Life North of the 54th

Transcript Chapters

• 00:00 - Why the Peace Country
• 03:58 - Old Farm House Memories
• 08:49 - Around the Acreage
• 19:52 - City Life
• 32:28 - Hanging Out in Town
• 40:42 - Reflections on a Life in the Peace Country

00:00 - Why the Peace Country

Opening Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff]

Garett:
Welcome back to Life Notes of the 54th. I'm Garett Brown.

Preston:
And I am Preston Brown. We welcome you back to our first episode of season three. And today we have with us a friend of ours, Alex Pradzinski. And we will let him introduce himself.

Alex:
Hey everybody, my name is Alex Pradzinski. Thank you for having me on here. And I'm excited to discuss my life and talk with you guys about my experiences living in the Peace Country.

Garett:
Thanks for joining us, Alex, and for making your podcast debut. It's great to have you with us.

Alex:
Thank you.

Garett:
So Alex, what comes to mind when you think about the Peace Country and you reflect on life growing up in the Peace Country?

Alex:
I think lots of stuff comes up to mind. I know living in the Peace Country, for lots of people I've always talked to. And they've had some really good experiences. Some bad experiences. But I think for myself, I've had a lot of really good experiences. Most of my family on my mom's side lives there. And I've had really good friends like you guys and other people from church and from school. For me, it's been a good experience living there. I am glad where I live right now. I live in Spruce Grove, closer to Edmonton. I still get that little small town feel, but closer to Edmonton and stuff like that. I don't know if I need to go into town. Yeah.

Preston:
You were born in Grande Prairie, if I remember right, eh?

Alex:
Yep. I was born in Grande Prairie. My parents moved from Chicago to Grande Prairie. So yeah, that's where I was born.

Preston:
Man, what on earth would take somebody from Chicago to Northwestern Alberta?

Garett:
Yeah, it's quite the move. Do you know?

Alex:
Yeah. It is actually a pretty good story. So my dad was born and raised in Chicago area. I don't know exactly where. I don't remember right now. But so he was born and raised there. And my mom immigrated from Poland when she was about 18 years old to Chicago. That's where she was living. Yeah, eventually they met up and started dating and got married and stuff like that. And a lot of my mom's side of the family immigrated directly from Poland, from Europe area, to Grande Prairie. And so they were living there and saying how awesome it is, how there's lots of opportunities. And they had started their own businesses there and things like that. So my parents were like, hey, let's go visit and see how actually nice it is and stuff like that. So they went and visited. And I remember them telling me that they woke up their first morning and they turned on the radio. And they didn't hear a single thing on the radio about any murders happening during the night.

Garett:
[chuckles]

Alex:
And so they're like, oh, this is amazing. This is a peaceful place. Let's live here. It's good for families. There's no murders happening. Not as bad as Chicago.

Preston:
[chuckles]

Alex:
And so and then all my family were there. So they decided that they would move. So they eventually moved to Grande Prairie. And yeah, that's where I was born. So yeah.

Garett:
And do you know what year they moved?

Alex:
Like around '93 or so. I was born in '94, so a little bit before then. I believe '93, maybe '92. I don't know the exact date.

Garett:
Yeah, I have not been to Chicago. But I've heard sometimes rough things about it.

Alex:
Chicago is nice. It always depends on where you go. There's always rough neighbourhoods. Same with Grande Prairie. Same with Edmonton. There's rough neighbourhoods. There's the good neighbourhoods. But Chicago is nice. I like the good food. And had lots of my family live there. So it's nice.

Garett:
Yeah, thanks for sharing that.

Preston:
Yeah.

03:58 - Old Farm House Memories

Preston:
So Alex, do you have any early memories of growing up in the Grande Prairie area that you'd like to share?

Alex:
Early memories? Lots of my memories are with you guys. We always had sleepovers together. And that was always lots of fun. We always played tons of video games. I used to play so many video games. But I don't anymore because I have kids. And there's lots of stuff to do. So yeah.

Garett:
Yeah.

Alex:
But yeah, I have lots of memories. And just spending time-- because my family, lots of my family are from there. So lots of memories with family members. And doing lots of get togethers and stuff like that. So yeah.

Garett:
I also remember a lot of the sleepovers. I think probably most of the sleepovers that I had as a kid and teenager were probably at your place compared to any other house in Grande Prairie. [chuckles]

Alex:
Yeah, we spent a lot of time together.

Garett:
Yeah, it was pretty good.

Alex:
I always remember this. And it was so interesting to me. Whenever I would go to your guys' house, it always seemed like everyone always had-- they always moved rooms.

Garett:
[laughs]

Alex:
You guys would always change and make it different. And I was like, where are we going to be sleeping today? Or where are we hanging out today?

All:
[laugh]

Alex:
Yeah. And sometimes everyone would be sleeping in the same room. And then you guys would have separate rooms. And then, yeah. That was always cool.

Preston:
Well, you never shared a room because you didn't have any brothers.

