The New York cool of professional hockey players in designer cut basic black and gray contrasts with the Aboriginals who are just leaving a meeting room. They are conservative in their pressed jeans, cowboy boots, jackets, big silver buckles and hand-tooled leather belts and long black braided hair falling over the back of their fancy cowboy shirts. This gray stone edifice takes you back to the turn of the century with its high ceilings and spacious rooms. From my room the sunrise is magnificent as its first light hits the river adding more sparkle to the crisp cold dawn. Ice occupies half of it.
Water flows freely past the ice down the other half.
The highway is blown over with snow dust drifting horizontally across the 4-lane blacktop out of Edmonton. We are headed for the Airport to catch a Westjet to Vancouver on this cold, windrift morning. The bleak, flat, stripmall landscape zips by as our driver jockeys for position against the aggressive semis. Our over-cautious cabby has the heater on full. Hot, dry heat is blowing from the floor vents forcing me to open a window to let cold air in.