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Convivium was a project of Cardus 2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
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The Land of Living Skies

My mother grew up not far from where this photo was taken in The Land of Living Skies - Saskatchewan. Mum was raised mostly in Rouleau, about a 40 minute drive southwest of Regina on the flattest piece of land imaginable; a place where in the winter the wind, as Colter Wall sings, will cut you half in two.

Peter Menzies

My mother grew up not far from where this photo was taken in The Land of Living Skies - Saskatchewan. Mum was raised mostly in Rouleau, about a 40 minute drive southwest of Regina on the flattest piece of land imaginable; a place where in the winter the wind, as Colter Wall sings, will cut you half in two. Most folks know it by its comedy sitcom Corner Gas stage name - Dog River. Her father was a WW1 vet, a school teacher and occasional fox- and mink-farmer. I think they had chickens and I know they had a cow. In the Dirty 30s, they didn't have much else. At night, Mum told me more than once, she would lay in bed, listen to the trains rumbling through and dream "of faraway places with strange sounding names." Later, after working as a nurse and then marrying my geophysicist Dad, they lived in London, England and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. When Dad retired, they made their way home to Canada from London by heading east, via India, Singapore, Bali, Australia, China, Japan and more - all faraway places with strange-sounding names. So when I saw that Big Sky with those contrails spliced across it, I was thinking of her. Well done, little Dolly Jones: Mission Accomplished.