All:
[laugh]

Alex:
That's right. Yeah. But it was cool that you guys could do that.

Garett:
Yeah. I don't know why we did that. I mean, it was nice to change things up. That's for sure. For example, at one point, Travis, Preston, and I all shared a room together. And three people in a room-- it was a fairly large bedroom. But after a while, you kind of want your own space again. Especially, as Preston and Travis can say, I was not a very still sleeper in the night. [chuckles] And there were lots of elbows to the face that-- never my face, but--

All:
[chuckles]

Preston:
Never my face, because Travis would sleep in the middle, because he was the biggest. [chuckles]

Garett:
Yeah. Yeah, it was nice, though. It was also nice in that old farmhouse to have the space to change rooms. I guess the other thing is, depending on whether or not it was summer or winter, made some rooms much more livable than others for that place.

Alex:
That's true. Yeah. Good memories of your guys' house. Is it still standing right now?

Preston:
Most of it.

Garett:
Yeah, I think the original part of it. Yeah.

Preston:
Anything with green carpet, if you know what I mean, [chuckles] it's not there anymore.

Garett:
Yeah, or the tin roof. All the tin roof is gone.

Alex:
Yeah, your parents built a nice new house. It was a nice place.

Garett:
Yeah, it was much better. Had actual insulation.

Alex:
[chuckles]

Preston:
Had three pane windows.

Garett:
Yeah.

Preston:
The windows didn't frost up.

Garett:
An actual basement.

Preston:
It didn't have a dirt floor basement.

Alex:
When we built that-- I didn't build it. I helped. I think one day you guys built that retaining wall in the back.

Garett:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, the new house? Yeah.

Alex:
Yeah, I remember helping with that. I was like when I-- I think I just came home from my mission or something like that.

Preston:
Yeah, because I obviously wasn't on, go out yet. But I had the experience that I knew how to do concrete forming from work.

Garett:
Yeah, as a quick aside, that was probably the only engineering project I've actually worked on. It was a lot of fun, especially since we're trying to build this retaining wall. And so Preston and I have been working construction. We know like, OK, well, we need concrete and we need rebar. And we can order concrete. But getting rebar for a small project is difficult. But we knew--

Preston:
We knew a contractor in town that had a lot of extra rebar. It just happened to be 25 millimeter rebar, which is huge.

Alex:
That's pretty thick.

Garett:
Yeah, so we just got what they would give us. And that retaining wall is very sturdy because we--

Preston:
We put 25-bill rebar, 12 inches on center, on 10 inches wide concrete.

All:
[laughs]

Garett:
It's mostly metal.

Preston:
On piles.

Garett:
Yeah, that's true. Instead of making footings or something like that, we just-- we went like six feet down with an auger so that we had-- anyway, it was a lot of concrete.

Preston:
Yeah.

Garett:
Not going to go anywhere.

Alex:
Nice.

Garett:
Yeah, I didn't remember that you were there to help us with that. So I guess, thanks. [laughs]

Alex:
Yeah. [chuckles] Yeah, that was fun.

08:49 - Around the Acreage

Garett:
Yeah, a lot of memories that I have at our place with you, Alex, is the-- well, we had a whole bunch of pallets that we would try-- I guess, we're not highly motivated to repair and sell or be, I guess, reused. And they were just a huge stack of piles of pallets, like thousands of them, I think. Definitely hundreds, but it felt like at least 1,000.

Alex:
It was definitely thousands. Yeah, there was a lot.

Garett:
Yeah. And you just make fortresses of whatever kind out of them and play on that. I was going to say carefully play on them, but I think you can only really be so careful when you're running on pallets that are stacked like 15 high.

Alex:
And they're like wobbling, and you're like, oh, this is so safe.

All:
[chuckle]

Alex:
I was actually telling my father-in-law that story of how we would be running along on tops of pallets. He's like, holy smokes, how did you guys not die? [chuckles] Yeah, but those are fun.

Garett:
Young and foolish, feeling invincibility.

Preston:
You're so much more agile when you're like 12 to 16 years old.

Alex:
It's true.

Garett:
Bones are so much more flexible.

Alex:
[chuckles] We'd use the survey stakes for swords. And was it you or was it Travis who made a bow?

Garett:
I tried a number of times to make a bow. I was motivated to try and get a wooden bow that I'd made myself but didn't have the patience for the craftsmanship of it. And I also didn't have the expertise to build a mold. Because what I understand is you have to mold it a certain way so that when you bend it, that's where you get the flex and the power from. So it's bowed shaped, sort of like semicircle shaped. And you would want to basically make it so that it's bowed the other way so that when you bend it together and attach the string, then that's where you get the tensile force from. My bow, I think, was just a flexible piece of wood that was not anti-flexed. There was not very much tensile strength or tensile force or pressure or something in it.

Alex:
Right. Yeah. Sounds like a lot of hard work to make a bow actually work, right?

Garett:
Yeah. Lots of slivers, though. Holding onto the survey stakes and hitting each other. Not really each other.

Preston:
Sword fighting.

