We travelled gravel roads, secondary highways and
fast-moving freeways during our holiday in August 2011. The roadways led to
points of interest, restaurants or picnic areas, landscapes or museums to
explore, roadside pullouts or a motel to rest.
Frank had fashioned our 1986 Classic Toyota van to use as
our accommodations and a storage unit. He covered the wooden sleeping bunk with
carpet and on that laid our blow-up mattress. Each evening we climbed into the
back of the van, slipped into our sleeping bags, laid our heads on pillows and
gratified ourselves with sleep.
In the morning, we sipped coffee prepared on a pullout table
at the back of the van, sat in lawn chairs and chomped on fruit. Each day we
purposefully travelled the back roads so we could meet small-town folks along
the way. A thirty-two foot structure, which is situated at the junction of
highway 13 and highway 14, caught our attention and we drove to it so that we
could talk to the young lady held captive by the structure. She told us she
spends her summer days in the tourist booth at the base of the replica of an
anklebone of a horse. Down the hill is Macklin, a border town between Alberta
and Saskatchewan renowned as the Bunnock Capital of the World!
“What’s this structure supposed to be?” I said.
“It represents the game, Bunnock, which translates from
Russian into bone. The Russian Germans first introduced the game to Canada. It
was adopted from the game played in Siberia. You play it like horseshoes. Your
team stacks its fifty-two bones on level ground at one end of a 10-meter runway
while the other team does the same at its end. Then the teams toss their bones
to try to knock down each other’s bones. The team with the most bones left
standing is the winner,” she said.
I nodded and pictured the participants flinging bones from
one end of a straightaway to another. We had arrived several days past the
scheduled August long-weekend world championship event and so did not witness
the bone-tossing game.
We drove away from Macklin happy to have learnt about the game call Bunnock. I've put a link below.
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| An Eye Catcher -source Macklin poster |
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| A Bunnock Tosser - source Macklin poster |
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| Welcome to Macklin |
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