We spent two weeks in Alberta in August – the middle two. Early on we’d planned a road trip down to Drumheller and the Badlands and borrowed my mother’s orange 1975 VW camper van which she graciously leant to us. The two car seats fit fairly well in the back and we had a lot of fun. Wish we’d spent more time down there though. Three days just wasn’t enough.

How curious this trip: I did not feel I belonged out there anymore, out west I mean. How strange to feel more connected to earth and dirt and sky than the people amongst whom I grew up. The same may be said for Ontario, but without the feel for land here. The closest I feel to the earth here is north by several hours where the Canadian Shield rises to meet air. That is truly a wondrous part of this country, but the pull and melancholic longing I feel for open prairie I don’t think will every be superceded by anything else I will ever know. I started to think about my parents who now live in environs far, far away from their naissance. Does my mother feel this was about the West Island in Montreal and then Alberta as I do about Alberta and then Ontario. How about my father who moved in his twenties from a different culture altogether across the Atlantic ocean and across the entire breadth of Canada? What can it be like to miss your homeland from that perspective? I wish I still lived out west, I guess it all boils down to that. Spending so many days and weeks and years hiking and camping in the Rockies and on the prairie while growing up and then just up and leaving all that greatness has never helped. Is it possible to have a break with your past as you migrate under your own steam to a new location? This August 18th past marked twenty years of living in Ontario for me, the recognition of which did nothing to help matters.

Due to the quantity of images shot during the two weeks out west, I decided that rather than post a few here I would instead create a couple of ‘albums’ and post them here and here.