Garett:
Yes. Sword fighting, always parrying, not really inclined to actually hit each other because--

Preston:
That would hurt.

Garett:
It hurts.

All:
[laugh]

Garett:
Then it's not fun anymore.

Alex:
I remember, I have a memory that I was sword fighting David Woodruff at your place. And I accidentally hit David on the hand while we were sword fighting. And your dad was right next to us. He got super mad at me. I remember that. [chuckles]

Garett:
Oh, no.

Alex:
But it was all good. Do you guys remember when we would build forts in that back forest area? And then we do slingshots with paintballs.

Preston:
Yeah. A poor man paintball trench.

Garett:
[chuckles]

Alex:
You were so good, Preston, at just always pegging people from hundreds of yards away, it seemed like.

Preston:
It seemed like. But it probably was only like 50 yards.

Garett:
[chuckles]

Alex:
Yeah, just 50 yards.

Preston:
Seems bigger.

Garett:
I think my favourite thing about using slingshots to throw paintballs instead of CO2-powered paintball guns is just the reload time. You can have a standoff between two people that are only like 15 yards apart. And you're just waiting and waiting. Because if you shoot and miss, then the other person can get closer than 15 yards chasing you down. But also, you can't squeeze your paintball too hard, or you'll blow it up inside your little sling. It's a completely different dynamic than constantly hiding behind things.

Alex:
And those balls curved so bad when you shot them out of the slingshot. It was crazy. It was like, you have no idea where it's going to go. That's why I was always so impressed with Preston, because it was like, you just like destroy people from so far away. And I was like, he had a magic touch or something.

Preston:
Yeah, just trying to understand how you grip it to hold it. And then when it spins out like a musket ball, it does sometimes have a pattern.

Garett:
More focus, more care, more precision.

Preston:
More luck. [chuckles]

Alex:
Right.

Garett:
[chuckles] I remember we had a few scouting or cub activities. And I think there was one in particular. It was a scouting activity, I think. And Alex, your dad was in part of the scout leadership. But you were there. So you were like four years younger than the scouts. But you were there. And your dad was taking video. He had a camcorder or something. And there's this particular video where-- so your dad had a camcorder. And one of the other scouts, Bradley Caulfield, was there. Your dad was taking video. And on the video, Bradley's like, I'm going to go see the goats, because we had goats at one point in our acreage life. And on this video, Alex, you were just like, I don't know, six or seven years old. And you were like, no, Bradley, they have horns.

Alex:
[chuckles]

Garett:
Very adorable. Thanks for that memory, too, Alex.

Alex:
I do remember that. I don't remember it, per se. But I remember watching and hearing that. So yeah, that's pretty funny.

Garett:
On top of the many changing faces of that acreage that went from old farmhouse and boneyard to new farmhouse and tidied up, stacks of pellets here, goats here, chickens here, cows, sheep, 4H stuff, just stuff which has come and go over the years in that place. It was always changing.

Alex:
Yeah, always something new happening. I always remember-- I'm sure it was your dad, but he would make those ginormous piles of wood. I remember him throwing out-- I think it was kerosene or something. And then you had a pen flare. You would shoot it, and it would explode. And then we have a big bonfire. Do you guys remember that at all?

Preston:
Oh, yes.

Garett:
Yeah, it was, I guess, colloquially called condi. It was like the condensate.

Preston:
Yes, it's like a paint thinner kind of product.

Alex:
Oh, OK. Yeah.

Garett:
So when you extract oil out of the ground, you get the oil. But you also get a bunch of water just from underground water or water that was used in the process of extraction. So the water would be the most dense, and it would sit on the bottom. And then the oil would be the least dense, and it would sit on top when you let it separate. And then in the middle, there's this condensate stuff.

Preston:
Yeah, so they would use condensate in pipelines. If the oil was really viscous, they could mix the condensate with it to make it easier to pump through the pipelines. And then when they get it to process, they can easily separate it.

Alex:
That's kind of cool.

Preston:
So you can have huge volumes of it because it's just full of hundreds of miles of pipelines. You would just get whole chunks of the stuff. That's why we used it all the time to burn.

Alex:
I think that's where I met your wife for the first time. It was around Christmas. And there was a bunch of-- I think it was a YSA or youth or something. And your dad had a big bonfire by those hills that we would sled on.

Preston:
It'd be your wife, Garett, not my wife.

Garett:
Yes, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, it had to have been Christmas because we've only spent one Christmas together in Grande Prairie.

Alex:
But I don't think you were even married yet. I think it was like--

Garett:
No, it would have been 2015.

Alex:
--were introducing your family to her.

Garett:
Yeah, it would have been 2015. Yeah, it was the only time that she was up there.

Alex:
Nice. Yeah.

Garett:
Because after that, she felt like maybe spending Christmas so far north is not as great as spending Christmas not so far north. [chuckles]

Alex:
That's pretty-- yeah, where's her family from?

Garett:
Missouri, the Kansas City area?

Alex:
Yeah. Definitely not as far north.

