Alberta

A few days ago, my girlfriend Sophie moved from Edmonton, Alberta to Victoria, British Columbia.

An oil leak was contained by a beaver dam in Alberta.

Alberta Clipper is a fast-moving low pressure system that occurs during the winter and sweeps southeast from Alberta, Canada, across the northern Great Plains and Midwest of the United States. These storms usually bring a few inches of snow.

Two hundred trained members of a South African fire brigade travelled more than 15,000 kilometres to help fight the huge forest fire in northern Alberta.

Most Canadian provinces have set the minimum age to purchase and consume cannabis at 19. In Alberta, however, it's 18, and in Quebec it's 21.

There at our neighbour Barb's, cutting rhododendron flowers, is Linda. Linda was born in a barn in the province of Alberta. She now lives with the Chans in a Spanish mansion. She says that her father was half-Cree. I say, "You're part-Native? I can see it in you! You're a real Canadian! You should be proud!"

On the 13th of April of 2022, walking along No. 3 Road on Lulu Island, I encountered my white neighbour Rod, who recently had knee surgery, despite which he and his family will go camping at several places, including Drumheller, Alberta, the place of dinosaur fossils.

On Lulu Island, my neighbour Linda, who is part-Cree and was born in a barn in Alberta, is a tenant of a big, fig-treed, Hispanic-style house of three Chinese women, one of whom, Julia, uses a wheelchair and has a special van for a wheelchair.

I've seen Greg incidentally at Starbucks café on Lulu Island for some years, but only today morning, on the 14th of August of 2022, we formally introduced to each other. He is a Filipino from Nueva Ecija, and he came to Canada at age 18 in 1977. He lived in Edmonton and Calgary in Alberta for some twenty years, then moved to here in BC. He is a devout Baptist Protestant, converted in Canada from Roman Catholicism, who carries his Bible to the café. I told him that when my father was alive, our house had Bible meetings for our Filipino Baptist community. I told Greg that I'm Buddhist. I talked to him about Buddhism and Daoism, this latter of which he knew little. I'm glad to meet a Filipino, like me, who came to Canada very young and has lived in Canada for a vaster period.

In the grey-sky morning of the 31st of March of 2023, Greg and I, both Filipinos, talked at the teahouse on Lulu Island. Greg by then had already finished his coffee, and I had just ordered my Iced Black Tea. Greg bought two bags of Dried Apple Chips, one of which he gave generously to me. We discussed in Tagalog many things like the romanticization of history, Inuit, Cree Indians, Alberta where he lived before, and evolution. Greg still did not believe in evolution, and I mentioned the Filipino creation myth in which from bamboo out came a man and a woman. We both learned this legend in school. I went to the pizzeria to have a slice and a Diet Coke. The owner, the Sri Lankan Tamil named Tharsan, was at the cashier. He lived in Vancouver, not here on Lulu Island. He had a girlfriend, also Sri Lankan. At my table, I read a Japanese fantasy book, Kudaketa Monshou, or Crumbled Coat of Arms. In my red fanny pack, I also had an Esperanto Mini Dictionary.

Alberta is more like a man's name than any other name that comes from a men's, more than Georgianna which is just like a magnolia blossom or Henrietta which most people change to Etta or Geraldine which nobody ever thinks of coming from a man's Irish name like Gerald. Alberta also sounds sort of Canadian, and everything from Canada is masculine the way everything from Mexico is feminine, even the men. In saying it carelessly or reading it you hardly notice the a in the end.