For the record, Winnipeg is where my parents, both who were children in Holland during WW2, ‘ended up’ in 1956. My dad got a job at a place called Dominion Malting and worked there 45 years after becoming the president. (side story is that the company was owned by Conrad Black). Dominion Malting brings in barley in huge rail cars from that flat flat prairie and makes it into malt and sells it all over the world, mostly to beer companies. That’s the Canadian grain business. I lived in Winnipeg until I was 21 and my parents still are there, about a 2 minute drive from the restaurant on Wellington you went to.

It’s true that it’s really really cold in the winter. But there is something about the Canadian prairie that is really awe inspiring. And someday maybe we will all go there — Patty and David and Mara and LIly too! — to Lake of the Woods.