We left Reesor Lake Campground on the 5th, heading east across the Cypress Hills. I had no cell signal, so Google Maps was out, and our tattered paper map didn’t have enough detail. The Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park was just a green blot. Our destination was Fort Walsh, on the Saskatchewan side of the park. I just reasoned that there must be a road through the middle, even if I didn’t know exactly where it was. When I expressed my concerns to Those Johnston Kids, Baby Girl remarked, “I like getting lost.” I concur.

In any case, it didn’t last long. We found a sign pointing to Fort Walsh about 200 metres after we left the campground. That hardly lessened the adventure of it though. Try to imagine it: navigating by paper map and road signs. Crazy, right?

It was actually a pretty drive through the park. The road was windy and the hills scenic. Most of the park is being ranched, as far as I could tell. At least there were cattle everywhere and they didn’t look like the wild kind. We chatted to pass the time.

Fort Walsh is an historic site that is staffed with costumed period interpreters – people who dress and act like the inhabitants during the time of interest. The site was the scene of the Cypress Hills Massacre in 1873, when a group of American and Canadian hunters in pursuit of horse thieves massacred an innocent Assiniboine village. Between 20 and 100 men, women, and children were killed, depending on who’s account you believe. When Ottawa found out later in the year, it put pressure on the Canadian government to enforce law and order in the region. The crime was one of the initiatives behind the creation of the North West Mounted Police, the precursor to the RCMP. The other was the arrival of Sitting Bull and his Lakota Sioux in the area in 1876. They were fleeing retaliation from the American military after wiping out Custer and his army at the battle of the Little Big Horn. The government established Fort Walsh and made it the headquarters of the NWMP from 1878 to 1882.

My appreciation of Fort Walsh is limited, simply because of the history. The RCMP had 3 primary goals: establish law and order in the Canadian western frontier; convince the natives to give up their land and move to reservations; and assimilate natives into the general population. The first goal is laudable, in the wake of the Cypress Hills Massacre, but the other two are anathema. The perverse revisionist logic is that reservations and assimilation were necessary as the bison were all but exterminated in Canada, ignoring the fact that it was Canadians that did the exterminating. We toured the fort, but didn’t take part in the Mountie make-believe they had set up for child visitors. There was no troublesome-Indian make-believe for us to join either, although we did cast dark looks at the walls from the outside.

Honestly, relative to other historical recreations we’ve visited like Louisburg, Nova Scotia, or the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village, near Edmonton, it was pretty lifeless. On a high note, they had a 4 month old calf, Molly, grazing around inside the fort. She was extremely gentle and seemed to enjoy the attention of kids. She was also ready for her bottle when we went over to say hello. Molly sucked on my finger like a pacifier until one of the staff showed up with a giant baby bottle. Calves have great sucking power and rough tongues. Baby Girl fed the calf for a little bit, then lost interest and passed the bottle to another swooning little girl.

Anxious to ‘cover some ground’, as Baby Girl put it, we drove pretty steadily from Fort Walsh to Regina, with brief stops in Swift Current and Moose Jaw for gas and bathroom breaks. I had thought we might stay at Buffalo Pound Provincial Park, but then remembered that we had no clean clothes left and finding a laundromat is never as easy as you might think. I called a couple of hotels in Regina before I hit on a Holiday Inn Express with a laundry and rooms with two queen size beds. WiFi and breakfast included for $132!

We arrived around 9 PM and I held squealing children in the shower until the water going down the drain ran clear again. It took a long time. A little Treehouse on cable, a lot of pizza, and they were out. I folded laundry until midnight.

I will get caught up on pics and links soon, promise!