Garett:
Not as cold. Not as cold in the winter. [laughs]

Preston:
You only get five and a half hours of daylight at Christmas.

Garett:
Yeah. The best part about the trip for her, though, in terms of experiencing the North, was that we drove up from Edmonton to Grande Prairie. And it got dark. If you only have five hours of daylight, then you're-- unless you spend the whole daylight driving, right, you're going to drive in the dark on your way to Grande Prairie. But it was fantastic. Northern Lights show.

Alex:
Oh, nice.

Garett:
You could start seeing the Northern Lights probably somewhere between White Court and Fox Creek. And then they lasted like all-- our whole drive home. And we even stopped outside of Bezanson for like 30 minutes or 45 minutes to see them and just watch them. And it was just a fantastic full sky display. It was--

Alex:
That's very romantic.

Garett:
It was, yeah. And especially for her, she'd never seen like Aurora before. So to get a show like that, it's like basically now, it's like how do you top that now?

Alex:
Now she had to get married.

Garett:
A multi-hour display. [chuckles] So that there's a slight chance of going back that far north.

I do remember dad telling us that whenever we were going to have a bonfire like that, he'd have to tell the county fire department. Because of course, you have a big bonfire, it just lights up the night. And those bonfires that my dad would put on were like-- like it was the size of a shed. Like we were burning stuff the size of a shed or bigger.

Alex:
Yeah, they were massive.

Garett:
Of just like scrap wood. It definitely lights up the sky and can be quite concerning if you're driving down the road and it's like, oh, there's a massive fire over there. I hope somebody's house is fine.

Preston:
We'd always burn it at night so you couldn't see the smoke.

Garett:
Yeah.

Alex:
[chuckles] Makes sense.

Garett:
And usually in winter too. Lots of snow nearby.

Preston:
Less fire bans. Yeah, that acreage was a lot of fun. Had a lot of fun sharing it with our friends.

Alex:
Yeah, how many acres did you guys have?

Garett:
It was 19.

Alex:
19. It felt so ginormous back then. But now when I'm older and it's like, oh, 19 acres, which is still a lot of land, but it's also not a lot of land as well. But back then it was just huge. I just remember there was so much space and we could go anywhere and do anything and explore. And that was fun.

Garett:
Our neighbour to the south, I don't know how much land he had, but we didn't have a fence between our lands, so it did feel bigger. And he was, of course, kind enough to let us wander. Yeah, of course we wouldn't do anything damaging or anything like that. And then the swamp bog to the north, I honestly have no idea who owns that land. It's not very useful for productivity.

Preston:
One of the-- Tim Jones's son owns it still.

Garett:
Oh, does he?

Preston:
The oldest. It's like 100 acres of musk eggs. Pretty useless. [chuckles]

Garett:
Yeah, pretty useless for development.

Preston:
Development, agriculture, it's like, what are you going to do with that.

Garett:
But if you want to hunt moose, then that's your spot to hunt moose. Yeah, and that little area, you're right, Alex. 19 acres is a lot. But compared to the neighbours across the road where they had full quarter sections or sections, who knows how much land they had. Yeah, it's not a lot.

Alex:
Exactly, yeah.

19:52 - City Life

Garett:
We spent a lot of time at your place too. It was pretty exciting when you guys put an addition on your house above the garage, and you got that second sort of living room space.

Alex:
We always called it the new living room. Even as long as we've lived there, we called it the new living room.

Garett:
[chuckles]

Alex:
The addition was garage, and then living room, and then my parents' master bedroom.

Garett:
Oh, you added the garage as well.

Alex:
So that on the side of my house used to be a really long driveway. So they had to tear that all up, put piles down, and they put the garage and then the addition on top of there. So yeah. Yeah, that was a good spot, because my dad got that projector, and we had the projector on there. And we would always play Super Smash Bros and other games in there, watch movies and stuff like that. That was the place to be and play games and stuff.

Garett:
Yeah, but the wall-- I think the wall was like a light yellow paint.

Alex:
Yeah, yellow. It was yellow. It was one of my mom's favourite colours. So she liked colours. So there's yellows and greens. And yeah.

Garett:
Yeah, it did make the projection colours a little strange, though, because it was projected onto yellow sometimes. I think you had a sheet on occasion, but--

Alex:
Yeah, definitely in the summertime, because there's so much light, you would definitely have to wait sometimes to watch. But in the winter, it was perfect, because it was dark quite early, and you could use it. And yeah, it was good.

Preston:
How did you like growing up in town? Within Grande Prairie Town.

Alex:
In town? Well, I mean, it's kind of hard to say, because I didn't know really any difference other than being at your guys' place. But in town was good. It was close to everything. I could walk to school or bike to school, take the bus. So in town, there was everything you needed. And all my other family members lived in town, so we could visit them quite often. And my grandma would come over quite often, and other family members, and we would visit their place very often and stuff. So yeah, living in town was good. Back then, going to the edge of town, it felt like it took forever. But now, the original edge of town is like-- it's expanded so much. It's crazy where the edge of town is now compared to back then. It's crazy. Yeah.

