Unpacking Memories: The Canada Tour

For some, the best part of a journey is the anticipation. For me, it is the remembering. That came to mind as I wrote about last summer’s Farm Collector Canadian tour for an article (North of the Border).

Hastily scrawled notes, dozens of digital photos and battered maps and brochures brought that trip roaring back to life for me. From our arrival at the airport in Calgary, Alberta (where we considered the plight of travel-weary Ukrainian refugees as they collected their bags and headed out the automatic doors to a new life), to our first sight of dazzlingly golden canola fields, to the hushed, dark interior of a century-old grain elevator, the experiences of the July tour were once again fresh in my mind.

Memory is, of course, a wily critter. Out of our group of 34, I doubt any two would have the same memories of the trip. Travel can be an intense experience. In the process of absorbing, meeting, navigating and experiencing, the brain and the heart can hold on to only so much.

In Canada, we found ourselves in a foreign country that looked and felt very much like home. At one point, in fact, we were less than 20 miles from the U.S. border. We met folks in Alberta who speak a (mostly) shared language and others in Manitoba who speak French. Everywhere we went, we found a keen appreciation for the preservation of the past.

Over 10 days, we saw everything from humble collections of original, unrestored pieces to sparkling displays of machinery that looked like they had just come out of the paint booth. We saw early, primitive conveyances that helped open the wilderness to settlement. We saw the relics of Canada’s proud history in ag manufacturing, with names like Cockshutt, Massey-Harris, and Sawyer-Massey.

People loom large in my memories. The kind host at a homespun museum, so proud of the collection housed there; the young chef who served an elegant spread of Canadian specialties; the museum craftsman who valued preservation over restoration; the son who took a month off from work to put a shine on his late father’s collection before displaying it at a tractor show. In the end, after all, it is the people we meet along the way who make our journeys memorable. Looking forward to seeing you somewhere down the road!