More Canada Day musings.
After the Elbow parade, after Gallery 148, after the best milkshake in the world, we found ourselves in Riverhurst.
By the time we got there, the village’s Canada Day festivities had drawn to a close. But the sun was still up, so we decided to take a walk downtown. It’s sort of a personal goal to see every “Railway and Main” in Saskatchewan.
Our first visit to Riverhurst happened by accident several years ago. We got turned around late one autumn day after encountering road construction on our way back from the southwest corner of the province, ended up at Riverhurst ferry and then ducked into the village of Riverhurst to see if we could find a late supper.
The town had quite a transformation after our first visit. Since I took the photo above, the town completed a Light Up Main Street project as part of their centenary in 2016 that resulted in a lot of streetscaping enhancements. In addition, they constructed a gazebo in Kiteley Park downtown on Main Street.
When we got there on Canada Day this year, there was a bright, shiny blue piano in the gazebo.
A woman who had seen us walk into the park came over and explained that the piano had been there for about a week, recently donated by a local resident. “The blues piano,” she said, anticipating that we were about to ask why it was painted. She went on to explain that there would be a Canada 150 celebration on Monday, July 3. (We planned to return for that day’s festivities, but were unable to make it back down.)
The village also organized a series of Blue Piano Days, 5:00 pm every Tuesday throughout the remainder of July. That sounds like it would have been a lot of fun. Radio station CHAB Moose Jaw will be in Riverhurst all day, August 31 (a Thursday). It’s good to see Saskatchewan’s small towns organizing events.
More about Riverhurst
- Village of Riverhurst official website.
- Village of Riverhurst Facebook Page.
- Blue Piano Days 2017, line dance lessons, by Lee Harding on Youtube.
- Riverhurst ferry, by my bicycling buddy Don Wilson on his Home Town Saskatchewan Youtube channel.
- Palliser Regional Park, near Riverhurst.
- Riverhurst Census Profile (unlike so many small towns, Riverhurst grew since the previous Census).