Canada Day in Winnipeg: After the obligatory laundry and bike maintenance, we walked to the Legislature and found a crowd of people in red and white, ready for the human Canada Flag event. Wandering, we stopped at the statue of Louis Riel, who, as the founder of Manitoba, holds his rightful place on the bank of the Assiniboine. We couldn’t walk along the river trail as it was flooded and the water is not yet as high as expected, with  flow from the rains which have caused  flooding in Alberta still to come. At the Forks (where the Assiniboine joins the Red River), there was entertainment and also the Founding Peoples celebration at the Oodena Circle. A 1/2 hour boat trip gave us a good view of the Museum of Human Rights, which opens in 2014, the Provencher Bridge and the St Boniface Cathedral. We had hoped to stay to see the fireworks, but retreated early to our air-conditioned hotel.

Today, we met a group of cross-Canada cyclists outside a bike shop. We don’t think that they believed us when we said that we were doing the same thing until we showed them our bike tans! An exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, The 100 Masters, Only in Canada, was amazing. A celebration of the gallery’s centennial, it is an assembly of one hundred works of art from twenty-eight museums in Canada and two in the United States, along with ten pieces from the WAG’s permanent collection. 1/2 of the works were by Canadian painters, some of whom, we were ashamed to admit, were unknown to us. Our euphoria continued through a dinner at  Sidney’s, where  every course was memorable.  It will make up for the limited options available back on the road.  To end the day, we walked around the site of the Museum of Human Rights. It is an inspiring building even now.