This is the opinion/column owner/founder of Border Pulse Dan Gray.
Kenny Chesney wrote a song once, “The Boys of Fall,” and as we head into the last week of summer, the screeching whistles I can hear from the nearby football field are a reminder: summer is almost over in Lloydminster.
The Lloydminster Barons and their cross-town counterparts, the Holy Rosary Raiders, are getting close to bringing their own version of Friday Night Lights back to the prairies. For a couple of months, the respective fan bases will make the trek in all weather to support their kids and their teammates, in a tradition as old as western Canada itself.
For Holy Rosary, it’ll be the first time they get to play on their brand new turf, something they’d hoped to do last year before a strike and construction delays pushed it back, as these things sometimes do. That field officially opens Friday, with soccer taking centre stage.
The hot weather, expected to stick around into the first week of school, has done wonders to cut down the mosquitoes in town. It’s also let the Just Kruzin’ motor club keep sharing their vehicles with thousands as they travel to communities on Wednesday nights. Tonight, they’re in Kitscoty, for anyone keeping track.
Despite all that, the air is different. A new news tool, a DJI Lito XL drone, has me out when the sun is coming up, in the quiet moments just before dawn, when you need to grab a sweater (ask how I learned that the hard way). You can tell the time has come.
Just outside the city, you’re starting to see the signs. Wheat and canola fields are getting ready for harvest, and you can see farmers prepping combines and wagons to run a blitz on the fields, just as soon as there’s a stretch of good enough weather and the fields are declared ready.
In a different kind of fall prairie tradition, families will gather to help feed the rest of the nation. On one farm, over a dozen combines work the fields while the women of the family put together feasts fit for kings to bring out at all hours of the day and night. Something my wife and I are still adjusting to out here is the sheer scale of the effort it takes to clear the fields. A 65-foot head in Ontario would finish most fields in a matter of hours, and good luck getting it down the roads anywhere near our hometown. Things out here are just built different.
So as we say goodbye to the fleeting days of summer, and the calendar turns to fall in less than a month, I hope you take time to look back at the memories you made these past few short months. They’ll be worth having when it’s minus 40 and the sun doesn’t come up until after 9 a.m., thanks to no time change out here.
My family’s life has changed for the better since moving to this little community, and each season that passes makes it feel more and more like home. Having community members embrace both us and the work this paper does is just a bonus.
Enjoy the last few weeks of summer. We know we will.
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