Tamara Gignac

Olds — population 8,500 — is a typical Prairie community with deep agricultural roots. Only last weekend, it hosted the World Plowing Championships. But the rural Alberta town has an unexpected claim to fame: Residents here enjoy the fastest Internet service in the country — if not North America — with speeds unrivalled in most major cities. Homes and businesses in Olds can access a full gigabit (or 1,000 megabits) per-second of bandwidth for as little as $57 a month.

An already hot rental market in Calgary is about to be squeezed even tighter as college and university students compete with displaced flood victims for scarce accommodations. The city’s vacancy rate hovers at about one per cent and is the lowest in the country, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. Some suggest the rental crunch is getting worse.

This Mother’s Day, as I eagerly await the annual bounty of crafts made with love by stubby, glue-stained fingers, I find myself wondering, What about the children who don’t have a mother? My children—aged seven and four—remain blissfully unaware that Mommy’s cancer means that, going forward, Mother’s Day will become a day of quiet grief. Soon they will join the club of those without mothers. Last June, doctors handed me a grim diagnosis: stage four metastatic colon cancer.