Northerner Rants About What North Means

I quite like Culinaire magazine.

It's free and glossy and has good recipes and supports the food industry in Alberta.

However, it appears that magazine's writers and editors know a bit more about food than they do about geography.  In the July issue, there was a delightful piece about road trips in Alberta, recommending a number of roadside food stops in southern and northern Alberta.

Yeah.

Except their idea of "northern" Alberta apparently means "north of Calgary" and "south of Edmonton".

Last time I checked, the geographic centre of Alberta was somewhere around Fort Assiniboine- there is even a roadside marker to note the location.

So the listed restaurants in the magazine are nowhere near "northern".

• Lacombe
• Wainwright
• Hinton
• Rocky Mountain House
• Fort Saskatchewan
• Ponoka
• Beaumont (weirdly anglicized to "Bowmont")

Yellow stars are "northern Alberta" restaurants according to this magazine.
Green flag is the geographical centre of Alberta.

Like many northern Canadians, I'm a bit touchy when it comes to "north". 

Look, all of Canada is NORTH. But these restaurants are in CENTRAL Alberta. Not NORTHERN Alberta. Calgary is NOT the middle of Alberta. Everything north of Calgary is not the wild hinterland.

I have lived in the north all my life. I am proud of it. The north has lots to offer. People who grow food. People who harvest food. People who forage for food. People who hunt food. People who cook food. Wild food. Organic food. Good food. Craft beer. Great little coffee shops and even restaurants.  

Take a road trip, Culinaire. You want to represent Alberta?  Go see it. Go taste it. And look at a map for heaven's sake. 

Go north.

The texture of silence

I knew it was snowing by the texture of the silence. 

Lying in my bed, curtains closed, I knew it.

There was a kind of quiet-a softness- that absorbed every sound. I wondered where the little noises of my old house had gone. The snow had soaked them up, like a blanket over my head. 

In late August we went north. On a night in Watson Lake Provincial Park, far from anything, it was so still, so dark, the silence woke me. I listened intently for something. Anything. I waited. But there was nothing. It was the absence of everything.

Silence is rare.

Sometimes I forget we need it.

An absence of the little sounds that call us. The minutiae of life that pulls us away so we forget to listen. For it's in the stillness we can truly hear.

So I await winter. The stillness of the snow. The forgiving blanket that absorbs the noise.