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By Danica Klewchuk

This is an audio piece about the Alberta Legislature and the way it brings people in the city together through the seasons. In the summer it provides a pool of water for families to cool off in. In the fall, as the leaves change color it is a beautiful place for walking and in the winter the trees are dotted with lights and ice sculptures are built. The Legislature is one of the many landmarks we have to be proud of here in the city of Edmonton.

It’s fall now, the leaves stripping themselves off the trees in sheets of pale green and gold. The night has begun coming earlier; and in the growing darkness of the early evening, the outdoor lights of the Legislature cast a soft pink glow on the lower half of the building—its structure normally a dull grey against the gathering clouds in the Alberta sky—instead, tonight it glows against the muted shades of dusk. The color of the building reminds you of something your grandfather used to say when he looked up at an evening sky and noted reds and pinks painting themselves on the undersides of cumulus clouds: “red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors delight.”

The fact that there are no large bodies of water around doesn’t change the feeling of a coming calm that you feel deep inside your bones. Tomorrow the city will be clear as the sails of a toy boat through the glass of the bottle that holds it. But that’s tomorrow, and tonight you revel in the beauty that is before you.

A camera hangs heavy around your neck and the sharp bite of winter sits in the back of your throat. Soon the snow will fall and ice sculptures will be built atop the frozen pools that sit beside the summer fountain. A thousand icicle lights will dot trees filling the darkness like so many fireflies as the couples walk through hand in hand, the cold drawing the shape of their breath in the air; their children trailing behind, their little mouths agape and their eyes searching for the wild rabbits that they watched play through spring and summer, as mittens slide off their swinging hands and land softly in the piled snow.

After that spring will come, and then its lazy cousin summer following slowly like a deer fresh from its slumber, as the festivals start and the temperature rises to bring the city here to the Legislature Grounds, to the fountains that offer a cold burst of water trickling down the backs of infants and the sun-hot legs of their parents. The taste of the Edmonton summer sun spilling out between clouds that yawn apart.

But right now, in this moment, in this city called Edmonton, it is fall; too cold for sleeveless tops, too warm for your thick down jacket that hangs waiting in your closet. You’ve pushed the leaves on the ground into a pile and fallen, dropped face first with an audible crunch as the night settles in around you. You lay kicking your feet as the leaves make their way into your shoes and down the neck of your jacket. The Legislature sits behind you; large and stoic like a father watching his child. But this building watches the city, and under its gaze you feel safe, just waiting for the seasons to change, and you think: yes, yes I’m home.