Before I made the decision to announce my release from the Canadian military I called my elder sister up and told her what I was going to do. She was surprised but not that surprised. She helped raise me so she knows me very well. She knows I have a free spirit so she suspected I was going to do something like this. I asked her if I could store my book collection at her place while I sell everything else. She is also a bibliophile so she agreed to take the books. So, I will drive my car from Northern Alberta all the way to Southern Ontario. It will be a nice road trip and a good way to spend my last few days in Canada before I move abroad.

I will visit all of my sibling (there are 5 of them) and announce what I have done. I haven’t told them yet because I am not sure of they will be supportive but I am going to find out. One chilly fall morning I packed the last few things into my car. I checked out of the military accommodations and the adventure began. Before I left a took a few pictures of a place I used to call home.

As I left Cold Lake I followed through with a Canadian military tradition. Outside of the town there are two decorative sailboats. It is custom that when you have been posted out to stop there and take photographs as a sign that you have officially departed Cold Lake. I made sure to follow through with this nice little tradition.

In the town there is an F-18 Hornet Fighter Jet on display. I made sure to stop there as a symbol of my departure from the air force.

Finally, I left Cold Lake…..for the last time. I remember how excited I was to come here nearly 4 years ago. I never would have predicted that I would be leaving in such a short amount of time. Life is fickle like that. But like the the book The Alchemist says “Follow the omens”. So I did and here we are.

Within an hour I had left Alberta and was driving through the Saskatchewan prairie. As I was driving I came across a town called Indian Head. “Well that is a bit racist, I must find out more” I said as I pulled into the town.

The story of how this town got its name is actually quite tragic. Before the town was established in 1882 the indigenous people of Canada lived here in relatively great numbers. That was until the first Europeans came. Now these meetings were quite peaceful. Fur trade was the name of the game and the indigenous people eagerly traded furs in exchange for guns and other European technologies.

What they didn’t know was that the Europeans would accidentally bring Old World diseases with them. The poor native peoples were not used to such strange illnesses and many died. So many died, in fact, that many of their bodies were left in what is now the town of Indian Head. When Scottish immigrants arrived ahead of the Canadian Pacific Railway they allegedly found many skulls of the unfortunate victims of the indigenous people. Thus, they named their new town Indian Head after the poor victims of the Old World diseases. Rather macabre and sad. Or so the legend goes. If the legend is true I find the giant Indian head to be rather inappropriate. Nevertheless it was still good to learn this little tidbit of Canadian history while travelling.

I continued my journey and spend the night in Saskatoon. That night I got a beer and a burger at a nice bar/restaurant and had a nice chat with the bartender and the waitress that were working that night. The waitress was very tall and pretty and a drunk patron gave the pretty waitress a hard time. The bartender shot the annoying patron a dirty look. The annoying patron paid his bill and made a run for it. Cheers to the hard workers of the service industry. The next day I continued on my into Manitoba.

In Manitoba I spent the night in a town called Brandon. There were two main attractions in this town. An airplane museum and a board game store. Now, after five years of service in the air force I was pretty sick of air planes so I skipped that sight and went to the board game store. I walked into the board game store and marveled at the myriad of board games, Dungeons and Dragon’s books and other geekly assortments. There was also a cafe that sold food and drinks attached to the store so you could play board games with your friends and enjoy a nice sandwich. A group of people came into the cafe to eat and play a game. I was about to ask if I could join them until I heard one of the guys in the group say “We sit here so now creepy a$$holes will come and ask to play with us” and the whole group laughed. “Well, not my kind of people then”. I left the store and got some dinner happy I didn’t ask those nasty people if I could play a board game with them. The next day I was driving into Ontario and the longest part of my joruney would begin.

As I was about to cross the border between the two provinces I found a lovely little place called Falcon Lake and I decided to take a detour to explore.

There were some beautiful fall colors around the lake.

That will be all for today. Tomorrow, I continue my drive through Ontario and closer to my destiny.