The way people work in Grande Prairie and other things.

Canada is the second largest country by land mass. It is sparsely populated. Grande Prairie is one of 18 cities and is the largest in the Northwest area of Alberta. The population in 2016 was 63,166. Fort McMurray is the largest in the Northeast. Fort Mac is the city that had the huge fires last summer. Fort Mac has the highest wages in all Canada and Grande Prairie has the second highest wages in all of Canada. Grande Prairie also has the highest crime in all Canada. The biggest is probably car theft.

There are four major areas of the economy. Agriculture, Energy, Forestry and Commerce.

There are huge differences with jobs in Grande Prairie. Right after Christmas, the ground is frozen and the temperatures are cold. The forestry and energy industries come alive. People go to work in the oil patch and the goal is 100 straight days. They work 12 hour days, not counting the commute. Most of the workers just stay in a camp. When the weather gets warmer and the ground starts to thaw, work comes to an almost halt. They still work, but have to be more creative until the ground dries.

The logging industry hauls logs to the mills around the clock every day, even Christmas.

These trucks have been on the highway all summer, fall, and winter.

We live next to a privately owned logging road and they were moving in logs as fast as they could. When the ground thawed, they stopped.

This is next to our apartment. The private logging road is 200 miles long. The road enters the saw mill in 500 meters.







Close up of that truck. All trucks have three trailers.







The lumber mill across the street from us has huge piles of logs.

This is across the street from our apartment. It is a large lumber mill that makes 2 x 4's. You can see Grand Prairie's only tall building in the background. There is no way I can photo how big this place is. There are acres and acres of these logs. I took these pictures today, 4.26.2017

I went to the 14th floor of our tallest building in town. The first picture shows the main road into town. The other picture is towards our house. Both of them show Muskoseepi Park in the foreground. The park is huge and goes through the center of town. There are three places to cross. This is the middle crossing. the other crossings are on both ends of the park.

The oil and gas, and the lumbering industries have come to a halt. Most of the range and township roads outside of town are closed to traffic because of the deep and slippery mud. If you live on one of those roads, traveling can be challenging. All Canadians seem to have high gum boots.

  
We have been unable to get a picture of the range roads. The picture on the left is a parking lot and is not fully being used. Depending on the day it takes tractors to haul them out. The picture on the right shows a temporary wooden path that is put down if some equipment absolutely has to be moved. It is time consuming and laborious. It is used as last resort and only if weather changed and they got caught short of their plan. This is in town at a construction sight.

Agriculture has its problems. Grande Prairie had the first snowstorm in 2016 on October 8. Many of the farmers didn't have their crops out of the field. Main crops are hay and canola. Our friend just barely got his hay in before the snow. After the snowstorm, the ground was too wet and soggy to get the equipment in to recover crops still in the field. The neighbor of our friend had fields of cut canola. He was able to bring his crop in, in small batches and rented huge dryers. It was a major cost, but he didn't lose his crop and total investment. Other farmers were not so lucky. Either the fields didn't have good access or the canola hadn't been cut. And now it will delay them putting in crops this spring. There is a shorter growing season in Northern Alberta, but there are long hours of daylight to compensate. With our move farther north, we won't get to see how they prepare and plant. Our ward members expect the ground to be dry enough to work on their gardens by the end of May.

Canola fields in the summer

Hay fields in summer.

Hay still in the fields during winter. 

  

 Canola still in the field. 4/19/17

Most fields look like this. Too bad they don't grow rice. 4.19.17

 Had to show a section of a road full of chuck holes. They are on every road in Grand Prairie. The Canadians say there are two seasons in Canada, Winter and Road Construction. But we happen to know there are three seasons in Canada, Winter, Summer and Mud. Everybody who gets snow has road construction.

Some problems working in the patch. Lots of times a dad or a son will be working in the patch for a year at a time. Their families live in Southern Alberta and this is where their work is. It might be impossible to go home except for Christmas. If the place is closer, they might get home for a weekend every month. There are a few who get home more often. Women also work in the patch. We don't know any, but we do have two YSA women who drive trucks for them. There is need of hauling lots of liquid either into the patch or away from the patch. One of our YSA does that. The other drives a gravel truck. Some of the YSA men are welder's assistants. There are lots of pipes and structures that need to be welded. The mission leader is a welder. He drives home most nights, but he puts in his 12 hours and travels the distance.

