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Next stop: Minot, North Dakota, with a fuel stop in Pine River,
Minn. Minnesota's license plate advertises "10,000 Lakes," and
sometimes it seems they all look alike. Here are a few lakes near McGregor.
If they're viewed
side by side, the real view and the sectional chart don't seem to look much
alike (the chart has been oriented to match the view from the airplane).
Rice Lake is 'way off in the distance. The four lakes in a row don't pop out
from the chart because of obstruction markings, and the lake on the left is
obscured by an airport symbol. The airport itself is well hidden from this
distance. Fortunately, none of these features were crucial for navigation.
VFR navigation isn't always
that arcane. This view is from the following day, near Bowdoin, Montana.
Here,
the chart matches the pilot's view
very well.
Back in Minnesota, we found Pine River with no trouble, got some gasoline and
went along our way. This is the kind of airport I like for a fuel stop. No
control tower, single runway, fast service. In this case, self service –
the pump is hidden behind the airplane.
We did our day's sightseeing at the
International Peace Garden. The Peace Garden straddles the U.S. and
Canada, and so does its airport (there are a handful of such airports, most
of them in very lonely places along the 49th parallel). Here, the runway is
entirely in North Dakota, but there are parking areas on both sides of the
border. Before departing, pilot and passengers must clear Customs for the
country where they will be landing next. If you arrive by car, you will also
go through Customs when you leave the Peace Garden.
This is how the Garden's entrance looks to a pedestrian with his left foot in
North Dakota and his right foot in Manitoba. Today's Peace Garden comprises
2300 acres on both sides of the
border. It was the brainchild of Henry Moore, an Ontario
horticulturalist who is not to be confused with the sculptor of the same
name. Dr. Moore proposed his plan for an international garden dedicated to
eternal peace, at horticultural meetings in both Connecticut and Toronto, in
1928-29. The project was approved almost immediately, but funding would take
a couple of years. Dr. Moore selected the site while on a flight over Turtle
Mountain, when he saw "the blue jewels of the West" for the first time.
Within a few years he had persuaded two national governments to donate the
land he needed, and had raised some money through subscriptions for the
corporation that was to build and maintain the Garden.
By 1932, it was evident that the corporation had enough wherewithal to hold a
dedication ceremony. There was nothing on the site yet, but 50,000 people
turned up for the ceremony on 14 July. William and Edroy Paterson,
stonemasons from Rugby, N.D., quickly built this cairn in June 1932, so that
the ceremony would at least have something to dedicate. The cairn was
originally flat-topped. The red granite globe was added in 1960, given by
the Great Northern Railway of St. Paul.
The cairn's inscription is the Peace Garden's charter:
To God in His glory,
We two nations dedicate this garden,
And pledge ourselves
That as long as men shall live,
We will not take up arms
Against one another.
In the 1930s, great advances were made in construction. Roads were laid, land was cleared, and lakes were built. On the North Dakota side, Lake Udall honors the Manitoba publisher who championed the project. In Manitoba, Lake Stormon honors the American judge who served the Peace Garden for over forty years in several rôles. The main lodge was also built at this time.
North Dakota's pride in the Garden is obvious. Ever since a law was passed
in 1955, the words "Peace Garden State" have adorned their license plates.
If you turn around after visiting the dedication cairn, you will be facing
this floral clock. The Bulova Watch Company has maintained it since they
donated it in 1966. The clock's face is
18 feet in diameter. It is a duplicate of
Bulova's original floral clock in Geneva, Switzerland. (Some accounts say
the original is in Bern, but you won't find a floral clock there. It's in
Geneva.)
Evergreens are not indigenous to this area; the thousands of conifers in the
International Peace Garden have all been planted here.
Like the two men here, many people come to be photographed standing astride
the 49th parallel, one in Canada and one in the United States. The Peace
Tower behind them, the Garden's signature structure, was dedicated in 1983.
The tower is
about 3000 feet from the entrance gate.
There are thousands of roses here, of every possible variety. Of course the
Peace Rose is among them.
A sign near the Peace Tower tells the story. With slight paraphrasing, it
says
Look up. Waaaayyy up.
One hundred twenty feet or thirty-seven meters tall, the four columns of the
Peace Tower are seen from miles around. These concrete columns each consist
of seventeen pre-cast sections. Each section weighs an incredible
45,000 pounds.
