The Longest Day

Today is the day of the Summer Solstice, the day the sun stops (which is what “solstice” means) in its trek northward, and turns south again. It's the first day of summer and the longest day from dawn to dusk in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in the northernmost North American city with a metropolitan population over a million, it has been a fine and sunny day, indeed, in spite of earlier predictions of rain.

A few months ago I was marvelling at the shortness of the day. I noted that the sun rises much later in Edmonton than in Montreal in winter, although it sets at about the same time.

In summer, the dynamic is the opposite. Now the sun rises at about the same time as in Montreal, but it sets much later. Daylight savings at work. According to Environment Canada, sunrise this morning was at 5:04 in Edmonton (I'll take their word for it) and sunset will be at 22:07. That's 17:03 of daylight. In contrast, in Montreal the sun rose at 5:06 and sets at 20:47 for 15:41 of daylight. Somehow having an extra hour and 20 minutes of daylight on a June evening more than compensates for having an hour and a quarter less on a January morning.

Needing my sunglasses to drive at 21:30 will take some getting used to, but I'm willing to make the sacrifice.

Extreme Gas Prices

Gas prices finally came down a bit on the weekend.

In Montreal there are two common extreme sports that just about everyone practices. One is jaywalking. The other is buying gas. It's an art to buy gas at just the right price in Montreal because the fluctuations in prices are huge. The trick is to time the empty tank with the bottom of the gyrations in price. If you miss it by an hour, you're out of luck because the price has shot up 10 cents or more per litre.

A graph (thanks to GasBuddy.com) of gas prices in Montreal over the last month demonstrates the volatility of prices.

But in Edmonton prices tend to be much more stable. The price drop on the weekend was the first change in about 3 weeks or so. Here's a graph of Edmonton prices over the last month.

The only trouble with price stability is that people were getting pretty tired of paying such high prices and were ready for the correction when it came. And then a 4 cent drop was so welcome, no-one really complains much about the fact that gas prices are still pretty lofty. At least by Edmonton standards.

Here's a graph with both Montreal and Edmonton on it for the last month.

So if it's excitement one is after, extreme gas buying isn't an option in Edmonton.

And almost no-one jaywalks.

Sausage and Eggs

I enjoy sausage and eggs for breakfast from time to time. I ate one of the most memorable such breakfasts at a home where I was staying in Newfoundland over 20 years ago. The sausage on that occasion turned out to be made from moose. Delicious.

But in Alberta sausage and eggs are not only a good choice for breakfast. They also make for monuments.

Today I visited Vegreville to take a service at the local church. It was a nice group of people, and an enjoyable service. After the service there was a lovely coffee hour with loads of food and loads of discussion about tomorrow's provincial election. Then it was time to play tourist a bit on the way home. It was a perfect day for it – warm and sunny.

First stop was Vegreville's famous pysanka, or Ukrainian Easter Egg. Constructed of aluminium in the mid-1970s, the pysanka is enormous. It weighs some 2.5 tonnes and is mounted in such a way that it can turn in the wind, like a giant Easter weathervane. The pysanka was built to honour both the Ukrainian heritage of many of the area's residents and the centenary of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It's still billed as the world's largest pysanka.

Very impressive!

Then, on the way home, it was from the sublime to the, er, ... not quite so sublime. We stopped in at Mundare to see their giant kubasa, constructed in honour of the local sausage maker. “Kubasa,” I discovered, is a Canadian English word, evidently a corruption of the Ukranian “kovbasa”, which is a cognate of the Polish “kielbasa,” which means sausage. The origin of the term seems to be a Turkic language. Kubasa is pretty commonly eaten in Alberta, either on a hot-dog bun, as a “kubie”, or on a hamburger bun (a kubie burger) or in slices on a tray of snacks. In fact, there was some kubasa and cheese as part of the coffee hour this morning.

Another lesson in Alberta's geography and culture.

Road trip!

Last week a few of us from the office took a road trip. The occasion was a sad one, the deconsecration of a church that we were selling. For the local people who gathered for this event it was the death of dreams, and a time for them to remember with sadness all the memories of what had happened in that church building over the years: memories of weddings, of baptisms, of funerals; memories of regular worship and of grander occasions like Christmas. And as the Bishop led us in prayers of thanksgiving for all the ministry that had been associated with that place, and read the certificate of deconsecration, it felt a bit like a funeral.

