Monday June 29, 2009 - Leaving Lethbridge

Monday morning, we got up, showered and packed up our suitcases before heading upstairs for breakfast with Aunt Shirley and Uncle Elwood, who was feeling better after laying low the day before. We took photos on the front lawn after breakfast with everyone and then Aunt Shirley took us to the Vauxhall Cemetery to see where Grandpa and Grandma Bryant are buried.

After that, we dropped Aunt Shirley off at the house and said our goodbyes and headed off towards Retlaw.

Aunt Shirley & Uncle Elwood had lots of these types of birdhouses around their house - various types of footwear enjoying a second life! These were on the back fence by the driveway.

Retlaw is where my grandparents settled when they moved from Whitby, Ontario to Alberta. When they moved west in ’31, they already had my Uncle Alan, Aunt Norma and Uncle Vern with them. My Uncle Elwood was the first son born in the west, and my dad of course, was the last, being the youngest. The rest are scattered in between.



My dad may or may not be named after Retlaw (Walter spelled backwards is Retlaw), but he also had an Uncle Walter that he may have been named after. I’ll have to ask him. Several of his brothers were named after uncles they had, so I suspect that is the actual case, but still, it’s interesting to note the correlation between his name and the town.

I had been advised by my Uncle Elwood that there really isn’t anything at Retlaw anymore – most of the town is gone and only farm fields, the cemetery and the church remain. The church has been restored by past residents who come out each Christmas for a once a year service. They dress warmly as there is no heat in the building! The farm house that my dad’s family lived on is no where to be seen – it is now just a farmers field.

This is not my photo of the Retlaw church, as I didn't drive over to it (saw it in the distance though and it looked very quaint)

So, after a 45 minute detour down a very loose gravel road in our new car (!!) we realized that what my uncle said was, in fact, true, and sadly there really is NOTHING to see in Retlaw. Darryl was very happy to say “I told you so” (several times) and was unhappy that we were going to be very late to meet my Uncle Denis in Lethbridge where he had invited us to join him for lunch.

We met him at Humpty’s diner at 1pm but he wasn’t at all worried. He had talked to Aunt Shirley who had told him we were late getting away from Vauxhall and were going to make a stop in Retlaw, so he was expecting us to be somewhat delayed.

We had a long, leisurely lunch with Uncle Denis before finding the local Starbucks to grab a drink for the drive to Crow’s Nest.

Leaving Lethbridge, we were treated to the sight of a train crossing the famous bridge – the largest and oldest of it’s kind in Canada. Darryl took a couple of photos of it. In the distance ahead, we can see mountains and are getting excited!

Gradually, the flat plains gave way to more rolling terrain…we were in the foothills…and the mountains were getting more distinct but still quite a ways off in the distance. The transition from plains to foot hills to mountains takes a short amount of time and is somewhat gradual so that you don’t really realize it until you notice that suddenly you aren’t seeing much green anymore, and a lot more grey and brown.

I have been looking forward to coming back to Crow’s Nest for many years – the place and the story captivated me when I was last here in 1986. It is a surreal scene of utter catastrophic devastation, yet the town rebuilt and carried on amid the rubble of the slide. I have told Darryl about it many times and was really anxious to show it to him and take in the new interpretive centre. We knew we had until 6pm when the interpretive centre was scheduled to close, so when we arrived in Frank and it was 5pm, we figured we had an hour to take in the interpretive centre. Imagine our dismay and disappointment when we got to the door and saw a sign posted that said that yes, they were in fact open until 6, but they lock the doors at 5!! We were at the door at 5:04pm!! I was furious, but Darryl wasn’t too worried. He peeked through windows and felt we weren’t missing much so we just walked around and took photos of the slide, of Frank, Frank Slide and of Turtle mountain. I was able to tell him most of the story as I remember it well.



After we left Frank, we made one more stop at Sparwood to take photos with the Titan – the worlds biggest truck, then drove from there straight through to Cranbrook to our hotel for the night.


Along the way we saw two bald eagles just west of Sparwood, white tailed deer, a heron and a red tailed hawk in Fernie. Rocky mountain sheep just past Fernie. 2 more white tailed deer in Jaffray and at a scenic overlook, we saw several cedar waxwings, a northern red shafted flicker and a wild turkey.

Dinner that night was sandwiches and cheese from the local Sobeys in our hotel room while I got caught up on some website work – I finally had internet access!!

- Paula