Things I miss about St. Albert, Alberta....

1. You never hear the constant dull hum of the highway. I realized the other day as I went for a walk that I can hear the highway from our house, (which is actually what inspired this list). I knew that I could hear it before but I think it is worse in the winter without the sound of leaves blowing in the wind and birds chirping. You can pretty much hear the highway from anywhere in Burlington. I guess that's the price you pay to get places quickly. Good old St. Albert trail runs right through the city and after 10 lights and 15 minutes or so later you'll reach your destination. But I could never hear it from my house...


2. Crown and Tower, Yesterdays, Blind Pig Pub, (and let's throw in the Grandin Liquor Barn). People have been going to these places since we turned 18, and if they still live in St. Albert these are STILL the places they're going 11 years later. Good old standards.


3. Every neighbourhood begins with the same letter. For example, we lived in Woodlands and our street was Wimbleton. The surrounding streets were Windermere, Waverly, Welland, Etc. If you lived in Grandin the streets were Gervais, Gordon, etc. Now in St. Albert, all of the letters have been used up with the exception of x, and z (and perhaps j and u?) X-ray crescent? Zebra Court?



4. Grocery store parking lots blaring The Bear radio station (the equivalent of The Edge here I think). I noticed this in August and thought "YES!, this is St. Albert personified....or musicified??" You know what I mean...that station just reminds me of St. Albert, or maybe it's just the "teens of St. Albert". Over here they would never ever blare a radio station in a parking lot, but if they were and the teenage workers were to choose the station it would definitely be pop or hiphop/rap, something like that.


5. Speaking of music...when Jen and I had our nails done at the local "Vietnamese nail place", they had CMT playing on the tv (country music!). If a place here was playing that they wouldn't last a week.


6. You get to plug your car in every night in the winter so it starts in the morning. I almost drove off with an extension cord and an entire string of house lights while visiting in December.


7. I wouldn't say this was a positive, PER SE, but it just brings back feelings of nostalgia. There are no snow plows in St. Albert, and as a result the streets are covered in brown, wet, and gravely snow. And all parking lots are covered in hard packed down icy snow. Actually this may really be a positive since that means there is less snow in St. Albert than Burlington. We would have been stuck in our house for 3 weeks straight this winter if the streets were not plowed. Hmm...I guess this is why we never had a snow day when I was in school. Here they have snow days like it's going out of style....kind of like the Crown and Tower....

8. My elementary school was named Keenoshayo. A bit hard to spell when you're in grade 1.


9. Back to grocery stores...in St. Albert everyone returns their cart to the "cart corral", and *gasp*, actually fits the carts together. I mean in -40 degrees I don't think anyone would blame you for ditching your cart and jumping in your (pre-started from inside the comfort of the grocery store) pickup truck and driving through the brown slush to the Grandin Liquor Barn. But everyone actually takes the time to maneuver their cart through the slush back to the base station and line it up nice and tidy with the other carts. Here you just (myself included usually), take your cart to the base station and just let 'er go...SMASH! into the other haphazardly placed carts. I mean if there is some sort of semblance of order I will always fit my cart into the other ones, but this usually isn't the case. Poor guys could probably do with listening to The Bear while they sorted out this mess.


10. Farmer's market in the summer. This is amazing and they could do with something like this here. The main street in Downtown St. A shuts down every weekend in the summer so local farmers and artisans can sell their wares at a good price. We never lived there when I could fully appreciate this. All I remember is being hot and bored, but hey, I wasn't paying the bills or making the meals.

11. Photo radar. You think that's just a randomly parked Ford Explorer? Think again! You've just been fined for speeding. Why do I miss this you ask? Well, I usually don't speed and it's fun to guess whether an innocently parked car is just that, or a radar gun in disguise.

12. Pizza pretzels. Why do they not exist here? Last year I would have added Old Dutch Chips, but now we have those here too. Pizza pretzels, you're next.

13. Probably one of the only places that a Tim Hortons employee could translate the following: "Gimme a suitcase fulla them doohickies" (my mom overheard this one).

14. You can get your licence when you turn 14. That's right....grade 9's were driving to school. You have to have your parent with you if you're in a car. But not if you're on a scooter! You know you're too young to drive when you crash your scooter and think it's a good idea to ditch your scooter and run from the cops?! Ahem..ahem.. mike?

I could spend all day on this. Like I said, the sound of the highway was what made me think about St. Albert. Also something about going for walk while it was nice and warm. Reverse logic, I know, but I think it reminded me of walking home from school in the spring. And for everything I miss about St. Albert, there is something I like about Burlington. Like the shopping cart disaster...it's kind of endearing. And the fact that Burlington has a half decent recycling program where not only does the garbage get picked up every 2 weeks, the recycling and compost get picked up once a week. This is a far cry from driving your own recycling to the depot and sorting it yourself into a plethora of wasp-infested bins (and nothing says teenage fun like jumping into a giant bin of magazines!). But I digress...