Regina, SK

Campbell Collegiate High School

Run time 59:44 + 2-minute kick

This was another forgettable run. I literally forgot to take any photos while running. First of all, this was no Lethbridge. There was nothing picturesque about the locale. I exited the back of the hotel parking lot, went through a dingy neighborhood that looked as if it had not yet recovered from winter, entered the school property from a grassy alley, and found no track to run on, so I ended up just running up and down the alley and several times around a soccer field.

There was just nothing worth visually documenting. Plus, I was a little punchy from a couple of days of long driving and staying up late working. I got my run in – that was the important part.

My wife did request that I document something I saw in Regina, however. When our two older kids were in high school, there was an ad hoc game every spring called “The Water Games.” My older son reports that it was a play on “The Hunger Games.” Participants were assigned targets anonymously, and then to eliminate their target, they had to get them with a water gun. It became a very elaborate affair, with people hiding outside people’s houses, and sometimes colluding to trap someone in a vulnerable situation.

When I pulled into a gas station in Regina to fill my rental car, a young man who was filling up his car suddenly ran out into the street with a water gun and started emptying it into the open window of a car stopped in the turn lane. There was laughter and merriment, and then the young man returned to his car and finished filling it up. I could only surmise that they were engaging in their version of The Water Games.

My wife wanted me to document it because I was telling her how unimpressed I was with Canadian cities, and then I told her this story, and she pointed out that a young man, a person-of-color, ran out into the street with a fake gun and started shooting it at someone, and no one shot him with a real gun. So I guess Canadian cities do have something of value to offer, perhaps.