Winnipeg to Hamilton

After travelling this much of Canada, I was starting to think that Vancouver is the oddball in the Canadian family. There's snow everywhere - it's really the Canadian constant so far - except when leaving Vancouver. And then I remembered that the wet coast just got about 10 cm dumped on it in the last week or so, so maybe we're not as odd as we'd like to think.

Though the snowmobile tracks that have paralleled the highway throughout northern BC, up to Whitehorse, and now points east are companions I'd never travelled with before.

So far I really like "northern" Ontario. I still find it a bit difficult thinking of Kenora as northern after checking out Thompson and Whitehorse. But it is quite beautiful, and the falling snow is covering the highway and reminds me of the Alaska highway, so I guess it's north enough.

At the last rest stop I heard a distressing story from a woman from Calgary. It seems they have a large homeless population there, and a lot of untreated mental illness as well. Sounds familiar - from the days when they emptied out Riverview after government cuts. I heard the story of a woman who had been under care for a week, and the day she was released, she committed suicide. And her war veteran son, who ended up homeless, and his legs froze in the prairie winter and had to be amputated, and then he was back on the streets, where his legs became infected before they found him housing.

Just another Canadian story?