Onward to Ontario
2011/08/19
Stopped off at the Mint in Winnipeg and took the tour – I had done this once as a kid but couldn’t remember anything about it. It was moderately interesting. I didn’t know that this mint produces only circulation coins (including coins for many countries other than Canada) and the one in Ottawa produces the fancier commemorative type coins. Also didn’t know what the core material of our coins is these days – for most, it’s steel, including pennies. Pennies are steel with a microns-thick copper coating. Cheaper than solid copper. Even so, about half the pennies made disappear from circulation.
They have this nice display out front of the flags of the countries they do business with:
I bought a nice coin set from the gift shop for my collection.
Then, onward.
Final impressions of Winnipeg: It has nice parks, some nice old buildings and is nicely treed, and has a great dessert place. It has a weirdly high concentration of Tim Hortons franchises and also a high number of small burger joints. Other than that, it’s about as attractive as a cinder block. I do not want to live here.
Drove to Dryden today – not a long haul. Northern Ontario has weird town spacing, if like me you prefer to stay at upscale sleep establishments. I could do it in ~700km hops or in ~400km hops. I prefer the latter, since it gives me time to stop and see the sights along the way, so the next few days will be short drives. And then I’ll be in Toronto for several days.
Dryden is a sad place. Its skyline consists of one thing: an enormous pulp mill. Nothing else is more than tree height. It has a road, a railway, a tiny commercial section and that’s about it.
I have a bad history with this town too. I’ve been through northern Ontario four times before – twice by rail and twice by road. One of those road occasions, weather was poor and hotels were more full than usual, and we had a really hard time finding a place to stay. It was late at night when we finally found a room here in Dryden, and it was crappy. Not a good night. We did take in a movie at a nice old theater they have downtown – with original wooden seating and all. It’s still there, but it wasn’t open today. I went to the town’s faux Chinoise restaurant for supper and had Combo #5 – sweet & sour chicken balls, rice and steamed veggies. The chicken balls were good, the rest not so much.
I passed the longitudinal center of Canada today – it’s about an hour east of Winnipeg. My west-to-east trip isn’t quite at the halfway point though, since I’ll be detouring down to Niagara falls and will also be spending multiple nights in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
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