Blending In With Albertans

The Final Chapter

Today we head east. The family will make a new home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, hopefully one with as much to teach as Cold Lake.

I have learned a lot from Albertans during my residence here. I have learned how to properly complain about the weather; which obnoxious truck to buy and how poorly I should drive it; and to which city I should swear my undying fealty - the big C-City of Edmonton, not the small c-city of Calgary. 

Albertans have given me countless opportunities to cultivate patience behind the wheel of my car, in drive-throughs, while waiting in line at Wal-Mart, living on my street, and while mistakenly thinking I had the right of way at intersections. 

They have taught me that no matter how dry it is, it can always get drier, unless it's flood season and then it can always get floodier. Unless it's wildfire season. Or Mosquito season. Or January.
 

I think Albertans are some the toughest, most adaptable people I have ever met and it's probably significant that a lot of them are not from here. I am not suggesting that born-Albertans are not tough, far from it. I am attempting, rather clumsily, to explain that this can be a hard place to live; beautiful,certainly and fun, but hard. Alberta does not forgive foolishness or lack of foresight. To discover that so many people who describe themselves as Albertans are from so many other provinces and places, is testimony to how wonderful life can be here, if you'll allow it. 

We did. We'll miss it.

Good bye, Alberta. Thank you for everything.