Flora's alphabet adventure: Toastmaster explores Manitoba's communities, from A to Z

Need a guide to Manitoba communities? Flora Schalla is working on having you covered from A to Z.

The 70-year-old in Steinbach, Man. woman has been visiting towns, villages and small cities across the province for the past eight years, learning fascinating stories about each place and sharing them with others through her Toastmasters speeches.

"It's been very exciting. There are so many neat places to see in Manitoba," Schalla told CBC's Radio Noon program.

Schalla is among those nominated for CBC Manitoba's #IamMB project, which is sharing the stories of people who have shaped our province's past, lead us in the present or will create our future. You can make your own nominations here right now.

She has been a member of the Toastmasters, a global organization that promotes public speaking, communications and leadership, since 2001. She is currently the vice-president of education with the Carillon Toastmasters in Steinbach.

Her project started in 2009, when Schalla was looking for new speech material. She came up with the idea of profiling towns that she had not visited before, challenging herself to choose a community for each letter of the alphabet.

Plans to visit Teulon this summer

Starting with Altona, Birtle and Carberry, she has checked out 19 communities to date. She said she plans to visit Teulon, in the province's Interlake, this summer.

"I visit the town and then I go back to my club and I present a speech on what I have seen and done in the town," she said.

Schalla contacts the municipal office before each visit, and asks to have a resident show her around and discuss the history of the community. The tours are followed by visits to local museums, churches and other attractions.

She said she usually spends a day in each community, but there are exceptions. For example, she stayed overnight in Flin Flon, which is about 680 kilometres northwest of Steinbach.

While every community she's visited so far has been welcoming, Schalla recalls a particularly memorable reception in Birtle.

"I actually visited it in the winter of 2009 and the mayor at the time suggested that I come back in summertime," she said.

"I did go back a year and a half later, in the summertime, and when I went into the museum and told the volunteer my name and why I was there, she was so excited, she was jumping up and down and she said, 'Of all the 'B' towns in Manitoba, you have chosen Birtle.' At the same time, she saw the current mayor walking down the street. She ran out and grabbed him and brought him in for a photo op with my husband and I."

X marks the spot

But as Schalla nears the end of her alphabet journey, a challenge lies ahead: there is no community name in Manitoba that starts with the letters "X" or "Q."

"We are going to be creative, as we had to be for 'Q' and so [St.] Francois Xavier has an 'X' in it and that's where I plan to go," she said.

The letter "Q," Schalla said, was covered by a lake. She and her husband went to Quesnel Lake Caribou Lodge on the northwest corner of Quesnel Lake, within Nopiming Provincial Park.

As for what she'll do with all the information she has gathered and all the notes she's made from her adventure, Schalla said a friend and fellow Toastmaster has suggested she write a book.

"I said, 'We'll worry about that when we get to Z,'" Schalla said.

(By the way, "Z" is for Zhoda, south of Steinbach.)

Schalla said while she started the project to gather more content for her speeches, it's helped others along the way. For instance, she said, her tour guide in Deloraine, Man., told her she learned a lot about her own community in the process of gathering information.

"My project has inspired a lot of people to really think of Manitoba and what there is to see and do," she said.