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DAUPHIN |
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DAUPHIN was founded as a fur-trading post by the French in 1739 and
is now a pleasant town that straggles across the flat prairie landscape
just to the east of the Vermilion River. Its long Main Street features
some good examples of early twentieth-century Canadian architecture, but
there's only one real attraction, the Fort Dauphin Museum (May, June &
Sept Mon-Fri 9am-5pm; July & Aug daily 9am-5pm; Oct-April by appointment
tel 638-6630; $3). This tidy wooden replica of a North West Company
trading outpost, located by the river at the end of 4th Avenue SW,
fifteen-minutes' walk from Main Street, holds the stockade where there
are reconstructions of several sorts of pioneer building, including a
trapper's cabin. If you have time to kill, there's a huge, chateau-like
CNR railway station on 1st Avenue NW and a modest arts centre and
gallery at 104 1st Ave NW (Mon-Fri noon-5pm; free) in a striking
Romanesque Revival building. At the corner of 1st Street SW and 11th
Avenue SW is the Ukrainian Church of the Resurrection , with its
distinctive clustered domes (by appointment only tel 638-4659, 638-5511
or 638-4618).
The fertile river valley that runs west of Dauphin towards Roblin was a
centre of Ukrainian settlement between 1896 and 1925, and its village
skylines are still dominated by the onion-domed spires of their Orthodox
and Catholic churches. There's a modest collection of Ukrainian pioneer
artefacts and traditional handicrafts in Dauphin at the Selo Ukraina
Office , 119 Main St S (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm), but their main task is to
organize the National Ukrainian Festival , which takes place on the
first weekend of August at a purpose-built complex 12km south of Dauphin,
just off Hwy 10 on the edge of Riding Mountain Park. The complex has a
tiny heritage village dedicated to the early Ukrainian settlers (by
appointment only tel 638-9401; free) and a splendid amphitheatre built
into a hillside, ideal for the festival's music and dance performances.
Dauphin's bus station is at 4th Avenue NE and Main Street, a couple of
minutes' walk from the town centre. The Chamber of Commerce , 21 3rd Ave
NE (Mon-Fri 8.30am-4.30pm; tel 638-4838), provides tourist information.
There's also a tourist bureau (mid-May to Aug Mon-Thurs 10am-6pm, Fri-Sun
9am-7pm; tel 638-5295), 2km away on the southern edge of town on Hwy 10,
beside the airport.
For accommodation , the Boulevard Motor Hotel , 28 Memorial Blvd (tel
638-4410, fax 638-7642; $40-60/$60-80), the Dauphin Inn Motel , 35
Memorial Blvd (tel 638-4430, fax 638-7466; up to $40/$40-60) and the
Dauphin Community Inn , 104 Main St N (tel 638-4311, fax 638-6469; up to
$40/$40-60), are all (fairly seedy) downtown hotels ; you may opt
instead for either the Canway Inn Motel and Suites (tel 638-5102 or
1-888/325-3335, fax 638-7475; $40-125), roughly 4km south of town near
the junction of hwys 5 and 10, with a pool, a sauna and more appealing
rooms - four of them have jacuzzis en suite, or the Touch of Africa Bed
& Breakfast (tel 638-0085 or 638-7936, fax 638-8174; $40-60), on Hwy 10,
south of Dauphin opposite the tourist information centre, which keeps
ostrichs on its grounds. The Vermilion Trailer Park & Campground (tel
638-3740 or 622-3109, fax 622-3199; $12-16; May-Oct) is ten-minutes'
walk north of Main Street at 21 2nd Ave NW. You can eat at Irving's
Steak House & Lounge , 26 1st Ave NW, which has a real honky-tonk feel,
or Zamrykut's Ukrainian Family Restaurant , 119 Main St N, a plain
establishment that serves delicious home-made food, from borscht through
to pierogies and kielbossa (sausage).
If you want to absorb still more Ukrainian ambience, visit the Wasyl
Negrych Pioneer Farmstead , near the village of Gilbert Plains, 30km
west of Dauphin. Here you'll find Canada's best-preserved and most
complete Ukrainian homestead (June-Aug daily 1-5pm; rest of year by
appointment; $2; tel 548-2477 or 548-2689). Wasyl and Anna Negrych
arrived here in 1897 with their seven children from the Carpathian
Mountains. Over the next few years they built the farmstead, which now
has ten buildings - an 1899 home that replaced their first log house
after it burnt down, three granaries, barns, a chicken coop, pigsty,
garages and a bunkhouse with a fully preserved, working peech - the log
and clay cookstove that was once the heart of every Ukrainian household.
Amazingly, two of Wasyl and Anna's children ran the farmstead according
to traditional practises until their deaths in the 1980s, never
introducing electricity, sewers or telephone lines. The farmstead is now
run by Parks Canada.
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