Garett:
I haven't been hanging out in Grande Prairie and talking with people for a while. But I can't imagine talking to people now and having a newcomer come in and then saying something like, oh, yeah, you take the old bypass past the college or something like that. And it's like, what do you mean, bypass?

Alex:
[chuckles]

Garett:
It's like, you mean the road that runs straight through the middle of town? Is that what you mean by the bypass?

Alex:
Yeah, exactly right. Now, I think it's near the airport, isn't it? Something like that.

Garett:
Yeah, what the bypass actually is, yeah.

Alex:
Yeah. It's crazy how much Grande Prairie has grown. I was there a couple of weeks ago for my dad's birthday. And yeah, just even those months in between visits, it keeps growing and growing. Crazy.

Garett:
Did you walk to the shops or a convenience store to get candy? An experience that I never really had as a child is to be able to go to a shop and buy candy with my pennies that I found somewhere.

Alex:
We would go quite often to a convenience store. There was a convenience store and there was a dollar store. And things were actually worth a dollar in the dollar store. I remember seeing this awesome thing. And it was the only thing in the store that I could find that was more than a dollar. It was like a toy gun or something like that. But yeah, we would walk or ride my bike. And back in the day when you could just leave and your parents wouldn't worry about where you were and you could just go and yeah, we'd go get candies. And candies were like $0.05 a piece. You could get a selection and you could get a good amount of candy for cheap. And yeah.

It was also nice living in town because I had a few friends that lived pretty close. I could either walk or take my bike. And I would just say I'm going to visit my friend Theo, for example, and I'd go and just head over there and knock on the door and say, hey, is Theo home? And we'd hang out or go to the park or whatever. It was nice too because living in town, my first job was-- I had a paper route. So I could do that. And I had more opportunities like that where I could work in town and work for my family and things like that. So yeah.

Garett:
Did you get a driver's license around 16 and drive?

Alex:
Yeah. I got my license basically when I turned 16. So I was able to drive. And I remember driving home by myself for the first time. I took my license test at the A1 License Center, which is near the No Frills right now area. And I remember finishing the test, passing, getting in the car that I was driving. I was driving home and going over the bridge and-- I forget what street that is. It's not 100th Street. What's that with the bridge? And you go through Muskoseepi Park.

Preston:
Is it 84th?

Alex:
Yeah, 84th or something. 85th. I don't know.

Preston:
84th Ave?

Alex:
Anyway, driving home and just like everything felt new. And it was just like driving by myself, got the music playing, all the trees are passing me. It was nice. Yeah. It was a beautiful thing. I didn't go straight home. I drove a little bit and wanted to embrace it, right? Yeah. But I still rode my bike a lot around town and using like Muskoseepi Trails and stuff like that. I'd go quite often with David Woodruff and Junree and Ryan and stuff like that when I was older. And we would go and we found these trails that weren't like paved trails. So they were dirt. And we'd go exploring and stuff like that. And we did lots of biking and stuff like that. So try to stay skinny. But it's not working still, I guess. I don't know. [chuckles]

Garett:
Yeah, one of the things that I remember at your place was being at your place was the first time-- probably the first time, but definitely the first multiple times that I attempted or we attempted to stay up all night and like pull an all-nighter of some kind.

Alex:
Yes.

Garett:
I remember I think one time we-- like I made it to like 10 o'clock before I fell asleep. And then my dad or someone came to pick us up at like 11. So I had like an hour of sleep. And then I had to go home and do yard work because it was a Saturday.

Alex:
[chuckles]

Garett:
And that was hard and not a great idea. [chuckles]

Alex:
Yeah, we did that quite often, actually. I don't know how we did it. I don't know. I don't want to do that anymore. As an adult, I don't know. It's like I would like to get some sleep, peace and quiet, with no kids sleeping in my bed. Thank you.

Alex:
Yes.

Garett:
For me, staying up all night, like over my life has had like sort of three different situations. Like there was mostly like hanging out with you, whereas like I just want to stay up all night because we get to play video games, some video games that we don't own, or like some game systems that we don't have. So like I want to play the game with you. It's lots of fun. So I just don't want to stop playing. I just want to keep going. And so there's that. And then there's my time in university where I'm staying up all night because I have a homework assignment due, and I got to get it done if I want to get the grade. That's not as fun, but it's still kind of motivating in some way. And then there was the other one where I was working on the rigs and working night shift. That was different because it was a night shift. So I would work all night, and then I would sleep during the day. And that one, on the one hand, was the best experience because being awake all night is kind of nice because it can be like really calming and peaceful. But it wasn't a great job. So, I agree now, I'd rather just sleep at night and be awake during the day. It's much better.

Alex:
I've never had a night job, so I think I've been blessed not to because I don't do well anymore staying up late.

