Our Canada Trip in '71

We took a trip to Canada in August of '71. We just finished harvest. I was only a few weeks from going to college.

The scenery was beautiful. I wish I had taken my glasses off long enough to realize this would be the last trip I would ever take with my family.

My parents were good sports too. They played Who's Next by the Who as often as I asked. We usually made it until the third song. Dad would tell me that he would play it, as long as I didn't tease my sisters.

And then dad would put one of several Neil Diamond cassettes I had. He loved Neil Diamond.

When he wanted to give me a hard time, he would put in Three Dog Night's Naturally.


Dad would sing Joy to the World. It's the song that most refer to as Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog.

I hated anyone singing the lyrics to a song while I was listening to music, and he teased me by doing it. It makes me smile now, because my Cles was the same way.

I could make Cles made by playing Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan. I didn't even have to sing.

The picture at the left shows the Torino G/T. It was a great car. It is another one of those cars we owned that I still wish I could reorder now.

The picture below is when we made a stop in Glacier National Park. After that stop, I actually wanted to study Geology, and I began at the university as a Geology major.

This picture shows the first days of the trip.

We are so stupid when we are young. Instead of enjoying the vast forests, the endless blue sky, the rumbling of a glacier at Lake Louise, I could only think of getting home to get ready to go to college.

Dad wanted to extend the trip and travel to the coast. He wanted to see the mountains of British Columbia and Vancouver. It never happened.

I remember seeing fields of wheat mowed and raked into windrows. Their growing season was short, being so far north. It was the only way for them to get ripened rain, or at least that's what someone told dad and me when we asked.

On the way over the border, our first "special" encouter with Canadians from Alberta set the tone for how I would view them for the rest of my life. And further meetings didn't change my mind.

We blew a tire on the car as we traveled through some little towns on the way to Calgary. Dad and I changed the tire, but the spare was not one that was a great replacement. Dad stopped by one of the towns to get the tire repaired. The two of us walk in and all these people stare at us. It was like something out of a Steven King novel.

Dad wants to be friendly. He walks to the pop machine, drops some coin in the slot and gets some soft drinks. An old man looks at the license plate on our car.

"You from Idaho?" The gray-haired man squinted at us.

"Yes," my dad answered.

"Are you a Mormon?" The old man waited for dad to say yes before asking why we drank Pepsi Cola.

I still remember the way the hair stood up on my arms and on the back of my neck, just like one of the dogs we once had that liked to chase strangers and bite at their heels.