The trip itself was quite eventful. The Treasurer and I started out first thing in the morning in a rented car for a three-hour journey. The roads were rather nasty, as we had had a snowstorm the day before – the first in several weeks. After a slippery start, conditions eventually improved and we made our way to our destination, where we met up with the Bishop and her Assistant. Then, after taking care of a few details at the church, and deconsecrating it, we stopped for a quick lunch and started out for home.

That's when things got interesting. 

The Treasurer pointed out that we were only a short detour away from a local monument, so off to Glendon, the home of the Big Pyrogy! It wasn't hard to find. Just in case you couldn't see the huge Pyrogy held aloft on a fork in Pyrogy Park (at the corner of Pyrogy Drive and 1st Ave), there was a sign pointing the way. Across the street was Pyrogy Park Cafe, with a sign offering All-day Breakfast, Western & Chinese Cuisine, Vietnamese Dishes and (of course) Pyrogies!

Shouldn't have eaten that hamburger!

Election Fever

Alberta is in the middle of an election campaign. Near as I can tell the question is whether Albertans will give the Progressive Conservative Party a majority or an overwhelming majority. Or perhaps vote Wildrose and shift the province to the right, ending a 41-year PC dynasty.

But I have to sit this one out. For the first time in my adult life, I find myself unable to vote. Not because I can't decide which candidate to support. It's because the Alberta Elections Act defines an elector in section 1(1)(j) as "a Canadian citizen, [who] is 18 years of age or older and is, and has been for at least the immediately preceding 6 months, ordinarily resident in Alberta." (emphasis added) Since we just moved here three months ago, that last bit means that we don't meet the residency requirement. So we find ourselves disenfranchised.

Alberta will pay for me to receive medical care. Alberta will certify my fitness to operate a motor-vehicle, and license said vehicle to be driven on public roads. Alberta will even happily collect taxes from me, retroactive to January 2011. But let me vote? Nope. :-(

And, lest this seem like Alberta-bashing, because it really isn't intended to be, let me point out that the same is true in almost all of the rest of the country. With the exceptions of Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador, it seems, every other province in Canada requires 6 months' residency before you can vote in a provincial election. It's just the luck of the draw that the writ was dropped before we were here for six months. And I imagine we're far from the only Canadians living in Alberta who can't vote in this election.

Maybe once the dust has settled, and we know which leader's campaign bus has taken her to victory, the legislature should revisit that six-month waiting period for voting. And not just the Alberta legislature, but the legislatures of all the other provinces that still deny the vote to newcomers.

Blue Skies

Many years ago, I recall reading that postcards of scenes in Ontario were usually doctored. Apparently all those lovely cards from Niagara Falls had their Ontario skies excised and replaced with skies from Alberta. I'm beginning to see why.

We can go for many days without seeing a cloud. The sky here is rich and clear and very photogenic. And there's much more sunlight every day. Just over a month ago I wrote that sunrise was 8:50 and sunset 16:29. Today the sun rose at 8:00 and set at 17:36. It's a staggering rate of change - fast enough that we can see a noticeable difference every week, if not quite from one day to the next. Already I'm going to work and returning home in daylight.

The forecast calls for more sunny days ahead, though perhaps a flurry or two on Wednesday. I can't remember when we saw snow last. It seems like it's been a couple of weeks at least.

Transit Etiquette

It's not uncommon to hear people say "thank you" on the way out the bus door in many cities. "Thank you", "merci", "cheers!" It doesn't take much to acknowledge the bus driver as a human being as you walk past him or her to get off the bus. And lots of people do it.

But here in Edmonton there's a twist: lots of people call out "thank you' from the back door of the bus as they get off! I've never seen that in any city before. It just about blew me away when I first heard it!

And then the transit experience stepped up to yet another level this week. As the bus stopped, the driver called out to those exiting to watch out because there was a sweeper coming on the sidewalk. (This is a smallish tractor-like vehicle with a large rotating cylindrical brush on the front.) I imagine walking out straight into those bristles would be a rather nasty experience, so good on the driver for warning the passengers rather than just leaving them to their own deivces.

But, this being Edmonton, the bus driver's warning, while welcome, was unnecessary. Because the sweeper driver noticed the bus and stopped to let the passengers get off unscathed.

Even though I wasn't getting off at that stop, I thought "thank you" to both drivers.

A great start to the day!