They were lifted into place by a huge crane in 1982.
Fifty years after a peace tower was listed as an objective by an early Garden
board, this structure became a reality. What does the Peace Tower represent?
The four columns symbolize the four corners of the earth, from which
thousands of immigrants arrived in Canada and the United States in the 1800s
and 1900s to build better lives for themselves. The foundation stands for
our common base of democratic beliefs. The tower's height represents the
early immigrants' soaring ambitions.
Two columns stand in Manitoba and two in North Dakota, facing each other in
two similar but separate societies. The 4000-mile long border that lies between them is the longest
undefended boundary in the world. Trust, it seems, is a good guarantor of
peace.
There are a few little obelisks in the Peace Garden that mark the
international boundary. This one is in front of the Peace Chapel. At the
western end of the Garden, the Peace Chapel is the only building that
straddles the boundary. This non-denominational chapel was dedicated in July
1970.
The chapel's floor is made of brick pavers from Charleston, West Virginia.
The limestone walls are a native Manitoba stone called Tyndall stone. Some
of the stones are marked with the fossils of ancient marine creatures. The
front and two side walls are engraved with quotations from dozens of "people
of peace," from ancient times to very recent. All of the illumination
you see here is from skylights.
The Veterans' Memorial Bell Tower sounds Westminster Chimes every fifteen
minutes. Only four sets of these chimes exist in the world, all cast by
Gillett and Johnston of Croydon, England. These chimes were formerly in the
First United Church of Brandon, Manitoba. They were donated to the
International Peace Garden when the church reorganized in 1969.
Ten steel girders from New York's World Trade Center were brought here in May
2002. The arrangement is the result of a competition that was won by Derrick
Wolbaum, Marcus Lund, and Tim Kennedy, students of Landscape Architecture at
North Dakota State University in Fargo. The beams are laid out in three
distinct but interdependent groups:
Recall. Six beams form a gateway to the memorial.
Reflect. A single beam filled with water lies on the ground, where
visitors can make a personal connection by touching both the beam and the
soothing water it contains.
Remember. A bronze plaque stands in remembrance, and a native oak tree
is a living memorial to the power of life and the benefits of growth beyond
tragedy.
There is a small cairn at the entrance to the grove around the
World Trade Center Memorial. It is made of stones gathered by children from
the United States and Canada.
The government of Japan presented the seven Peace Poles to the International
Peace Garden in 1997. These hand-crafted obelisks carry the message "May
Peace Prevail on Earth" in 28 different languages. This is not an isolated
display. The
Peace Pole Project has placed more than 200,000 Peace Poles in nearly
every country on Earth.
Although the International Peace Garden airport is an Airport of Entry for both the U.S. and Canada, this fact is not indicated on U.S. or Canadian charts. Neither is it obvious in the Canada Flight Supplement; although the information is there, if you look hard enough. I didn't. So we returned to North Dakota for the night, which in retrospect I wish we had not done. Getting into Canada one day earlier might have let us avoid some nasty weather.
I changed my original plan because of a dire forecast for Regina, Sask., and planned instead for a route to Havre, Montana, and Lethbridge, Alberta. Havre is named for Paris's harbor city Le Havre, but it's not pronounced the same way. To pronounce the name, you need to know a local story. Back in Gold Rush days, two men were competing for the affections of the same woman. After a while, one of them got tired of the fight, and told the other one "Aww, you can have 'er!"
The photo on the left shows a reasonably friendly cloud forming a few miles west of
Havre. So far, so good. But there were thunderstorms forming farther west
over Cut Bank. So we requested clearance direct to Lethbridge, which was
quickly granted. After clearing Customs and
waiting out some rough weather on the ground in
Lethbridge, we took off when things looked like they would be calm enough for
the next couple of hours – more than enough time to reach the
good VFR weather we knew was waiting for us in Red Deer.
The photo on the right shows what things look like when you guess wrong. These are
not friendly clouds. We finally did pop out into a nice flying day,
but only after "paying our dues" for half an hour or so. This was the only
really bad weather we encountered for the whole trip, at least while flying.
on to Drumheller
Calumet
Peace Garden
Drumheller
Red Deer
Convention
Bow River Pkwy
Lake Louise
Moraine Lake
Field
Yoho NP
Icefields Parkway
Jasper
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