Change In Plans

This short post is about our afternoon and evening in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

We arrived in Winnipeg at about 4pm, and discovered immediately that Canadian border control is tougher than that of any of the other eight countries we have visited thus far on our trip.

We should have guessed there would be challenges when a group of elderly wheelchair-bound passengers was directed by the NorthWest Airlines crew to move to the front of the passport control line. The officers chastised the group loudly, and sent them to wait at the very back.

“But sir, we were only doing what the flight crew …” said one of the passengers.

One of the flak-jacketed customs officers interrupted the passenger loudly, “Flight crews have no authority over our operations. We will process you after we have completed everyone else in the line.”

Harsh. I thought Canadians were supposed to be friendly.

The woman directly in front of us was getting grilled by the other officer. Apparently the passenger was giving a motivational speech to a church group, and hadn’t declared the commercial goods (books and CDs) that she had brought to sell at the church. She was sequestered to a closed room on the side to be dealt with by superior officers.

Then it was our turn. Zola, India and I got through fine. India’s gentlemanly 72-year-old father, LC, and his 9-year-old granddaughter, our niece Charlsi Jayne, triggered all kinds of immigration alarms.

On the suspicion that LC was some kind of child-smuggling Humbert Humbert, the officers got very worked up. Several times they asked Charlsi, “Are you sure that he is your grandfather?” and “If the two of you are related, why do you live at separate addresses?”

LC and Charlsi were sent to the sequestration room, along with the book-smuggling motivational speaker. Eventually, some combination of us (including India and me) persuaded the commanding officer that we were legitimate, and that our failure to fax a notarized letter from Charlsi’s parents in advance was merely a mistake of ignorance. I offered to get Charlsi’s parents on the phone, but was reprimanded sharply for trying to take control of the process.

As we re-emerged into the baggage claim area, we saw the dozens of “missing child” posters and bulletins on the walls. Either Manitoba has a real problem, or the customs officers are hypervigilant on child smuggling, or both. Regardless, we were happy to get past customs and into the cold Canadian afternoon.

After we checked into our hotel, we went downtown to check out Winnipeg. Interestingly, all of the taxis here appear to be Priuses, and most appear to be driven by turban-clad Punjabis.

The driver dropped us at The Forks, a park and small South-Street-Seaport-type development near where the Red River and Assiniboine River meet. After looking around a little, we took a footbridge across the Assiniboine onto a river-front walking/biking path. Both areas were nearly deserted as late afternoon became dusk. We looked out at the flat and already freezing scenery for a short while, and watched long freight trains clatter off loudly to the south and to the west. We then headed back to The Forks to try looking in a new direction.

We walked across an elegant Red River bridge into Winnipeg’s French quarter, which had a lot of signs in French, but was also curiously devoid of foot traffic.

Freezing, we jumped into another Punjabi Prius taxi, and went to an elegant steakhouse called 529 Wellington, away from downtown but still on the Red River.

529 Wellington was a good choice. Despite the fact that we had no reservations, brought small kids, and were comically underdressed, they were very welcoming. Also, the food and the service were excellent. According to several of the sources I could check on my BlackBerry as we tried to choose a restaurant, it is considered Winnipeg’s best.

Our afternoon in Winnipeg was fine. Frankly, it is diffiult to imagine living here, particularly given a cold, windy and gray October afternoon. Early tomorrow we fly another ~800 miles north to Churchill. The cold, windy, and gray may be only beginning.