Yesterday, I went to a stream off the Wanapitei at midnight to catch smelts.
The catch itself isn’t worth mentioning, of course :D, but the experience as a whole was completely new to me. I never imagined that so many people would gather together beside a cold, dark, wet stream in the middle of the night. Some of them didn’t even seem to care about the fishing — they just wanted to soak up the atmosphere and hang out with friends, which showed me another side of Canadian culture.
The shimmering light of campfires, the laughter of young people, old-school rock songs, the rumble of ATV engines — all of it mixed together into something that felt, to me, like the mysterious ceremony of some forgotten cult.