Airport Codes

Anyone who flies very often quickly becomes aware of the three-letter airport codes that appear on baggage claim tickets, boarding passes and so on. And anyone who flies in Canada probably wonders why Canadian airport codes all seem to start with the letter Y, whilst in most normal countries they seem to have airport codes that at least relate to the city. Other countries get recognizable codes like HKG (Hong Kong) or PEK (Beijing, formerly known as Peking) or LAX (Los Angeles). Some international airport codes relate to the name of the airport: JFK (John F Kennedy – New York), CDG (Charles de Gaulle – Paris), LHR (London Heathrow). Though you'd have to be in the know to recognize FCO (Leonardo da Vinci – Fiumicino) as Rome. Not in Canada. Here we get such inscrutable combinations of letters as YQY (Sydney, Nova Scotia; not to be confused with SYD – Sydney, Australia – though from time to time one does read of foreign tourists who manage to mix the two up, and can be found looking for the Opera House near the Port-aux-Basques ferry.)

Strictly speaking, there are two sets of airport codes, the three-letter IATA codes and four-letter ICAO codes. You can generally get the ICAO codes for Canadian airports by sticking a C in front of the IATA codes. (Why the two organizations feel the need for different sets of codes is a whole separate topic).

I don't know exactly why Canadian airport codes all seem to start with the letter Y. Googling the question reveals a complex technical explanation having to do with weather stations. Actually, not all Canadian airport codes do start with Y.

According to this database, there are 401 airports in Canada. 322 of them have IATA codes that start with Y, 33 with Z, 4 with X and 7 with other letters. 35 have no IATA airport code at all. Nevertheless, the big airports do all have codes starting with Y. Given that restriction, at least some relate to the city, like YVR (Vancouver) and YWG (Winnipeg). And YOW is obviously Ottawa (derived from a word commonly uttered when people see their tax bills). But most seem pretty random, like YYZ.

I like to fly. I don't fly as much as really hard-core frequent flyers, but I do fly a bit every year. So far I have flown in and out of 18 Canadian airports and 22 international ones. Oh, and 2 heliports. (And I have flights booked that will take me to four new international airports this fall). So when I named this blog I thought it would be fun to use the airport codes for Montreal and Edmonton in the name: YUL (Montreal) 2 YEG (Edmonton). It also made for a short and memorable URL for the blog. But I thought it was a bit of an insider reference. People who have flown often enough into or out of either city would recognize the codes instantly, but that would be it, I thought.

I was wrong.

In Edmonton, YEG is way more than an airport code. It has taken on a life of its own, as a general city reference, especially in the Twitterverse, where #yeg is a commonplace hashtag for the city, and compounds of #yeg abound: #yegtraffic, #yegtransit, #yegarts, #yegfestivals, #yegdt (Downtown), #yegcc (City Council) and on and on. The @CityofEdmonton, the police, the media, and ordinary Edmontonians all use this convention. This afternoon, while I was pondering this post on a stroll downtown, I even saw a car with the civic-pride vanity license plate YEG4ME. (Really! I am not making this up!) Ironically, YEG the airport isn't actually in the City of Edmonton; it's about 20 minutes to the south. Edmonton City Centre Airport (also known as Blatchford Field) is YXD. It's just a few blocks from where I live. Though it's also in the process of closing. And strangely enough, YEG the airport seems to prefer to refer to itself as EIA (Edmonton International Airport). But YEG is a well-known and apparently much-used reference.

Not so in Montreal. There the most common abbreviated reference to the city is MTL and #mtl is the common hashtag. YUL refers to Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport (formerly known as Dorval) and usually not much else. (Though there seem to be some people who are trying to use #yul as a more general hashtag, as a quick search on Twitter will show.) YUL always reminds me of Christmas, as well as Montreal's airport. But not really the city. People know what it is, but they don't seem to feel the need to extend its use beyond the airport. MTL just seems more natural.

I don't know what all this means. Maybe Edmontonians fly more than Montrealers. Or maybe #yeg is simply amazing cool. Or maybe it doesn't mean very much at all.

But I do find the currency of the airport code outside the airport and frequent-flyer conversations curious.

