Every province, no matter how small it is, no matter if their economy is a dumpster fire, no matter if their young populace is fleeing in droves due to poor job opportunities (*cough* Nova Scotia *cough*); all of them have one thing to be proud of. Everywhere from Prince Edward Island to British Columbia has something to brag about.
I’m not talking about cultural heritage or man-made landmarks; I’m talking about stuff that’s completely out of our control. I’m talking about naturally occuring phenomena! (Exclamation marks make even the nerdiest sentences exciting).
Every province has one weather event or geographic location they paste all over their tourism brochures. Ontario brags about its great lakes. Alberta toots its horn about the Rockies. PEI likes to highlight its...um, its...well, I actually don’t know what they’ve got besides potatoes. (I kid, I kid. I know what PEI has: A nice view of New Brunswick).
In Nova Scotia, we’ll go on forever about our oceanside vistas. Every part of the coastline is a must-see. The Cabot Trail is popular partly for its great view of the sea.
In Halifax, I had a friend who was a former Saskatchewan-native. She told me the one thing thing I had to see while I was here were the Northern Lights.
Now, the Northern lights are almost mythical on the east coast. We never catch a glimpse of them outside of the Internet. They’re like tornadoes or a booming economy; we’ve never seen them.
I was dying to see the Northern Lights when I got here. I stared out my window the first night I stayed in Yorkton. Crystal-clear skyline. A nice collection of stars, but no glowing lights.
I kept my eye on the night sky, but I never saw the light show. Maybe I had to be further north to see them. I filed it away in the back of my mind.
A few weeks ago, I was sitting on my balcony trying to hammer out a column for this paper (does that count as a fourth-wall break?). I looked away from my computer to collect my thoughts when I saw them: The Northern Lights.
They were pretty subdued. Just one uneven line of green sprayed across the sky. It alternated between a bright glow and a dull shimmer.
It was beautiful. I don’t think I can add much to the mounds of poetry and literature written on the Northern Lights, so I won’t try. All I can say is that it was a breathtaking glow-in-the-dark sticker pasted on the sky. It looked so good I deleted my column draft and wrote this one instead.
Some natural landmarks don’t live up to the hype. The Northern Lights exceeded it. They do Saskatchewan proud.