Garett:
Yeah, it's not great. Yeah. I used melatonin, too, to help sleep. Especially since it was like a week-- I'd do like a week of day shift, and then I have 24 hours off as I switch to a week of night shift. And then I would have a week off. So it was just not great. It was pretty rough. Basically, be switching sleep schedules every week.

Alex:
Yeah, that would be tough.

Preston:
I had a job where I did, I think it was two or three weeks straight of night shift work. We had to do after hours work. And that wasn't so bad because my commute, there was no traffic because I go to work at 9 AM and I'd come home at-- or 9 PM and I'd come home at 5 AM in the morning. So my commute was breezy.

Alex:
Was that when you were working at the bank?

Preston:
No, I only worked night shift at the bank a couple of times on renovations. That was when I was in Portland. But yeah, at the bank, I suppose we did do some after hour stuff as well. And I have done some snow removal jobs where I'd push snow all night. That's the worst because it's like 20, 30 below, snowing, and you're out pushing snow in a machine just to drive home in a cold vehicle. [chuckles]

Alex:
Everyone's at home in their cozy beds. Just like sleeping and you have to be at work.

Garett:
And not only you're pushing snow, probably while it's falling.

Alex:
You have to just come back and do it again. Same thing.

Preston:
And you can never plan for it because it's like you only go if it snows. So it's like you're not pushing snow and then it's like you're just awake during the day. And it's like, OK, we're pushing snow tonight. It's like, great. I'm going to try and take as long of a nap as I can before I go to work tonight.

Alex:
Is that when you worked with Mark?

Preston:
Yeah, so those days are over. The only place I push snow is for service or at my own place.

Alex:
[chuckles]

Garett:
Yeah. The first shift I had on the rigs was a night shift. I was trying to get a job on the rigs so I could make money quickly. And it didn't seem to be lining up. It didn't seem to be going well. And so I started another job. And I had this job for two days. And then the morning of the third day, I get a phone call saying, hey, there's a position for you on the rig. You start tonight. And I was like, OK. So I knew I was going to be working a night shift. And I had just slept because it was like 9 or 10 in the morning. And so I went. I mean, I'd only been in this job for like two days. So I just went in. I was like, hey, bye. I'm going to go work on the rigs now. And they're like, OK. And that was that. Yeah, I went home and I slept. And then I woke up and went to the rigs. And it was something else.

Alex:
Nice. I've never had the opportunity to work on the rigs. I know a lot of people in the Peace Country do work on the rigs or have worked on the rigs. It's definitely a big cultural thing up there. It's either you work in the oil field or you're in forestry or that's really the two main businesses up there. I know there's a lot of like entrepreneurs in Grande Prairie and stuff that are very successful and stuff like that. But yeah, oil field or forestry are big up there.

Garett:
Yeah, it's not that great. I don't suggest it.

Alex:
Yeah.

Preston:
Just a cash grab.

Alex:
Yeah. Well, yeah, people do make a lot of money there. They also spend a lot of money.

32:28 - Hanging Out in Town

Garett:
Anyway, I wanted to say a couple more memories hanging out at your place. There's one moment that sort of burned into my mind. We were just hanging out, playing in your room. And we probably stayed up late, but we didn't pull up, like stay up all night, I don't think. Anyway, we woke up, we're playing again, like still playing games. And then your sister came in to tell us something. Like your older sister, she opened the door and she went to say something. And then she's just like, oh, man, guys. [chuckles] It's like, open a window.

Alex:
[chuckles] I do remember that, actually. I do remember them now that you say that.

Preston:
[chuckles] I remember that as well.

Alex:
Yeah, we were teenagers.

Garett:
Yep.

Alex:
We probably didn't notice it because we were in there, right?

Garett:
Yeah, just it's slowly getting worse and worse and worse as we just don't even notice our own smell.

Alex:
It's funny because I'm in Young Men's at church. And that does happen if it's hot in the room and we're in a room and I come into the room. That does happen that I smell those kind of smells.

All:
[chuckle]

Alex:
I think it's a young man kind of issue.

Garett:
Yeah. Your mom was always the best, Alex, at when we go to your place. I remember on two separate occasions she would come in and be like, you guys have been playing too many video games. So we're going to watch an educational movie now.

All:
[chuckle]

Garett:
We watched one about Mozart. And then another one that I had a deep impression on me was an American Civil War movie called Gods and Generals.

Preston:
I remember that one.

Garett:
It was partly memorable because it was--

Preston:
That was like a two-disc movie.

Garett:
[chuckles] Yeah.

Alex:
I remember that. It was quite a bit. It was very long. I remember that. But it was good. It was like lots of action, but then also like pretty historical.

Preston:
I actually looked for that one before.

Garett:
Yeah?

Preston:
Watch it again as an adult. You always understand things differently the older you get.

Garett:
Yeah. Yeah, one of the moments that impressed me the most about that film-- I guess spoilers. It was pretty late in the film.

Alex:
I don't know if it can be spoilers. It's pretty old movies.