The other times families are apart are when one or the other parent is getting more schooling. In order to move up in your job, you must get another certificate. It means you will be in school. Most of the time people in Grande Prairie can get the required training in Edmonton which means they can be home on weekends. Sometimes the schooling is in Calgary or Lethbridge. Then they don't come home as often. Very rarely they have to go to another province. One of our YSA is a volunteer fireman. He is now in training to step up and be in a permanent fire hall. He had to get his advanced training in British Columbia.

And the final reason families are apart is for an illness, or surgery. Major surgeries are done in Edmonton. After a few weeks recovering there, they are sent back to Grande Prairie and complete recovery here. Sometimes they are home and sometimes they are in the hospital here.

Queen Elizabeth II Hospital (QEII)

We made a recent trip to Edmonton to go to the Temple before we head up to Yellowknife. Oh, wait!! I haven't told you that we are being transferred to Yellowknife. It is in the Northwest Territories and is the capital city. We have to drive 725 miles farther north to get there. It will take about 13 hours. We have been busy wrapping up loose ends here, and that's why I am late with this blog. We had a zone conference the end of March and President said we are needed in Yellowknife. Thank goodness we got more than one day notice that the Elders and Sisters get. Anyway we went to Edmonton. We also went to Muttart Conservatory, the West Edmonton Mall (WEM) the largest mall in North America, and the Temple.

 

 Edmonton Temple is a micro temple.

 It is right next to the Riverbend Stake Center. They share parking lots. The Stake Center is larger than the Temple.

We really enjoyed ourselves.

 

This is going through downtown Edmonton. I'm glad Elder Brown drives, I navigate. Neither one of us is fond of Edmonton. There are too many things to watch out for.

  

 These are from some of the pyramid greenhouse rooms at the conservatory. All of it inside. The grounds will be pretty some day, but not one thing is in bloom or has buds.

This is one of the entrances into the amusement park inside WEM.

This was a skating lesson at the rink in WEM

 There are 800 stores, a shooting range, miniature golf course, many restaurants and 3 or 4 food courts. The water park was larger than we have ever seen before and was totally inside. It had a wave pool, lazy river, huge slides for all ages, surfing area, zip line, shallow, deep, plus more. We couldn't get good pictures through the viewing glass. We opted for this car that some lucky person may win. We got 16,000 steps walking walking around the WEM.

This is the ski resort in Edmonton. It is in town, closer than WEM and the Temple. It's not very big, there are subdivisions all around it. This Freeway goes right by it. They are closed now, but it still has man-made snow. You can probably tell the runs aren't very long but a part of the hill has a steep section.

 This is another lumber mill on the way home.

No leaves on any of the trees in the boreal forests on the way home. These are in contrast to the pictures I showed in one of our first blogs.

I took a picture of this same sight on the way coming to Grande Prairie. It sure looks different now.

There are many of these bridges in Canada. This is on the way home.

 This is our parking lot when it started to thaw. The big puddle is where our parking space is.

 There was gravel down during the worst of the ice. They are starting to sweep the gravel up. They got half way finished. The driveway was thick with the gravel because snow kept covering it and they would bring more. They didn't do it all winter, but I guess some tenants complained.
 
The YSA loves to play card games. They also like to bring their controllers and play video games.

This is how the younger kids leave their things on activity night. They don't do this at home. Everyone removes their shoes in homes in Canada and they have nice places to put everything.

  
This is earth day. Look at these nice flowers       This is the day before Earth Day in our old
at our son's house in Utah.                                    neighborhood.

Same day, Grande Prairie. Not a bud or any sign of Spring.

I suppose that it is spring in Canada. It just doesn't look like anything we are used to. We have had lots of snow lately. Six out of ten days it snowed all day, but didn't put down very much. It is called Spring snow. Again, not familiar. Spring snow in Utah has daffodils peaking through. We will miss Grande Prairie. We have gotten used to it. We have made friends here. Some of them are the kind that will last forever. And some will be a good memory. We have loved getting to know so many missionaries. Because there are two wards here, there are two companionship's of missionaries. We have also had Tagalog language missionaries to teach the Filipino people. There is one set of elders in Yellowknife. We will probably get to know them even better because we will have more contact and rely on each other more.

