Back to Brandon, Manitoba

1,309 miles

As I was saying, before Brandon got me interested in the 2016 Canadian Census of Population, …

Brandon is the biggest & busiest city I’ve seen since I whizzed past Regina, Saskatchewan, over a month ago.   I found a place to watch curling!   The Brandon Curling Club is situated in Keystone Centre, one of the largest consolidated entertainment, convention, agriculture and recreation complexes in Canada.  Keystone Centre also hosts Brandon Wheat Kings (junior hockey) and the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair.

Winter can be severe.  Snow usually falls from October to April, but it has fallen as late as May and as early as September.  

Prior to the influx of people from Eastern Canada, the area around Brandon was primarily used by the Sioux people and some other tribes.  In the 1870s and early 1880s, the bison of the Great Plains were nearly completely wiped out by over-hunting. With the destruction of their staff of life, the nomadic Sioux people began to settle in reservations or left the area entirely.  French Canadians also passed through the area on river boats on their way to the Hudson Bay Post near present-day St. Lazare, Manitoba.  I feel as if I’m witnessing the history of Canada’s western expansion in reverse as I travel west to east.  It’s rather disorienting.

Brandon has a lot of pompous & impressive government buildings erected in the 1890s, but the most beautiful building I saw is the 1912 Parkland Hospital for Mental Diseases.  It looks like it was designed to offer serenity to sufferers, even if that eventually proved impossible.

curling image:  http://www.keystonecentre.com/sports/curling/

Parkland Hospital for Mental Diseases:  http://www.hillmanweb.com/bmhc/