Driving through Alberta triggered all sorts of thoughts and made me aware of how prejudiced I can be towards people who are different from me. But when you come from the USA, Christians, conservatives, and cowboys are often crazy. In Alberta, that’s just not the case. While more overtly conservative than Quebec and the maritimes, Alberta’s politics…
Category: Alberta
Rocky Road Trip Day 7: The Calgary Stampede
Last year on my birthday I was in Iceland and I found a pair of Mexican cowboy boots at a store in Reykjavik. The boots were handmade, with exquisite embroidery. Only one pair existed in the store, and when they fit me perfectly, I felt they were destined to be my shoes except for the…
Rocky Road Trip Day 6: The Royal Tyrrell Museum
Royal Tyrrell Museum’s paleontology gems Bad food with good vibes Foreign birthday beer They might make fun of their elitist tree-hugging counterparts on the coast of British Columbia, but Albertans aren’t anti-intellectual, anti-sustainability, or anti-government. It’s a kinder, softer version of the American heartland over here. They drive to their megachurches in pickup trucks, but still believe in…
Rocky Road Trip Day 5: Dinosaur Bones in the Badlands
Along with North Korea and the United States, only Canada allows the killing of the unborn. Canada protects endangered species like whales, but not human fetuses. That’s what the billboards told me today, in the Alberta prairies. I shuddered. It wasn’t the billboards, or the giant Christian mega-plex replete with preschool and movie theatre. There was…
Love and Barley 