This was shared with us by our Mission President's wife in April newsletter. I like it. It works for any age.

"The people we surround ourselves with either raise or lower our standards. They either help us to become the Best-Version-of-Ourselves or encourage us to become lesser versions of ourselves. We become like our friends. No man becomes great on his own. No woman becomes great on her own. The people around them help make them great.

We all need people in our lives who raise our standards, remind us of our essential purpose, and challenge us to become the Best-Version-of-Ourselves."

My question to myself, and to you, is - Are you that Friend and Companion?! Are you striving to raise others up and helping them to become their greatest selves?

"Being blessed with hope, let us, as disciples, reach out to all who, for whatever reason, have 'moved away from the hope of the gospel' (Col. 1:23)"

Sister

Pattison

We enjoy our association with President and Sister Pattison. We have enjoyed getting to know the other senior couples. There aren't many and now they are starting to rotate home. That is why we are going to Yellowknife. The missionary couple is going home, and no one came to replace them. Set a goal that you will go on a mission with your spouse. You will never be sorry. The Church is true. Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God and restored Christ's Church to the earth after a long apostasy and reformation. Our Prophet today is Thomas S. Monson. God will never take the Church or Prophets away until Jesus Christ returns to the earth to preside over His Church. It is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It will remain for eternity.

We love you all.

Sister Brown, Mom, Grandma, Robyn

Adventures in Jasper

We finally have neighbors after 8 months. One young couple are from Kenya and have a 6 month old baby girl. The other couple has an 18 month old boy and are from Pakistan. We give them cookies and they have invited us in. Both men have good jobs here and the mothers stay home with their babies. They all speak English.

We love Canada, we love the people. Canadians are calm, peaceful, laid back. They protect their privacy. They love hockey passionately. They love their Canadian football league. But the day of the Gray Cup, equivalent to the Superbowl, the stands were empty. It seems Canadians like to watch from the privacy of their family rooms, where it is warm, the announcer will tell them everything, they can see it all close up, with instant reruns, and scream and yell to their hearts content. And eat cheaper food than at the stadium. 

Of course, the Superbowl was also viewed that way. Distance was a factor. And Canadians had a few ways they could watch. There were three English-language channels and one French-language broadcast. If they watched any of the English broadcasts on CTV, they would get Canadian substitute advertising. So to get the American ads, they could watch Fox Cable TV, or some people could stream, but it would only be CTV. Then there are those who record and watch it later. The lives of Canadians in northern Alberta are complicated and our next blog will be about them.

Our weather is improving. The first week in February was back in the deep freeze. We had temperatures at -27 F feels like -42. Two weeks later we were above freezing, 37F in the day and things melted. But, it froze at night, and then we were slipping around on sheets of ice. The last week of February was single digits. We went to Jasper National Park. Being a little farther south, it was a little warmer. It was a long P-day. We brought our snow shoes to Canada with us so we could use them. Alas, this has been an unusual winter in the Peace Country. We haven't had much snow. The area usually gets most of the snow after Christmas. We could see that is not going to happen this year. We decided to go to Jasper National Park and snowshoe there, now. We won't be here after Christmas in 2017.

We ate lunch in Grande Cache at the Ridge. The meals are always good. Going out of Grande Cache the lake is frozen, (everything is frozen) and we saw all the little fishing shacks on the lake. We fought a kind of icy road on the way down.

We got to Jasper in the early afternoon. We entered the park and had about an hour drive to the town of Jasper. There isn't much snow here. The mountains are amazing. There will be snow as we travel back into the mountains.

  It looks like someone cut the mountain off at the pass.

The wind was blowing the snow on the ice. It looks like open water, but it wasn't.

All these mountains were formed "recently" because they are angular and sharp and haven't had time to wear down into smooth edges.

This train was on a side track. We saw it come into town while we were there. But a freight train came in before it.

This is snow blowing around this mountain.

There is a precipice of snow. A closer shot is below.

That is a jagged edge at the top of this mountain ridge. The wind was really blowing hard.

The mountains have so much character which shows up well with the snow making a contrast.

                                                                  The eye makes a better picture than a camera. It was amazing.

It was also so fun to see wildlife on the way to Jasper. We saw two bald eagles between Grande Cache and The turnoff to Jasper NP.

