Canada: Land of great inventions and fond memories

Let’s see, there’s Insulin, Superman, basketball, the snowmobile, the telephone, peanut butter and, among others, IMAX and instant replay.

Oh, add beer with a punch, some great candy and hockey, too.

Canada, and those with Canadian ancestry have brought us any number of familiar inventions and contributions to society, Justin Bieber not withstanding.

Canada has also provided personal memories that have spanned a lifetime.

Last weekend, my wife and I, along with some friends, needed a destination that was easy to get to and offered some of our favorite past times — golf and wine.

That would be Osoyoos, British Columbia, a community of 5,000 people in Canada’s Okanagan Valley that sits smack-dab on the 49th parallel, otherwise known as the border between the countries.

Nearly 30 years had passed since I last passed through the town whose origin, I discovered, was the word “suius.” That comes from the native language of the Osoyoos Indian Band and means “narrowing of the waters.” Indeed, the waters of the former glacial-formed Osoyoos Lake are split by a natural isthmus.

Spending lengthy periods of my early days south of the border in the U.S. part of the Okanogan Valley — spelled with an “O” rather than the Canadians who prefer “A” — with my grandparents, trips to Osoyoos and Penticton, further up Highway 97, were commonplace.

My first trip to Canada, at least the one I remember, was with my grandfather. We hopped in his two-tone green Plymouth after he got off work as Okanogan County Treasurer and drove 90 miles to catch a hockey game.

A smoky arena and standing hip-high to men in overcoats wearing classic fedoras are the memories that are still etched in my brain.

At that time Osoyoos was a sleepy little town at the lower end of a rich fruit-producing region where apples and peaches were king.

In the Osoyoos I visited last week fruit was still king, but now it was “fruit of the vine,” endless acres of wine grapes, nearly 10,000 acres are planted in the valley. Many of the former fruit orchards, or ranches as some of the purveyors like to call them, had made the transition to some of the 120 wineries that stretch to Kelowna, Vernon, and beyond, nearly 120 miles in all.

Between sips of the Merlots, Chardonnay’s, Pinot Noir’s and many fine blends of wine, the journalist in me slipped in questions for the winery operators.

Gold Hill’s owner came from Central Asia. He was eager to tell his rags-to-riches story of emigrating here, working in local orchards to save the money to invest in his now award-winning winery. Only trouble was cutting through the thick accent.

There were other leap-of-faith stories, like that of the Inkameep Vineyards — a Canadian First Nations project of the Okanagan Band — who struggled to launch their Nk’mip Cellars. But they now have a gorgeous and classy resort and winery, not the cliché casino, with which to draw visitors.

The Adega property once grew apples but found that they could not survive so out went the trees and in came the vines on property the current owner’s parents both toiled over. Maria named a wine after her mom and dad in tribute.

It’s certainly not the Osoyoos my grandfather said he visited in the 1930s when he told me he could have bought that strip of land that divides the lake — now lined with hotels, houses and businesses — for 25-cents an acre.

But the former hardware man had all he could handle making his Blackwell’s paycheck stretch to feed his family of four during the Great Depression.

Any trip to Canada cannot be complete without a trip to a provincially-owned liquor store to get real Kokanee, the 5.0 percent by volume stuff where two cans or bottles gives one a buzz.

That revealed yet another great innovation that I’ve only seen in Canada. To get the use of a shopping cart it’ll cost you 25 cents. But you only rent the cart and get your quarter back when it is returned to the place you got it — not left in the store parking lot.

Now talk about the next great invention to export to the good ‘ol USA?

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.