, 6-0, 6-0. Didn't drop a game - never happened before!
Glad to see you still love taking photos of signs!!! Oh the days when you wanted to drive 3 hours out of our way to take a pic of the town of Nancy. On another note it must be nice to win something ;)
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