We saw Rocky Mountain sheep that we didn't anticipate seeing. We saw them in three different groups along about 40 miles.

                                                    It was fun watching these families.

When we got into Jasper we drove around the few streets and went into a huge apartment complex. There were about 20 groups of apartments. Each group had a huge parking area for bikes. Except for tourists people ride bikes or walk.

This is downtown near the train station.

The train yard was a popular place. These elk just moved aside to accommodate two freight trains, an oil train and a large passenger train. Nothing phased them.

This is a restored Lutheran church building in Jasper.

OK, Robyn always notices roofers.

We saw all the town and shopped at a lot of touristy stores and normal stores. We left while it was still light so we could get out of the park and still have visibility.

There were mule deer grazing right by the highway a little way out of town. We saw four white tail deer on the hillside among trees, but they were impossible to get a picture that you could really see them.

This river has open water because the river dropped so the ice cracked. You can see the ledge at the edge of the water, and the cracks in the middle.

This is the skating oval on the lake by Jasper Lodge.

A game of ice hockey in the middle of the skating oval at Jasper Lodge.

These guys were just waiting for us to take their picture when we came back the next morning.

This bull elk was with the group in the picture below.

We drove up to the tram that was closed. The view must be breathtaking at the top.

This is the road to Maligne Lake. The road was like this the whole way, about 30 miles. So we are going to have snow after all.

.

We had lunch, in the car at this picturesque spot. The Red Chairs are in the National Parks in Canada. There are 7 sets in quiet, scenic locations in Jasper. We couldn't easily get to this one. There were big drifts and icy areas. We should have gotten the gear out and hiked over there, but we were trying to beat a storm we could see starting to brew in the distance.

 The drive was beautiful even though some of the park is remnants of earlier forest fire.

As we neared our destination, Maligne Lake, it started to snow.

 

The snow stopped, but no sun came out. Bruce is doing a yo yo trick in the parking lot before we head into the woods. Robyn is just ready to go.

We met to locals in the parking lot and they pointed us to a great trail that went through the woods to Moose Lake and then looped back by the larger Lake Maligne. It was 3 K (2 miles) and didn't have a huge ascent. We had a great hike in the woods. We were all alone with just the trees making noise as they blew. When we to Moose Lake, we contemplated walking on the lake to the other side. We decided not to. It was probably thick enough ice, but no one was around in case we got into trouble.

When we got back to the parking lot we met a couple from the train yesterday. They had rented a car and driven to Maligne Lake. They asked us where they should go to see some of the sights. They were from Wales and were not prepared to hike. We directed them to the lake. They went for a short look, then followed us back to town, about an hour drive.

We went to a great place for dinner, on the second floor of a building overlooking the edge of town and had a great view. Our waitress was one of the locals who had showed us where the trail started. We had a great visit about the day and about Jasper.

The sun had gone down when we were through eating. It was cloudy but there was a break in the clouds. We drove out of town where we would be in darkness and waited for it to be dark enough to see the night sky. Jasper is an area of night sky preserve. We were not disappointed. We saw a very clear picture of stars and milky way in part of the sky. It was awe inspiring. Neither one of us has seen such a sky in a long time. The only problem in sticking around to see the sky, was traveling very dark roads for an hour back to Hinton. We've been there done that with animals running into our car in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. We were nervous but fine. We were watched over by a loving Heavenly Father and made it back with car and passengers all in one piece.

Our trip was such a nice one. We saw the sheep, elk and deer. We saw one coyote, and a squirrel, but no caribou, or moose. Even on our ride back to Grande Prairie through Grande Cache, we didn't see any caribou. There are a few other places in Canada we might see caribou. We saw lots of  enjoyable, beautiful scenery. We are so glad we got on this little get-away. This is such a beautiful earth that's been created for us. We felt at peace. We felt loved by a Heavenly Father who knows who we are, and cares about us. He is aware of the things that make us happy. We love our Heavenly Father very much. Bruce and I love each other very much. As we serve this mission, serve our brothers and sisters in Canada, and help to continue the missionary work of our Father's great plan, I grow fonder, closer and more in love with Bruce every day. This has been a good way, at least for me, to adjust to retirement. We love our children and grandchildren. We are both glad we get to talk to them and keep up with their activities.

We appreciate all our many blessings and love all of you.

Robyn, Mom, Grandma, and sister Brown