I MADE IT UP: Tales of Canada

by Carl D. Clarke, Jr.

My wife Sweetness flew to Minneapolis to meet our friend Mary Huggins. From there they drove to Winnipeg, Canada for a conference.  While Winnipeg is almost due north of Minneapolis, to get there, like everywhere else, you have to drive to North Dakota.  I got out my map to follow their trip.

Manitoba, Winnipeg’s province, is big, has lots of lakes, and apparently is pretty well populated for a place that gets that cold.  It is also very diverse, given the variety of place names.  I didn’t want to bother gathering any real facts to explain the various names on the map, so I made some up.  Here they are.

Winnipeg.  Named for Winnie the Peg, who ran the trading post there and only had one leg.  She was an Annie Oakley kind of woman, tough and mean.  If you shorted her on furs, she would knock your socks off with her peg leg.

Portage La Prairie.  This is French.  It means, “From here on, you have to carry your canoe 100 miles across the prairie to the next lake.”  If I was a fur trapper, I would have trained the beavers (or wolverines or whatever they were) to carry the canoe for me.  I’m sure that, after several clear demonstrations of the alternative, the beavers would have chosen to carry the canoe.

Beausejour.  A place maybe 60 kilometers northeast of Winnipeg.  Beausejour means “Have a nice day” in French.  I thought New York hippies created that expression, but apparently the French Canadians beat them to it.

Little Grand Rapids.  This seems to be an oxymoron.  Grand Rapids must have washed away, because I couldn’t find it anywhere nearby on the map. 

Prince Albert.  Way, way northwest of Winnipeg, over in Alberta.  This city must be embarrassed about its name.  In the early days, it was the only trading post where you could get the pipe tobacco that came in the little red can.  Now you probably can’t smoke anywhere in the city limits.  Funny how times change. 

Minnedosa and Neepawa.  Two French outposts west of Winnipeg, named for Jean Pierre Minnedosa and Rene Neepawa, respectively.  The French apparently had a very substantial presence in this region. 

Steinbach.  Southeast of Winnipeg.  Named for the only German fur trapper in all of Canada.  Germans just aren’t a fur trapping people. Steinbach also is remembered as the man who introduced the cell phone to Canada in the 1780’s so that trappers and traders could stay in touch with each other, check on the price of hides, that sort of thing.  Problem was, nobody had thought to build the towers, so it didn’t really take off. 

Carl D. Clarke, Jr. from Abingdon is a weekly columnist for the Washington County News.  He may be reached at