Do you remember me mocking Alberta for its oldest still standing building about a year ago? Well, now I've finally seen it, at least from outside. The statue in the front of it (the white house) is Father Lacombe, founder of the chapel (the white wooden "house" in the background) and of St Albert.
St Albert is an about 30,000 people town just outside of the Edmonton city limits and the place where Anya's family (since spring including herself) lives. And they invited me for dinner (which of course was very nice). I may never have posted a picture, so this is Anya (the picture is from last fall).
After the dinner we went to that little hillock where Father Lacombe's chapel is situated - next to the Catholic Church (one of the largest I've seen here) and the cemetery and two old folks homes and whatever more. I should have taken a picture of the whole "complex".

Anyway, at the back of the church there was this outside altar imitating a grotto - very Catholic isn't it?


And there was also this little memorial which I just had to take a picture of. Very Catholic too, or rather very North American Catholic I would say. Has anyone of you ever seen a depiction like this? I haven't; at least not that I'd remember and I'm pretty sure I would have remembered.
Of course the Church's position is the same in the old and the new world, and I remember a couple of sermons against abortion in church. However as much as Austrian Catholics may personally reject abortion, there also seems to be a general agreement that it's a personal choice. Or at least I had the opinion that that's the general attitude in our country, isn't it? I haven't really talked to people here but from what I've experienced in the media and on the internet abortion is really one of the most explosive topics (as far as the combination of religious feelings and political opinion is concerned). I assume even more so in the US than in Canada, but in Canada still more than in Europe...