When I started making these walks in April, spring hadn’t arrived yet; the trees were bare and the grass was still brown after the long winter. Now the city is green; the wild roses in our yard are in bloom, and our bur oak tree—always the last to leaf out—is bright green. Christine and I leave the house to walk to our allotment garden, and we notice a tiny bur oak seedling—probably from an acorn forgotten by a squirrel—is growing among the western Canada violet and solomon’s seal in the shade of the mature spruce tree in our front yard. Should we transplant it, or leave it where it is? Will it get enough sun? We discuss these questions as we begin our walk down the alley and through the neighbourhood to the pedestrian bridge over Wascana Creek. The neighbourhood smells of freshly mown grass. A Bobcat waits silently at the curb, and the elm trees create a lush canopy over the street. We hear a man whistling happily and tunelessly. On Hill Avenue, a city truck is watering the pavement, leaving behind a fresh smell, kind of like petrichor, but with an overlay of chlorine. We see a man sitting on the curb. He looks uncomfortable. “Do you need a hand?” we ask. Yes—he sat down to rest while waiting for a bus, and now he can’t get back on his feet. We take his hands and pull him up. He is grateful. As we walk away, conscious of the contact with a stranger, I open the small bottle of hand sanitizer I’ve been carrying in my pocket. “Don’t insult him,” Christine says. But it’s the pandemic—he would understand, wouldn’t he?
At the garden, a woman asks, rather officiously, whether we have a garden plot there. Because of Covid-19, visitors are no longer allowed—a rule that must be difficult to police. That’s the reason for her question. I’ve seen her many times, and we’ve talked to each other, but apparently I left no impression. “Yes,” I answer shortly, and I carry on towards our plot. The corn is only a few inches high, but the potatoes seem to be happy enough, as is the chard. It’s been a cold spring, and very dry, so it’s a lucky thing Christine loves watering. She finds it meditative. I find it a chore, so we have worked out a division of labour. I weed, she waters. There’s no point watching Christine water the garden, so I say goodbye and head off on my walk. I’m on my way out of the allotments when I hear a bird singing happily and loudly in a tree. It’s not a song I recognize, and I take out my camera, hoping it might be a Baltimore oriole. We put out oranges in our yard to attract orioles, but none has visited. I approach slowly, trying to see who is singing. Despite my caution, I frighten the bird, and I catch a flash of reddish brown and a long tail as the bird flies to a distant tree. A brown thrasher, I decide.
I cut through a parking lot to avoid walking on the edge of busy Pasqua Street—there’s no sidewalk, and it’s not a safe place for pedestrians—and notice a strange archaeological dig going on between the lot and the empty beach volleyball courts at the Rugby Club. What is happening? Why does there appear to be a barbecue grill poking out of the ground? I turn the corner and wait for the light to change so I can cross Lewvan Drive. I walked this way just a week or so ago. The billboards advertising the Harbour Landing development have not been repaired yet, and they continue to speak nonsense, but there are no picketers outside the Co-op supermarket today. Grasshoppers whir in the dry grass. I surprise two large jackrabbits, as big as dogs. Another lies dead next to the sidewalk—killed crossing the road. How did I miss that the last time I was here? A gopher whistles. Four more jackrabbits watch me, warily, from a field that seems about to disappear, if the heavy equipment parked on its edge is any indication. A grackle complains in a boulevard tree. I hear a turboprop taxiing at the airport. The neighbourhood is a strange mixture of things: houses, apartments, retail, a large business park—and, of course, the airport next door. I think about Garreau’s description of edge cities—the odd assortment of land uses assembled together—and realize that, in its own small way, Harbour Landing is an edge city.
I turn onto Campbell Street and head north, towards the airport. Another rabbit suns itself in a greening field. An abandoned farmhouse warns trespassers about video surveillance; perhaps the owners are concerned that bored neighbourhood kids might vandalize the property. Red-winged blackbirds trill in a slough, and lights flash atop two cell towers. A Bobcat rumbles in a farmhouse driveway. The same rooster I heard last time is crowing. I can tell which fields have been seeded now; after last weekend’s brief rain, they are beginning to turn green. I think about what it means to be walking in my own footsteps. For years Nan Shepherd walked repeatedly through the Cairngorms, a mountain range in the Scottish highlands, and through that repetition, she came to know that place intimately. Her book about the Cairngorms, The Living Mountain, is a powerful evocation of that place. Could walking in the same way on these grid roads give me that kind of intimate knowledge of them? Would this space repay that kind of attention? I’m not sure. The Cairngorms are a marvel, a sublime gathering of mountains and plateaus, burns and lakes and valleys, apparently unscarred by the extractive economic imperatives of contemporary civilization. The edge of Regina, on the other hand, has been devoted to those extractive activities. On one side of the road, industrial agriculture; on the other, the airport; and, in the distance, trucks move along the Bypass and along Highway 1. This space is bounded by those highways. But surely the space I’m walking through has its own rewards: the cloudless sky, the western meadowlarks singing joyfully on the other side of the airport fence.
