I Like That

I Like That
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Thursday, September 8, 2011

World’s Largest Bunnock


We travelled gravel roads, secondary highways and fast-moving freeways during our holiday in August 2011. The roadways led to points of interest, restaurants or picnic areas, landscapes or museums to explore, roadside pullouts or a motel to rest.

Frank had fashioned our 1986 Classic Toyota van to use as our accommodations and a storage unit. He covered the wooden sleeping bunk with carpet and on that laid our blow-up mattress. Each evening we climbed into the back of the van, slipped into our sleeping bags, laid our heads on pillows and gratified ourselves with sleep.

In the morning, we sipped coffee prepared on a pullout table at the back of the van, sat in lawn chairs and chomped on fruit. Each day we purposefully travelled the back roads so we could meet small-town folks along the way. A thirty-two foot structure, which is situated at the junction of highway 13 and highway 14, caught our attention and we drove to it so that we could talk to the young lady held captive by the structure. She told us she spends her summer days in the tourist booth at the base of the replica of an anklebone of a horse. Down the hill is Macklin, a border town between Alberta and Saskatchewan renowned as the Bunnock Capital of the World!

“What’s this structure supposed to be?” I said.

“It represents the game, Bunnock, which translates from Russian into bone. The Russian Germans first introduced the game to Canada. It was adopted from the game played in Siberia. You play it like horseshoes. Your team stacks its fifty-two bones on level ground at one end of a 10-meter runway while the other team does the same at its end. Then the teams toss their bones to try to knock down each other’s bones. The team with the most bones left standing is the winner,” she said.

I nodded and pictured the participants flinging bones from one end of a straightaway to another. We had arrived several days past the scheduled August long-weekend world championship event and so did not witness the bone-tossing game.

We drove away from Macklin happy to have learnt about the game call Bunnock. I've put a link below.


An Eye Catcher
-source Macklin poster






A Bunnock Tosser
- source Macklin poster
Welcome to Macklin



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