By gosh! After a long, drawn-out spring of cold weather and rain, it sure was nice to have a few days of sunshine, especially coming as it did on the opening long weekend of summer.
Last week, it seemed as if everybody around the country was gearing up for backyard barbecues, weenie roasts, lazing about on the deck, heading to cottage country, or tweaking up the lawn, garden, or flower beds. Or all of the above!
Despite the cold spring, the ice went out on last week on Lesser Slave Lake, or at least the western basin, which is as we all know is the most important part. Maybe there is some ice down at the other end, seeing as how that’s the way the wind usually blows, but that’s someone else’s sadness.
There is only one time in recent memory ice was still around on the Friday of the long weekend. That particular weekend, there was ice on the eastern horizon, as viewed from Joussard. By Saturday morning, it was gone.
Maybe with a wind change, there will be ice coming back from the east. But so far, that isn’t the case. Last week, there were boats in the marinas, and some folks were already out on the water. No water-skiers, wind surfers or just plain old swimmers were reported, though.

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There just might be enough warm and dry weather coming so farmers can get their crops in.
It’s going to be a squeaker though, depending on which weather forecast one is looking at.

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Last week, the big news in Alberta was Wild Rose and Progressive Conservatives, Alberta’s two right-wing parties, are going to merge.
The thinking is, each of the parties will split the vote in the next election in 2019 and Rachel Notley’s New Democrats, currently now in power, will again win enough seats to run the province.
Wild Rose will get some conservative votes. And the PCs will get some conservative votes. If their votes were added together, they reckon, they would be able to beat the NDP vote. Separately, they both lose.
Of course, just because the two parties are joined does not mean they will be happy. There are rumours already of squabbling over the nuts and bolts and details of who will run what, and what the party platform will really be.
This all sort of goes back to the days of Ralph Klein and Nancy Betkowski duking it out. One side was called Redneck Ralphies, and the other side, just the Red Tories.
Sort of, one “really conservative party”, and one kinda “not so conservative party, and almost liberal, in fact”.
More to that, Betkowski, after losing the Conservative leadership to Klein in 1992, came back in 1998 as leader of the Alberta Liberal Party. A real Liberal now!
So the real problem, if you want to call it a problem, is that Alberta does not have a Liberal party of much reknown. Since the days of Pierre Trudeau and the National Energy Program, talk about liking Liberals is the same as talk about liking bad breath, foot and mouth disease, and cancer.
Anyway, July 22 is the date set so far for a vote to join the two parties.

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A meeting is where minutes are kept but hours are lost!

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Have a great week coming up, and a fast recovery from the one just over!