Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/566324
f a l l 2 0 1 5 | w e s t w o r l d 15 there once upon a time and might still if he didn't also love Canada. Geographically, his heart is divided between Saskatoon and Freiburg. Anyway, he was just home from a six-week trip to the Continent and was feeling more than a little bummed to be back to the grind at that gritty time of year on the prairies. "I've got the cure for you, Marki," I said. "Canal riding!" He raised a desultory eyebrow. "What canals?" He was thinking Danube or Elbe, of fairytale Rhineland castles. For years we've talked about riding the great waterways of Europe, which are lined by equally great cycling paths. And we might, someday, when time, funds and marital peace align. No such alignment could be expected that summer. "Not Europe, Marki. Saskatchewan!" I tried to make the word as effervescent as a pint of Dortmunder. We were drinking domestic in a Saskatoon pub called Somewhere Else. It is a little-known fact that Saskatchewan has extensive canal works, complete with trails on their banks, that run roughly 200 km northeast from Lake Diefenbaker. Mark used to work on a land survey crew and has visited every township and pickled-egg tavern in this rectangle province, so he knew all about these irrigation canals. But it hadn't occurred to him to cycle along them. I said they looked full of promise. "It's all double-track. Pure cream. We can ride side by side, like gentlemen. Very continental." I don't know if he was quite convinced, but one Sunday morning not long afterward we set off on a test ride, following the canal where it leaves the north end of Blackstrap Lake. And I think we were both hooked in the first kilometre. True, there were no castles. But there were 100-year-old farmhouses elegantly fading. There were no wineries or distilleries. But the grassy banks afforded Michelin-worthy picnic grounds. Even the word "canal" was a little gran- diose; the canal was more of a ditch you could wade across in spots, so there could be no house- boating. But the little strip of water sustained every kind of plant and animal. e corridor was wild with sea buckthorn and goatsbeard, coyote and deer, garter snake and bittern. It was like we had found a secret door to the prairie. Lovely as the plains are in their bright, bucolic way, they can be hard to experi- ence, especially in the farm belt where there is little access except for the grid of gravel roads, which are ugly, straight, wide, dusty and unin- viting except by car. e canal was a green car- pet that curved through the undulating land. The silence and solitude was profound. The first hour, we passed a group of hunting-dog enthusiasts running some kind of derby, but that was a fluke. In the many weeks of riding that followed over the next year, we passed perhaps a half-dozen people in all. I may have planted the seed, but Mark was Expedition Leader after that first ride. Back in the city he emailed me a Google Maps plot of our route and a distance log. We'd done 19.5 km of canal, making a 39-km roundtrip to return to our car, and we agreed to explore the whole route as a series of out-and-back day rides. As an idea, Saskatchewan's irrigation canals were born in response to the Great Depression, so that no future generation would have to endure another dustbowl. e building had to wait until 1967, when the canal works were created as an offshoot of hydroelectric Gardiner Dam on the South Sas- katchewan River and its vast reservoir, Lake Diefenbaker. e main canal connects the res- ervoir ponds of Broderick, Brightwater, Black- strap, Bradwell, Zelma and Dellwood. Over a dozen rides averaging 37.5 km, we immersed ourselves in prairie. We studied the (opposite) The canal route passes many abandoned, century-old farm yards. (this page, clockwise from top) The waterway itself may not be grand, but the countryside is a sensory feast; artifacts both man-made and natural tell the prairie story; brimming side-channel spillway on the west side of Broderick Reservoir.