EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

When Nature Shuffles the Deck

Last week small ragged vees of squonking Canada geese were winging their way through the wet metal sky. The birds seemed to be gathering together for their great migration south, their annual flight. The oddity was their timing as there was still a week’s worth of days left on the calendar before summer slipped into autumn. It’s possible the birds’ travelling instinct had been goosed by five consecutive days of snowy weather.

Ann and I live in a winter city. We know it. It is what it is. But snow during the last lingering days of summer? C’mon. Our garden is still green but devastated. The patio umbrellas are stalagmite icicles. We like to leave our yard in the fall as we wish to find it in the spring, neat and tidy. Our annual autumn clean up has always been a task tinged by mild melancholy though its repetition explicitly implies our faith in a brighter future even as the days grow shorter. Me, I tend to get hung up on which team cap to sport whilst working outside because all of the overlapping baseball, football and hockey results in October matter at least a little bit.

From time to time Ann and I muse about where else we might like to live in Canada instead of Edmonton. An unavoidable topic as we gripe about snow flurries in the summertime. We discount taxation and politics to facilitate our discussion, understanding that changing the scenery to enjoy the final fifth or so of one’s life is generally climate driven though there’s a myriad of considerations to be contemplated. Ann's three siblings reside on Vancouver Island. My sister splits her time between Montreal and Prince Edward Island. Some friends in Alberta consider Kelowna and British Columbia’s other southern environs Oz. Some plan to eventually return to the once-familiar, the places they were born.

Ann and I always conclude that there’s no place we’d rather be than Edmonton. As with any place, there’s a lot to complain about here. The weather, for instance; when distant friends choose not to visit us in January, we know it’s nothing personal. Successive municipal and provincial governments have made some appallingly wrong-headed decisions whose disastrous consequences only became apparent over time. Heritage buildings were razed for parkades; public transit and cycling initiatives were botched. For all its warts, this town is our town and we’ve no plans to leave. Still, when we’re outside at this time of year, weather permitting, we gaze up at the geese and wonder once more where else we might prefer to be.        

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