All:
[chuckle]

Garett:
Yeah. But yeah, so there was this main character, I guess a general in the North Army, I think. It was either like his niece, I think, or someone. She died as like a nine-year-old or something from scarlet fever or something like that. And then he was just like crying. And all of the men were like, wow, I've never seen him cry before. Like he's like this hardened general that has been through so much, and I've never seen him cry. And then they're like, he's there crying. And it impressed me as like a teenager. But if I watch it again, I would probably just be like full tears now. It'd be probably so much worse.

Alex:
It's interesting how when you get older, you experience more, and you've gone through different things. And then you're able to look at life differently. And I think as teenagers or kids, you think you know everything. And then you become an adult. And when you first become an adult, you're like, I still know everything. But then you're learning that you actually don't know everything. And then now, for me, when I deal with youth, it's like, was I like that when I was a youth?

Garett:
[chuckles]

Alex:
Did I think I knew everything too? That's crazy. But yeah.

Garett:
Yeah, I think so. I felt like I was like that too.

Alex:
Yeah.

Garett:
Yeah, I could definitely say that this feeling of feeling like I know everything to feeling like I know less, the more that I experience. Doing a PhD definitely was a fast track on I don't know anything.

Alex:
[chuckles] Yeah, I'm sure it does. Yeah.

Garett:
It's difficult in the sense that there's just so much. It's-- anyway.

Alex:
It's crazy to think-- I don't know who your typical viewer is, but with God, he knows everything. That just blows my mind how much information that really means. Things that we don't even know about. It's crazy. He knows it perfectly. It's not like he just saw a Facebook video about a topic. He knows it, right? It's crazy.

All:
[chuckle]

Garett:
So I use a supercomputer sometimes with my PhD. And I was looking at their statistics in terms of the number of CPU cores, and nodes, and computing power and stuff they have. And then I was also looking at their storage stuff. Just looking at like, oh, I wonder how much storage is free on the volume that I'm using. So normally if you do this, you see something like GB for gigabytes or TB for terabytes. It was PT because it was petabytes. And I was like, oh, man. They have volumes that have petabytes of storage. And that's just--

Alex:
That's a lot.

Garett:
Like, it's out-- yes, 1,000 terabytes. It's just so much data. And that's how much is free. So much information.

Alex:
And now we have AI to help us go through that information.

Garett:
Yeah.

Preston:
Yeah. So Alex, as you've come to more understanding as an adult, how have your feelings towards Grande Prairie and the Peace Country changed over the years?

Alex:
I don't know. I think growing up, I enjoyed living there. But now I haven't lived there in such a long time. I don't know if I could go back to live there. It always seems like lots of people that I knew have moved away. And so kind of going back, it wouldn't really be the same. I still have a lot of family that lives there. But there's a lot of family that has also moved to Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto area as well. So it would be different. And so I don't have any hate or anything. Like, I wouldn't-- I just wouldn't go back because I have my own family here now. And it's-- I mean, unless something dramatic changes, and we decide that we would move back there. But there's so much that has changed. And I've built a life here that is just as important as my life in Grande Prairie. So yeah, I think-- I don't know if that answers your question. But yeah.

Preston:
Very insightful.

Alex:
I don't know about that.

All:
[chuckle]

Garett:
Yeah, and where you're living now is also slower paced, right? Like, you're not in the heart of the city. So the feel of wanting to escape the city and go back to Grande Prairie is not as strong because you live in a place that's not so urban. Yeah, I mean, it's still-- so I live in Spruce Grove, which is-- it is a city. I would say it's maybe like half the size of Grande Prairie. But you're like 20 minutes away from Edmonton. There's another town, Stoney Plain, that's like right next to us that's like a five minute drive. So you kind of get that small town feel, kind of. But you're close to Edmonton where we can drive in. So like yesterday, we went to Cabela's. I bought a new tree stand. Going to be hunting on our property. We could go into town and go to those stores that aren't here. But then we can come back and we don't have rush hour traffic that we are stuck in for 45 minutes, right? So yeah, unless there's construction or something.

And then now that I have-- so my wife and I, we own a piece of property with my in-laws. It's just north of Spruce Grove. We have 75 acres. So we have lots of space to do stuff on there. So it's so close to town, but it feels like you're hours out of town. Like it's so secluded. It's nice, right? But yeah. You can do lots of stuff there without anyone knowing.

Garett:
Yeah, and you don't have to deal with rush hour traffic on the Anthony Henday.

Alex:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's definitely a beautiful area. Spruce Grove, I like it. I'm glad we live here. So yeah.

40:42 - Reflections on a Life in the Peace Country

Garett:
Do you feel like the Peace Country's taught you any life lessons that you're willing to share? Or do you have any life lessons you've picked up along the way that you're willing to share?

