Louis Riel Day in Dauphin

Monday was a holiday here in Canada. Most of the country calls it Family Day (I believe BC celebrates the holiday next Monday), but here in Manitoba we call it Louis Riel Day.

Louis Riel was a Canadian politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and a political and spiritual leader of the Métis people. (Wikipedia) 

Our tour currently has us residing in Dauphin, Manitoba for about a week and Dauphin has a rich Aboriginal and Metis history. Alissa, her boyfriend Christian (who drove up from Winnipeg to visit us!) and I ventured out to Fort Dauphin on Monday to partake in some Louis Riel Festivities!

Warning! This is a picture heavy post!

A couple structures inside the fort.

Here we are helping ourselves to maple syrup on a stick (sometimes called maple taffy)! It's so delicious! Better than a lolipop!

Maple syrup is heated until liquid and then poured in a line on the snow. Then before it hardens on the cold snow you take a wooden stick and roll up the line of syrup until it's a ball on the end.

This is the inside of the Archaeology Laboratory. It's full of fossils and artifacts from the surrounding area.

Inside the museum. I found the Fur Bale intriguing as well as the fur value chart.

More stuff in the museum. These were part of the WWII exhibit. Mostly I liked the sunglasses...

I couldn't resist taking photos of the amazing embroidery and bead work of these items. So beautiful!

The Dauphin Dramatic Society. This photo is so causal and jovial compared to so many turn of the century portraits. I especially like the gentleman holding the violin bow up to the lady's neck on the left side of the picture.

This is the blacksmiths shop.

And the trading post.

I loved this woman's Hudson's Bay coat. She was kind enough to let me photograph her. She told me after that her coat belonged to the museum! And that it was warm!

At the end of the day we went on a horse drawn covered wagon ride! 

And if I may leave you with this puzzling photo. The evolution of the telephone...switchboard to iPhone.

So as you can see we're having lots of fun between work. We get home on Thursday night for a day and a half before we head back out for another week. Couldn't come too soon. I started to feel homesick today for the first time. 

Lisa.xo