My Drive Across Canada: Part 3—The Prairies

Train lumbers across a horizon of canola, west of Winnipeg, Manitoba (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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I emerged from the Lake of the Woods boreal forest into Manitoba’s true flatlands as I neared Winnipeg. Though, the eastern part of Manitoba was similar to the boreal hills of Ontario, it soon levelled out into flat stretches of prairie grasslands, and expansive fields of various crops including bright yellow fields of blooming canola. It was early July and I’d caught it at its peak in flowering. Bright waves of yellow continued from Manitoba into Saskatchewan, where canola seemed to take over the land. At times all I saw was lemon yellow all the way to the horizon in all directions. Canola accounts for the largest area of land dedicated to any single crop in Saskatchewan. I’m told that there are over 22 million acres of canola growing in that province.

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Canola field in Saskatchewan (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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Canola is a member of the crucifer family; it is a cool season crop that grows particularly well on the prairies, where cool nights and hot days allow it to develop its unique fatty acid profile. The name Canola was registered as a trademark in Canada in 1978. The name is essentially an acronym for CANadian Oil Low Acid. Prior to canola oil, most of the oil Canadians used for food purposes was imported. The canola plant was developed by two Canadian prairie plant scientists, Dr. Baldur Stefansson and Dr. Keith Downey, who bred rapeseed populations to develop a crop that would meet consumer demand for a healthy, edible oil product. Harvested seeds are crushed to produce canola oil, with the remainder used to create a high-protein meal for livestock and human consumption. Canola is kind of cool, given its versatile use from cooking oil pant-based protein, biofuel, animal feed to possibly even clothing!

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Bridge across the Assiniboine River for the Trans Canada Highway

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Before reaching Winnipeg, I crossed the Red River at Selkirk. This large river floods almost every spring, covering large areas of flat land with muddy water. I touched on the Red River in an article I wrote about the impact of current agricultural practices on river dynamics and eventual flooding in the Niverville Citizen.

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Nina Munteanu talks about watersheds in the Niverville Citizen

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After passing through Winnipeg, near Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, I crossed the iconic Assiniboine River, as it flows from Saskatchewan and parallels the Trans Canada Highway as it flows east to Winnipeg to join the Red River.

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Train crossing the Trans Canada Highway in Saskatchewan (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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Driving through the prairies on the Trans Canada Highway, I often had to stop for a train crossing or slow down as a slow farm vehicle cut across my path on the highway. Here, the Trans Canada was just another country road and I was competing with tractors, farm vehicles and, in some cases, horse and wagon.

I made good time, driving the straight roads along flat and gently rolling landscapes sculpted by wind and water. This was big sky country, and I recalled that this was all a giant shallow and warm inland sea in prehistoric times.

Depiction of the prehistoric inland sea in Canada

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Called the Western Interior Seaway, this Cretaceous inland sea stretched from the Arctic Ocean down to the Gulf of Mexico, connecting the two oceans and separating the continent into eastern (Appalachia) and western (Laramidia) landmasses and covering what is now most of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and part of Alberta. Existing from about 100 to 66 million years ago, this shallow marine sea supported a rich and diverse marine life, including the shell-crushing durophagous Ptychodus mortoni, apparently 10 metres long. I thought all this as I raced across a giant dry ocean of grass waving in the wind. I imagined myself a crab scuttling along the ocean floor beneath 760 m of water as giant sharks, 13-metre long mosasaurs and other exotic creatures swam leisurely above me. Is that why I found myself speeding along the highway and crossing into Saskatchewan before I knew it?

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Sodium sulphate deposits of salt mine near Chaplin Lake, Saskatchewan (photo by NIna Munteanu)

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Near the village of Chaplin, Saskatchewan, I stumbled on a moonscape of white chalk-like hills. This was the sodium sulphate mine on the northern shore of Chaplin Lake, a salt lake that is a major stop over for migratory birds that feed on its brine shrimp. I discovered that the lake formed in the late Pleistocene when glaciers shaped the landscape and deposited salts and other minerals into the soil and bedrock. As the glaciers receded in the late Pleistocene, meltwater channels dried and left isolated depressions filled with meltwater and groundwater rich in dissolved salts from underlying glacial deposits. Hot, dry summers and persistent winds common in the Saskatchewan prairies increased evaporation and concentrated salts, leading to crystalline sodium sulphate deposits, which created the salt lake. The salt mine started in 1947 and today is one of the largest producers of anhydrous sodium sulphate in North America with production capability of 285,000 tons per year.

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Chaplin Lake map

Salt deposits on the side of the road, near Chaplin, Sask (photo by NIna Munteanu)

Flat grasslands plain under a darkening sky, near Piapot, Saskatchewan (photo by NIna Munteanu)

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I continued through the Great Plains, west toward Alberta, across a rolling grassland mingled with sage. Along the stretch from Chaplin Lake past Swift Current through Piapot, the terrain grew distinctly dry and chaparral-like. I spotted various types of sage everywhere.

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I saw two types of native sage: left is Artemisia frigida; right is Artemisia ludoviciana (photos by NIna Munteanu)

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Three types of native sage live in the grasslands of Saskatchewan: Pasture Sage or Prairie Sagewort (Artemisia frigida), Prairie Sage (Artemisia ludoviciana), and Silver Sagebrush (Artemisia cana). Pasture sage is an ‘increaser’ species; its population grows as rangeland condition deteriorates. It is a good indicator of overgrazing.

I also found ‘frothy’ clusters of pretty tiny white 5-petaled flowers that I finally identified as Prairie Baby’s Breath (Gypsophila paniculata), growing by the roadside and in the grasslands of Saskatchewan. The pretty tiny white 5-petaled flowers It’s a much branched perennial, the inflorescence often giving the plant a dome shape. Foliage is glaucous and plants are glabrous except for small hairs on the calyx. This plant has been designated a noxious weed in Saskatchewan.

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bunches of Gypsophila paniculata in a Saskatchewan grassland (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Close up of Gypsophila paniculata, Sask (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Then, in no time, I crossed the border and was approaching Medicine Hat in Alberta. But that’s Part 4 of this journey.

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Rolling prairie hills near Medicine Hat, AB (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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Nina Munteanu* is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “**A Diary in the Age of Water” **was released by *Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

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