Edmonton

I worked through my last two years of college as a disc jockey and a commentator in a local radio station in the Cagayan Valley up northern Luzon. One of my English teachers thought that I could improve my English if I used it more often, so she had me introduce songs on the airwaves as well as read dedication wishes.

Before I knew it, I was doing a social commentary in Iloko like a seasoned politico, dispensing advice to the forlorn and the love-distraught, pretending to be an experienced Don Juan or seasoned Romeo, if not a tested gigolo/lothario massaging egos while reading flowery dedications. I found out early also that I was not in the air for the quality of my broadcast voice for I sounded like an old man, thus my early morning commentary in Ti Ayat ken biag ni Tang Jaime (the love and life of old Jaime), but my teacher allegedly saw wit in my gab.

At noontime, when our VOA-voiced announcer was absent to read the daily news, I reluctantly subbed. My voice cracked more than it gelled. Our announcer Mang Kiko with the deep throat (before the phrase meant something else) turns out to have a niece who lives in Edmonton, Alberta. The connection, albeit thin, occasioned the trip from the Calgary Stampede where I wore a black cowboy hat, a plaid shirt and a bolo tie, to a visit with Mang Kiko’s relation in the festival town of Edmonton!

I had been to Edmonton before, in the second half of the ’70s when my family and I resided in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. My second daughter was born in Canada. I was to drive my Calgary host’s car but I forgot my Hawaii driver’s license in China, and rules will not allow for facsimile even if a copy is available from the Internet. So we took a Red Arrow bus instead.

I arrived in Calgary before Canada Day on the First of July. I learned that the city was voted in one tally as the cleanest in the world. Even though the province has abundant tar sands that the oil industry wishes to process for electric power, Calgary and Edmonton are cities with clear skies and ample fresh air. The healthy ambience comes, however, at a steep sticker price. Both are on the top 10 of the most expensive cities in the world.

Edmonton sits at the junction of the prairie that rolls south all the way to the Mississippi River and heads north to boreal hills full of aspen, poplar, birch, and Manitoba maple trees. Railroad development first came through with the Canadian Pacific line from Vancouver to Calgary, so the second city of the province is ahead on the population count. The provincial government supported other lines that could compete with the federally supported Pacific line that traversed the nation close to the 48th parallel, and the Canadian Northern line developed routes connecting Toronto to Prince Rupert in BC of the northwest Pacific coast, and Churchill up north. Edmonton became a gateway city.

The city leads to the oil sands of the north, and the diamond mines of the NW Territories. It is also the highway gate to Alaska via the Yukon. Though at a more northern latitude than Regina in Saskatchewan and Winnipeg in Manitoba, it has milder winters than both.

The Red Arrow bus came equipped with a fridge full of pop soda and water, with clean washroom and comfortable seats provided with three-pronged electrical outlets for the laptop, USB power sources for tablet and cell phone, a socket for the earphone, and volume and TV channel controls.

Halfway into the trip, we were welcomed by the familiar green farm equipment of John Deere in Red Deer. The red deer that named the town is often mistaken as an elk, a wapiti, and a moose, but with bison on the horizon, I was reminded of a recent trip to Erg’una near Hailar in Inner Mongolia, to an old elk-tending tribal group known to be part of the tribes that crossed the Bering Straits into the continent, later carried Amerigo Vespucci’s name, some now identified with members of the First Nation of Canada.

I napped a bit and awakened in a populated settlement so I asked my seatmate where we were. I was told that we were in L.A., which made me wonder if I was asleep in a surrealistic dream until I saw a sign that said: Le Duc, Alberta. We were in L.A. of the French trappers.

In the farmland, the 3,500 Duramax 4×4 GMC was the chariot of choice of the farm warrior of boots and hat. Edmonton loomed not too far alongside what I previously saw were but trickles of the Saskatchewan River in the Athabasca glacier in the Rockies, now a wide and deep cut in the middle of the city; the English Edmonton of 1977 has become a glitter of metropolitan polish in the midland of Alberta.

My welcome was very warm. Our host was a retired pediatrician who spent some time in Zambia with her miner hubby. Sprite as a Doris Day, we knew people in common. Meeting other Pilipino elders at the local Legion center introduced me to other folks who knew or were related to other people I also knew. Attending a baptismal gathering got us multilingual Pinoys; the diaspora suddenly was kin.

It did not take long for Edmonton in my heart to cry out: Yah hoo!