Inside the atrium of the Manitoba Leglislature, taken from behind the grand staircase and the iconic bison, mascot of Manitoba.

The Manitoba Legislature, home of the provincial parliament, is a pretty impressive building, and a monument to the ambitions this city had in the early days of the 2oth cewntury. Winnipeggers owe a lot to the people of that day, whose entrepreneurship ensured that the city now has a lot of historical buildings with lots of character, and not just urban sprawl and blight.

We got a free tour of the building, but strangely enough, among all the trivia our tourguide had to offer (fossils in the walls — that’s pretty cool), she didn’t mention it was heavily influenced by freemasons who may have intended it to be a replica of King Solomon’s temple… The CBC produced a very interesting documentary about this, see it on youtube (quality isn’t very good).

See the previous post, Maskwa.

Here’s a sunset shot. It was so incredibly clear, the colours were really stark. And it was completely quiet… except for the rustling of the wind, the tweeting of birds… not a manmade sound to be heard… very tranquil. I miss that.

Around this time we saw a beaver swimming past. It came back several times. I followed it upriver, and as I came through some bushes I was right on the riverbank, and I saw bubbles right by the shore. I point my camera in that direction and the beaver surfaced, scarcely two metres away! It was more surprised than I was; it made a big splash and disappeared. I got a great picture of the splash. Fun though.

So I’m in Winnipeg right now, and for the rest of the summer (why? More on that later, maybe tomorrow — I should have written about this sooner). As I was walking around, taking in the sights, I was looking for scenes that would capture the essence of this prairie city. Winnipeg is a fairly large city and downtown is dominated by highrises. But nothing you haven’t seen elsewhere. I settled on the Manitoba Legislature — the stately home of the provincial assembly — built during an age of tremendous optimism, when Manitoba’ s future looked golden. It still is — though not fantastically rich (at least not in a Beverly Hills 90210 sense) , it looks like Winnipeggers have done a lot to make this a very liveable and friendly place. I look forward to exploring more of what this city has to offer, and hopefully see some of the rest of the province.