Eckville – And Why The Heck Does My Mouth Work Faster Than My Brain?
Mutterings And Murmurs . Social Studies
From the highly suspect Wikipedia – Fact check please.
Eckville is a town in central Alberta, Canada. It is west of Red Deer on Highway 766 just north of Highway 11.
History
Eckville gets its name from A. E. T. Eckford, a pioneer citizen. Eckville relocated to its current location in 1912, after the Canadian Northern Railway completed its local line. The current location on the Canadian Northern Railway was briefly known as Kootuk, but the name Eckville prevailed. Eckville was incorporated as a village in 1921 and became a town in 1966.
Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the Town of Eckville had a population of 1,014 living in 425 of its 472 total private dwellings, a change of -9.9% from its 2016 population of 1,125. With a land area of 1.61 km2 (0.62 sq mi), it had a population density of 629.8/km2 (1,631.2/sq mi) in 2021.
In the 2016 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the Town of Eckville recorded a population of 1,125 living in 443 of its 465 total private dwellings, which represents no change from its 2011 population of 1,125. With a land area of 1.6 km2 (0.62 sq mi), it had a population density of 703.1/km2 (1,821.1/sq mi) in 2016.
Culture
Eckville is home to several festivals and events throughout the year:
- Eckville Indoor Rodeo
- Bull-arena
- Eckville 50s & 60s Dance Jamboree
- Canada Day celebrations
- Eckville Winter Carnival
- Tree-lighting Ceremony
Education
Eckville has two public schools, Eckville Junior/Senior High School and Eckville Elementary. The town is relatively close to Sylvan Lake and many students from Eckville attend schools there. Eckville is also a short drive from Red Deer College.
Eckville Junior/Senior High School attracted national attention in 1984 when history teacher and vice-principal James Keegstra was charged under the Criminal Code of Canada for teaching his students antisemitic material, including Holocaust denial. Keegstra was stripped of his teaching credentials and convicted. His appeals eventually reached the Supreme Court of Canada in 1990, where his conviction was upheld in R v Keegstra. Keegstra was mayor of Eckville at the time, but was defeated in a subsequent election.https://www.lacombetourism.com/communities/town-of-eckville/
There was also an Olympic bobsledder that came from Eckville.
Who knew?
It used to be that I was able to share my experience, strength, and optimism not hope, as well as a variety of minutia and relevant or irrelevant garbage on most things. I enjoyed playing trivia games, reading books and journals, watching films, listening to music, going to concerts, doing crossword and word search puzzles and travelling to obscure and bucket list destinations. I took an interest in most things and gladly discussed my findings with like and not so like minds. I did not have the added disadvantage or advantage of being heavily indoctrinated with any social engineering garbage that has plagued institutes of higher learning lately. I did not worship Che Guevara or need a safe space when I read or heard things that upset me. I made up my own mind. For better or worse, I made my own mind. I filled my brain with stuff. Some of it leaked out into public discourse but a lot of it was expelled due to lack of use or replaced or refreshed with new interests.
It is becoming more apparent that I am starting to lose my ability to recall and withdraw data from my fleshy but withering memory banks. I sometimes forget my PIN number to access my accounts. Three wrong entries and I’ll have to see my branch.
Horns honk.
Other people in line grumble.
The most recent example of momentary brain fart lapse (MBFL), that I can remember, occurred during a motorcycle trip with friends through central Alberta somewhere. I remember that it was a sunny and mild day. Or was was it windy and cloudy? We eventually arrived at a now famous hamlet to eat food, lunch I think, at a diner there. I remember a train and a whistle and a big truck with a crane that was the main stage at the greatest, most unifying, people and nation building event in Canadian history. This peaceful, legal event was de-ligitimized and criminalized by an illegitimate government. It was brutally crushed by government and non-government forces foreign and domestic.
I doubt that I will forget any of this…probably.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people won’t.
This isn’t over.
I brought the cafe some truth telling newspapers.
I think it’s called Druthers.
Somewhere along the way to some other place I can’t remember, that had a beach, I noticed a sign for a town with a name that has triggered cognitive malfeasance or MBFL on numerous occasions. I couldn’t wait until we got to wherever we were going to tell my fellow riders about the town I couldn’t remember the name of. As soon as we found a place to drink something, we started to talk about parts of the grand day out that were fleetingly remembered or entirely new to me. I started in with, “Did you see that sign for….um…that place…forget it…I worked with a guy from there…his name was…ahh…anyway…he wore glasses…and he used to spy on the girls that lived in the Galway House…especially…what’s her name…okay I give up.”
Did you see that cow?
This is happening a lot lately. My dad died of stubborn, post war European, old age magnified and enhanced by Alzheimer’s and dementia and that last fall he took while in the care of ‘helth’ care professionals. When he was more or less clear of mind, he used to joke that when he died, we should just throw him over the fence. He managed to rally the day before he died, as I was about to leave his silent bedside. He rolled over from facing the wall. He called me by name. He waved me over.
“Yes Dad?”
“Hug”
We hugged for the first time ever.
He said, “I love you”.
For the first time ever.
“I love you too dad”
This was a first too.
The next day at 10:13 am I received the call that he had passed in the night.
Passed.
So it goes.
My mom is dying but not from old age.
She has fallen too often and broken her frail bones too many times.
She was losing her mind slowly before but is now losing it quickly.
“My brains”, she says.
It didn’t help that dead people enabled some ‘self harm’ behaviours.
Even now, she has not lost her sweet essence and nature yet and can still engage in conversation at times.
She likes it when we speak German. She speaks German to the kind Filipino nurses.
This is funny.
It’s not so funny when shrill, stressed, white nurse Karens bristle at a foreign language.
Mom remembers my name when, behind closed doors and away from prying Nurse Karen eyes, I drop some of the theatrical PPE to reveal myself to her and she cries when I leave her room.
She has pretty much forgotten the horrors and hardship of her childhood during the second world war and the horrors and hardship of the peace that followed. She has forgotten the mistreatment and ignorance she suffered at the hands of people that were supposed to be kind and thoughtful husbands, sons, and friends
She is forgetting how to be in physical pain and mental suffering but in moments of clarity, tells me that she wants to die.
She is also unaware of the indignities that public health care, Alberta Health Care in particular, has offered to her still living body under the auspices of keeping her and every single one of the most vulnerable safe during the great COVID cull of the elderly.
She has been injected twice.
She did not give informed consent.
Small mercies.
From now on, whenever I start talking excitedly about something that I think is exciting and forget the names of things that I’m excited about, I will say ‘Eckville” and move on to something else. Of course I’ll have to warn anybody I may be with about my ‘condition’. Otherwise they might think I’m demented or something.
Tourettes.
MBFL
Just today I remembered things that I had to ‘Eckville’.
I had to get back to my friend with the ‘Eckvilles’ of an evening out.
They were :
Hanna, Alberta.
Stone Temple Pilots.
Scott Weiland
The Brian Jonestown Massacre
and
William Utermohlen.
We were talking about how popular music is shit now and how the COVID agenda tried so hard to kill something that had so much meaning to so many.
Also from later, when I was alone, to myself :
Gerald
and
Susan
and Jeff Berwick.
Sometimes I’ll get out of bed and brush my teeth only to find that it’s 3 am.
I have a pee.
I go back to bed.
Sometimes I’ll gear up and get on the bike and look around for the seat belt.
There are some strange stains on my motel room curtains tonight.
Where was I?
Where am I?
Eckville.