Alex:
I was thinking about it before coming on the show. And I think the biggest thing that I've learned is-- I knew a lot of people in the oil and gas industry and things like that. And just that they work so hard, but they're always away from what matters most. I know it's not bad to go and provide for your family. But for me, I think I learned that prioritizing what matters most to me, I learned from people that would go and work two weeks away from their families and then come back for a week. I saw there was lots of families and kids, my friends, that had dads that would go do that. And it would be tough on them. I was glad that I had my dad. He had his own business. And he was home every day. And sometimes he would go and travel and do some business. But most of the time, he's home. My mom was home. And they were able to provide a good life for us. And now I'm-- well, my main business, I'm a realtor. I still have to work, but I can also prioritize my family. They know that I'm there for them.

Garett:
Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Do you feel like that's a weakness of the Peace Country, that so many of the oil and gas jobs have these days on, days off, life away from family sort of thing?

Alex:
Yeah, I think so. When I was just kind of finished high school, I went into construction. I was a taper, mudding and taping drywall. And there was quite a few people that I worked with that were a little unsavoury, I'll say. I remember this one guy that I was working with. He would go around, and he would look for women that their husbands were away on oil field jobs. And he would go and spend time with them. So yeah, I think it can be a weakness. I mean, it depends on the family and stuff like that, too, right? But with people being away, it makes things difficult on relationships and family. And even though they're out there working and providing for their family, they may be causing more stress than potentially finding something else. But there's so much work in that area that so many people depend on that work to provide, right? So it's kind of a catch-22.

Garett:
Yeah.

Alex:
So I guess you could call it a strength as well, right? Because there's so much work up there that people can-- it's a bustling place, and people want to work and make money, and so it brings new people into the area, and then it grows. And then that means there's more construction jobs. You've got to build more homes. There's more businesses that need to come in to service people. And so yeah, I mean, the oil and gas industry is the reason why Grande Prairie is where it's at today. I always forget. Your dad was in oil and gas, but he was home every day, right? Most of the time?

Garett:
Yeah, more or less.

Preston:
Yeah, because he worked in the measurement part of oil and gas.

Alex:
Right.

Garett:
So typically, jobs that have days on and days off, a lot of them are especially in the extraction and things related to that kind of work. On the other end of it, especially on the service end of it, then it's not so much.

Preston:
Yeah, he would calibrate the instruments that measure the product.

Alex:
Nice.

Preston:
Because if you could measure it, you could sell it.

Garett:
Yeah. And you've got to do it different frequencies for different places. I know there were some sites that he would go to more frequently than others. And some of the little measurement tools that he would service, they were just junked up full of who knows what just coming out of the ground and just clogged with sand and oil mixture, stuff like that. Those ones, of course, needed to be fixed more quickly.

Alex:
That makes sense.

Garett:
Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting job.

Alex:
Your dad is retired now or still working?

Preston:
He is still working, doing the same thing. He's been in the management part of measurement and calibration for many years. But he's still doing the same thing he did 20 years ago.

Garett:
Yeah.

Alex:
I think that's definitely a generational thing, where you work in the same job for quite a long time, right? But whereas maybe our generation, we may switch between lots of different things in our life.

Garett:
Yeah. I also don't know historically, at the time when our dad started the job in measurement and calibration, whether or not there was an official trade and education path for that job. There is now. But he's never done that training. And he's joked sometimes. His bosses or management would say, hey, Ron, you've never done this training before. And he's like, well, if I go and do the training, then you have to pay me more. And then he doesn't do the training.

Alex:
[chuckles] Because they don't want to pay him more.

Garett:
Yeah, and he doesn't want to do the training. Because he's been doing it for 25 years or more, I guess. Yeah.

Alex:
True. If you have more education, they got to pay more, right? It's only fair.

Preston:
I was going to ask, Alex, what did your dad do for work, running his own business?

Alex:
He was a computer programmer. So he would write different programs for companies. And he wrote a lot of programs for Weyerhaeuser and other wood-producing plants and stuff like that. And they would use his programs for tracking product and things like that, I believe. That's kind of what I remember. And he still does a little bit of that. But he now works for the city of Grande Prairie, doing similar things. He's kind of in that IT department and making programs for the city and things like that, and helping the city run smoothly and things like that, various different projects.

Garett:
Yeah. Alex, you have any other thoughts before we wrap up?

Alex:
I don't think so.

Garett:
Thank you so much, Alex, for taking some time to talk with us and share a bit about your story and to reminisce with Preston and I on a lot of formative experiences that we had at your place and ours. It's been great catching up with you again. It's been a long time.

Alex:
Yeah, it's been--

Garett:
Long time for me.

Alex:
It's been great. Thanks for inviting me. It was fun.

Preston:
Yes. Thank you for joining us on our show today.

Garett:
We're very grateful to those who listen. And welcome back to season 3. We hope that you enjoy the episodes that we have coming for you this season. For anyone who has feedback or would like to ask us questions or write in a story for us to share, you can email us at lifenorthofthe54th@gmail.com. You can also go to our website at peacecountrylife.ca/feedback, and you can submit feedback that way. Thank you, Alex. We hope to see you around soon. Thank

Alex:
you. Yeah. See you guys in person. That'd be nice.

Preston:
Yes, thank you again.

Garett:
Take care. Bye.

Ending Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff with drumbeat]