Daytrip to Gimli

Grandpa Keith and I decided to go for a spur of the moment drive outside the Winnipeg city limits, so we headed north east towards Gimli, a lakeside Icelandic community. Our first stop was Lockport and the famously haunted St Andrews church, where apparently you disappear if you walk backwards around the church 3 times. We didn’t, so we are still here. Phew!

The running joke before we left was that we would swing by a Mennonite or Hutterite colony on the way and make a few extra bucks. Apparently (and I have actually done a bit of research on this one as this probably is the weirdest thing I have heard in a long time!) the Mennonites, the Hutterites and the Amish communities of North America are troubled with an increasing number of hereditary diseases as their gene pools have been closed off from the rest of the world for about 12 generations. Therefore, they have come up with a way to get fresh blood into their community by offering men from outside the colonies money to impregnate one of their women the natural way. Show me the money!

We also drove through Winnipeg Beach, an aging holiday resort town that kind of looked like it had been left behind in the 50’s (*tumbleweed*). We drove on to Gimli, which had a similar feel to it. For me, being Swedish and all, it was interesting to see all the Icelandic flags and Nordic references in street names, shop names, names of ships etc. For example; the coast guard ship was named ‘Vakta’, which translated to Sweden would be ‘guard’ or ‘guarding’ and a crafts shop was named ‘Koma Heim’, which translated to Swedish would be ‘coming home’.

Keith kept us entertained by flipping channels between my 80's hair-bands-channel, and his favourite blues-channel on his satellite radio and by practicing the harmonica. Thank you for a great day out, Keith!