As an Environmental Engineering student who made the move from Alberta to Prince George, I gotta tell ya, the differences hit you like a Flames fan at an Oilers game. The weather, the trails, the whole vibe – it’s a whole other world, eh?
Weather: A Real Gong Show
Back home in Calgary, we’d get those chinooks rollin’ in and the temperature would jump faster than gas prices after a long weekend. You’d be in a parka in the morning and a hoodie by afternoon! Here in Prince George? Forget about it. When winter shows up, it digs in like a stubborn Albertan refusing to admit the Stampede isn’t the greatest show on earth. The snow sticks around so long you’d think it signed a lease.
Summer’s another story altogether. Calgary gets hotter than the inside of a Tim’s coffee on a July afternoon – bone dry with those wild thunderstorms that roll in outta nowhere. Prince George keeps it more chill, which is deadly when I’m out doing fieldwork instead of melting like a Beaver Tail in the sun.
Places to Wander: No Mountain? No Problem
I grew up with the Rockies as my backyard – you can see ’em from pretty much anywhere in Cowtown. Weekends meant bombing out to Banff or K-Country for a hike. Out here, it’s all about the rivers. The Nechako and Fraser meet up right in town, which is pretty mint for studying different ecosystems.
The Ancient Forest near here would blow your mind – nothing like that back home unless you count the CrossIron Mills parking lot. Walking through those old cedars makes you feel smaller than a backbencher in Parliament.
The Engineering Side of Things
For my environmental engineering program, these differences aren’t just beauty, eh? In Calgary, everyone’s all worked up about water conservation and cleaning up after the patch. Here, it’s all about managing too much water and sustainable forestry.
The air quality’s different too. Prince George gets this gnarly inversion thing happening where all the mill emissions get trapped in the valley. Back home, those prairie winds are good for something besides wrecking your hair – they keep the air moving, don’t ya know.
All said and done, studying here gives me a wicked comparison to what I knew back home. Who knew moving from the land of beef and oil to this northern forestry town would teach me more about environmental engineering than any textbook? Not too shabby for a place where “going south” means heading to Quesnel!
