The Conclusion of ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ Cruise

Donna Fox’s coverage of Garrison Keillor’s annual fan cruise concludes. Next year, Norway!

July 20 Victoria, British Columbia

We spend the day at sea, arriving in Victoria, B. C. at 8:00PM.

In the morning we listened to Garrison, Robin and Linda singing old tunes. Later we ran into Robin who told us that they did not have any time to rehearse. At times one of them would say that they couldn’t remember the lyrics. We are still in awe of how many songs they do know.

The afternoon’s main stage show was the Talent Show. The passengers’ talent had wowed us during the auditions we did see but we were still amazed by what we hadn’t heard. Garrison introduces the four judges and announces that he will not be a judge this year. However, after every performance he tries to sway the panel by pointing out the positive aspects. In the early show the fiddler Leslie Gregory of the band Equinox from Saginaw, MI and the tenor from Lyric Opera of Chicago whose name we can’t remember ended up tied for first place so they had a play-off with Leslie winning.