What do people think of when Canada is mentioned? Not much apparently, from the indication of their glazed-over eyes. An extension of America? With a bit of the UK and French culture in the mix, but really a humongous and barren state of the good ol' US of A. A place where millions of people are scattered (90%) within 100 miles of the American border, and believe me not just because of the cold. A place where the cities are nice, but not that big. Or famous. And there's not that many of them. A nice place that has problems like all countries but doesn't seem to do much bad on the news, or make the news very much at all. But hey, who wants to be nice these days?
Yeah, I hear you say, so why move there? Well first of all I don't like to call it a move, thank you very much. A temporary relocation is what I prefer, although that gets a little long in conversation. Secondly, it happened for very good reasons. Or so we thought at the time. Reasons like financial security (uh-huh - the polite way of saying moolah), travel and adventure. With a time limit of 24 months - whether minimum or maximum remains to be seen.
I won't bother telling you the name of our town. You won't know it, really you won't. But I will tell you that it is a lot like hundreds of others. Small but with all the facilities that people here think essential, ugly but safe, clean most of the year round. Slap bang in the middle of Alberta which is slap bang in the middle of the country. Oh yeah, and a couple of hours drive from Edmonton, my closest city for a long time which at least houses the biggest mall in the world. I'm still trying to find the coffee shops, art galleries, intimate bistros and up-market boutiques.
No comments:
Post a Comment