The Last Stop for Greyhound
The company cancelled bus service in Western Canada, isolating hundreds of communities. We went along for the final ride
The place names on my itinerary read like accidental poetry. Elstow, Colonsay, Plunkett, Foam Lake, Insinger, Minnedosa—pioneer surnames and plain-spoken settler descriptions punctuated by Indigenous terms, filtered and distorted through generations of colonists.
The view beyond the window is a mottled blur of browns and greens, like military camouflage come to life. My city-trained eyes struggle to make sense of it all, and I find myself in a landscape-induced fugue state. Details begin to resolve from the relentless, side-scrolling scenery, though. Haystacks, hydro wires, grain elevators. Ponds and trucks and tanker cars resting at railroad sidings.
Read more at at thewalrus.ca.
Photography by Derek Shapton (derekshapton.com).
