Canada 2

What do you think of these?  Medicine Hat, Moose Jaw, Swift Current, Bucking Horse, Horsefly, Salmon Arm (fish have arms?) Flin Flon, Cow Head.  These are names of towns/cities in Canada!  Canadians sure do have a sense of humor.

Today we ended up in Regina (pronounced ridge-EYE-nah) and will be here for the next two nights.  On our way here we stopped at Moose Jaw because someone told us that we needed to see the Tunnels of Moose Jaw.  That sounded intriguing so off we go.  Do you know how stressful it is to take a 38' motorhome down the main street of town and try to find a parking lot big enough for us to stop in?  Well, it's VERY stressful.  Good thing Karl does the driving there and not me.  I would probably wipe out a few cars.

The Tunnels of Moose Jaw are two guided tours that take you underground and under the main street of Moose Jaw.  The first tunnel we went in is where Al Capone used to go when he came up to Saskatchewan to get away from the heat (cops) in Chicago.  It is a labyrinth of twists and turns that will get you real lost if you don't know where you are going.  The tunnels were also used to make and hide bootlegged liquor from the government of Canada.  Capone would make it in Moose Jaw and transport it back to the US because he couldn't make any profit selling it in Canada during Prohibition because the Canadian government was making and selling their own!

The next tunnel told of the Chinese immigrants that came to Canada and helped build the railroad.  But after the railroad was done they were out of jobs and out of money.  The tunnels were actually built by the railroad to connect steam pipes to heat rooms.  An Englishman employed immigrants for his laundry to rich white people.  He abused them, took their earned money by making them pay for everything they needed to live and made them live in the laundry.  They were kept in the tunnels so that the rich public couldn't see them.  The persecution of the Chinese continued until the late 1960's!  But working in laundry in the tunnels was preferred over living "up top" with the terrible discrimination they faced by the public and their hatred of the Chinese people. 

All in all it was a very interesting 2 hour time of visiting Moose Jaw.  Tomorrow the Royal Canadian Mounted Police museum.