It’s quiet: just the sound of my feet on the gravel, the birds, and the wind. Occasionally a vehicle passes. I notice a golf ball at the side of the road. It stands out from the usual empty coffee cups and beer cans. What’s it doing there? I kick a rusted pair of vicegrips off the road, mindful of the damage they might do if they were thrown up by a passing pickup truck. A killdeer tries to decoy me away form her nest in a field of stubble. A pair of grey partridges fly up from the ditch, and dogs bark at me from a farm just up the road—probably the same dogs I heard last time I walked this way. I hope they’re still tied up. Today the farmer is riding a quad around the yard, and we wave to each other. The old farmhouse that used to stand next to the new one has been torn down; just the basement is left. A dump truck is hauling in loads of dirt to fill in the hole. I can hear the Bypass now, a faint howl in the distance. There is a steady line of traffic heading south. Perhaps, as more people discover the new highway, it is getting busier; perhaps the Bypass is not an exception to the principle of induced demand. I turn on Centre Road and cross the overpass. A constellation of steel washers lies on the shoulder. Then I cross the road and walk down the offramp onto the highway.
I hadn’t planned to come this way today, but it feels inevitable, walking here. If I’m going to study the Bypass by walking, at some point I was going to have to step onto it—or its paved shoulder, at least. The highway is now empty; that earlier traffic may have been an anomaly. The wind is getting stronger, and the sun is hot. Grackles creak. I pick up a galvanized nut belonging to a large bolt as a memento of my first steps onto the Bypass. Meadowlarks are singing above the wind. I stop to drink some water, and inhale the smell of a large manure pile in a pasture next to the road. A flock of red-winged blackbirds is sitting on the fence that surrounds that patch of grass. On the other side of the highway, a cyclist is heading north, slowly climbing the incline up to the bridge over the Canadian Pacific tracks, the only hill for miles. Two more cyclists follow. A grey partridge lies dead on the shoulder, its feathers blowing softly in the wind.
I leave the highway at the Rotary Avenue onramp. Rotary Avenue is the main east-west street at the Global Transportation Hub, and there is an interchange on the Bypass to funnel traffic into and out of the development. The fields beside Rotary Avenue are empty but for dead grass and dandelions. Stubs of roads, blocked by concrete barriers, lead nowhere from Rotary Avenue. To the south, a locomotive shunts a few cars hauling containers onto the siding that serves the Canadian Pacific Intermodal Yard. The fields are crossed by deep drainage ditches, and a temporary sign announces that the land is for sale. Half of the land in the GTH has already been sold, it proclaims. I walk past the Loblaw warehouse and across Fleming Road. A sea of trash surrounds the Enterra waste transfer station. I thought there were rules about the kinds of businesses that were allowed to locate in the GTH; apparently, when the land didn’t sell, those rules must have been abandoned. Why else would SaskPower have been encouraged, or ordered, to buy land here? A row of concrete barriers blocks Rotary Avenue, and I walk past them to the end of the road. Rotary Avenue could continue further west. I’m surprised at the size of the GTH. When I walked here before, I crossed the north-south axis, on Fleming Road; the east-west axis, on Rotary Avenue, is three times as long, at least. It’s taken me some 45 minutes to get this far, and it’s clear that the GTH land goes even farther, past the end of the road: a right-of-way has been constructed, heading further west. I turn back and sit on one of the barriers to rest. The map on my phone tells me that Rotary Avenue—the part I’ve walked—is three and a half kilometres long, and I wonder how much farther the GTH goes. The official web site says that the development is 1,800 acres, and I’m starting to get a feeling for just how big that is.
I finish eating the apple I brought for lunch and start walking again. On the way out of the GTH, I stop to look at the map posted on the sign at its entrance. Last time, I thought that map just exaggerated where companies were located, that it made them look closer together than they actually are, but now, after walking the length of Rotary Avenue, I realize that it indicates not just where companies are located, necessarily, but where they have bought land. There’s no sign of the SaskPower warehouses that supposedly sit where Rotary Avenue and Sharp Bay meet, nor is there any sign of Morguard’s building across from the Loblaw warehouse. SaskPower and Morguard might have bought land here, but they haven’t done anything with it. Is the purpose of that map to indicate which land has been sold, or to suggest what activities are going on at the warehouse park, who its occupants are and where to find them? If it’s the latter, then it’s extraordinarily misleading, and a worse attempt at deception than I had previously thought.
I turn east on Dewdney Avenue. There are so many meadowlarks singing today, perched on wires or power poles. A hawk—maybe a Swainson’s, although I don’t know enough to be able to say for sure—is hunting gophers in a field next to the LNG storage facility. A cyclist passes, heading towards the city. I notice a jackrabbit, dead since last summer, on the shoulder. How did I miss that when I walked here before? I think about Nan Shepherd again, and the importance of repetition in getting to know a place, and realize that, in a small way, I am coming to know these roads by walking on them. My feet are sore—I’m not walking enough to toughen them up—so I head for the Tim Horton’s in the gas station at Saulteaux Crossing. I order an iced cappuccino—too sweet, as always, more like ice cream than iced coffee—and call Christine for a ride. She’s not home, and I wonder if I’m going to end up trying to find the capacity to walk another six or seven kilometres. Then, finally, she answers, and agrees to pick me up. I wait outside, on the concrete block that anchors the Esso sign. My friends Mark and Vonda stop to say hello; they are buying gas and then heading to Ogema, two hours southwest, to get one of the pizzas that village is famous for. A road trip: what a good idea.
Works Cited
Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain, Canongate, 2011.