All Hail

According to the Edmonton Journal, yesterday was the 21st day we have had a thunder storm so far this summer. Evidently there are an average of 19 per year. And what a storm it was! We had the full treatment as the temperature plummeted quickly and then we were hit with blasts of thunder, lightning strikes, torrential rain and hail.

It was fun to watch from safely indoors, but I don't imagine it was much fun to be out in, especially as the hailstones the size of gumballs (not quite golf balls) would have hurt.

We've had a number of serious storms among the 21, with some flooding of streets and homes, and other damage.

Here's hoping for some nicer weather ahead.

The Deep South

Recently we spend a weekend in the Deep South. No, not Savannah or Charleston, but Lethbridge, in the Deep South of Alberta. At least we were able to see the Oldman River. (Oops, wrong link.)

Looking South toward Montana

  

Compared to Central Alberta, the South is an alien landscape, of badlands and hoodoos and coulees and high prairie. The inhabitants seem to be prepared to welcome aliens themselves.

Southern Alberta looks very different from the now familiar central part. To our eyes the fields looked less green; trees were fewer and farther between, except in the river valleys and coulees; and if the irrigation equipment in nearly every field is any indication, Southern Alberta is a much more arid place. Driving south, after passing Calgary, we could see the foothills and Rocky Mountains to the west and the flat prairie to the east.

Having landed in the south, we had a couple of days to explore. It was hot, around 33 degrees in the shade, if you could find any.

We paid a visit to Writing on Stone Provincial Park where we were able to hike among the hoodoos in the Milk River valley.

Milk River in Writing-on-Stone Park

The landscape was stunning, and the rock formations quite impressive.

Hoodoo

Hoodoo

Hoodoo

Hoodoo

In addition to the natural landscape there were also some petroglyphs.

Lots of impressive scenes, and some lovely flowers to be seen on our hike.

All in all, we enjoyed Writing-on-Stone.

On Day 2 of our short stay we visited the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.

The interpretive centre is built unobtrusively into the side of the cliff beside the actual Buffalo Jump. There we learned how the local Blackfoot hunted buffalo (or bison) by driving them off the cliff. It must have taken great skill, co-operation and bravery to achieve a successful hunt. 

The Buffalo Jump

A couple of short trails on the site provide an opportunity to see some of the plants... 

...and to enjoy the views.

After Head-Smashed-In, we made a quick stop in Vulcan on our way home, where we managed to snap the photos at the top of the page.

It was a short visit leaving much unexplored, but a lovely weekend. We'll be back.

Shrines

Shrine at Edmonton General Hospital

Several years ago a friend of mine published a guidebook to Canadian shrines. It was quite comprehensive, including the big, well-known shrines like Ste Anne de Beaupré, and small road-side shrines that had been set up by who knows whom in devotion to the Mother of God or the Sacred Heart of Jesus or some saint or other.

But there's another kind of shrine that we're increasingly aware of in Western culture. I'm referring to the popular sort of shrine that usually appears spontaneously to mark either the location of a tragedy or devotion to someone famous who has died. Under the rubric of popular shrines I would include the candles and flowers and sympathy cards at Kensington Palace after Princess Diana died, or similar displays after the Montreal Massacre, or when any public figure dies. It's interesting, in passing, that in our secular age so many people seem to discover quickly where to find the votive candles that are so often part of these popular shrines.

Then there are the smaller version of popular shrines, the little clusters of bouquets, or perhaps a small wooden cross, which mark the spot of a road accident. These are definitely visible along the highways in Alberta as they are anywhere in North America. Driving on the highway I can't help but wonder about whether certain locations are particularly dangerous, given the presence of several memorials.

Edmonton also has what I like to call municipal shrines. These are locations marked by city road signs as places where someone has died in a traffic accident. In the case of the one shown here, it was mixed with a popular shrine, as someone had carefully taped a photo of the deceased and some plastic flowers to the pole beneath the municipal sign.

I guess the message of these municipal shrines is not so much to honour the accident victim as to remind drivers that they bear responsibility for the life and safety of pedestrians, and that taking that responsibility too lightly results in someone's fatality.

Be careful out there. And, oh yes, may the victims of traffic accidents rest in peace.

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.