Rural Routes, Blog Version

My husband and I went to an auction sale last weekend. On display were tables of glassware and collectibles and rows of antique and vintage furniture. I could have bid on an icebox like the one in my grandmother’s porch when I was a child. Or a wall-mounted phone like the kind that was in my parents’ home until dial telephones were introduced to the community in 1975.

The items up for bid were the life-long collections of several households in southwestern Manitoba.

Someone in the group collected dolls – fancy dolls still resting in the boxes they came in. The auctioneer told us that he knows someone who has 2,000 dolls in her collection and is still not ready to give up the habit.

Sometimes, the smallest things can trigger seemingly unconnected memories. Many years ago I met a woman who lived with her husband of 50-plus years in Welland, ON. She had a doll collection, too, but it was the kind of collection that was meant to be touched. Especially, in this case, by her grandchildren. She had given birth to eight children and there were many grandchildren.

“When I was young, I used to get a new doll every year for Christmas,” she told me. “But I had to throw my old doll away when I got the new one.”

“That was one of the wonderful things about having children,” she said. “I could have as many as I wanted and keep them all.”

I can still remember the laugh that accompanied her statement.

Perhaps her childhood dolls were handmade and nothing more than rags by the time they were a year old. Perhaps that is why her mother insisted they be thrown away when they were replaced. I could never really think of another reason for it, although there are probably some.

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It was a lovely day for a drive, that last Saturday in September. The blue sky was a perfect backdrop for the colours of the foliage. Yellows, oranges and reds with still some green here and there.

We don’t have the reds that eastern Canada has; we don’t have the maples either. Have you ever noticed that if you do a web search for autumn leaves, the pictures you get are most often those of maple leaves?

We don’t have any maple trees nearby. There were two Manitoba maples in my parents’ yard, but that was because my mother planted them there. And recently I saw a Facebook post seeking information on where you could find maple trees in Winnipeg.
So obviously they are not as common as their name might suggest.

My husband has often remarked that, when they selected a maple leaf for the Canadian flag, they chose a symbol that not all  Canadians can relate to.

I decided to do some research and I discovered that there are ten species of maple native to Canada. At least one of the ten species grows naturally in every province.

The sugar maple can be found in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. Red maples are also found in eastern Canada. The silver maple is found in southeastern parts of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Forest Region. The black maple can be seen from Ottawa to Montreal and the striped maple is native to northeastern America including Canada.

The west coast of British Columbia has the big leaf maple, while the Douglas maple is found along the Pacific coast and eastwards to the Alberta foothills. Southern B.C. also has the vine maple.

The mountain maple is found in forests from Saskatchewan to eastern Canada and the Manitoba maple is found in southern Manitoba.

So yes, there is a maple tree to be found in each province, but not in all parts of each province. Six of the 10 species listed can be seen in eastern Canada; five of those six can ONLY be seen in eastern Canada.

Of course, the territories – Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon – don’t have any at all.

There’s a little bit of truth in almost everything, it seems. After that, it’s all interpretation.

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