Southwest Assiniboine Retired Teachers

CHAPTER REPORTS

southwest assiniboine Retired Teachers

Text and photos: Ed Arndt

Retired Teachers’ Tour Members exploring the Spirit Sands Desert near Carberry. Southwest Assiniboine Retired Teachers’ Tour participants with “Sara the Camel” at Glenboro.

On June 18, 2014, approximately 35 retired teachers and guests boarded a Brandon Bus Lines Motor Coach for “Another Adventure of a Lifetime Tour”…. well maybe not quite the “adventure of a lifetime”, but nonetheless quite interesting, informative and entertaining.

As in the past decade or so, this tour was once again sponsored by the Southwest Assiniboine Chapter of Retired Teachers’ Association and was organized and directed by our fellow retired educator, Kel Smith. Our capable and congenial bus driver for this tour was Jim Farthing.

This year we had multiple destinations scheduled. The first stop was the town of Carberry where we visited the Carberry Plains Museum and a very unique “Gingerbread House” adjacent to the museum. This house contained many turn of the century furnishings, etc. This writer and many of my fellow travelers were particularly interested in a photo on the wall of a rather scantily clad former female Goulter School Principal. I hasten to add it was picture of this person taken in her early infancy when she was probably six months old!

Our next visit was to the Seton Centre honoring a very famous former Carberry resident, Ernest Thompson Seton. This centre housed much information including many books and articles written by Seton. A garden featuring many native plants (part of the Seton Centre) was quite interesting and enjoyable and provided some equally interesting photo opportunities. Prior to leaving Carberry we were served a delicious lunch at the Carberry Legion.

From Carberry we proceeded south on No. 5 Highway to the Spirit Sands Desert. En route we went by the newly constructed Spirit Sands Casino which was scheduled to open to the public several days hence. It was probably a good thing that it was not open as I am sure some members of our touring group would have insisted we stop in order to allow them to squander their hard earned pension money!

When we arrived at the “desert” (not a true desert but rather a remnant of a sandy delta of the Assiniboine River), two covered wagons both drawn by a matched team of beautiful , well-mannered Belgian horses awaited our arrival for a tour. Mere words seem so inadequate to describe the beauty of the plants and the landscape of this “Manitoba Gem”. A part of this tour included a visit to the “Devils Punch Bowl” where “the sand slips and slides down a bowl shaped depression into an ever moving, eerie pool of blue green water”. A veritable visual smorgasbord and a photographer’s delight.

Following our visit to this tranquil and peaceful place, we continued on to the village of Glenboro, “Home of Sara, the Camel”. Here we visited the “Burrough of the Glen Museum” which housed many artifacts pertinent to Glenboro and area.