I think I need to get better at talking to strangers. As a social science researcher, it would seem an appropriate skill. It just makes me feel guilty. People have suggested that I go talk to people in the mall, just walk up to them and tell them what I'm doing. This is probably a great idea, but know that when I'm shopping, what I'd really like to do is find what I need and get out, not hang out and talk to a stranger about something that I may not care about at all.

I thought that Canada Day celebrations would be a good place to maybe test out my stranger-approaching skills. I thought maybe I'd head down to the fireworks and try to chat with people while they waited--after all, they're not exactly busy. There was one significant problem, though: Fort McMurray has Canada Day fireworks on the night before Canada Day. I suppose this makes sense in that people can sleep in on July 1st, while they likely can't on July 2nd, but to those of us who celebrate holidays on the actual date of the holiday, it's very frustrating. I love fireworks. Well, they scare me a little bit, but they're pretty fun. Especially when there hasn't really been anything fun happening.

I did manage to catch the local parade. I was a little surprised that there weren't more ostentatious floats from the big companies. If I made a billion dollars in profit last year, I'd sure want to make myself a big fancy parade float. But that doesn't seem to be the focus here. The parade appeared mostly to be a marching advertisement for local businesses. A few people handed out little Canada flags, but the crowd appeared more excited about Wednesday's All-You-Can-Eat-Ribs. Overall, the parade was fairly pathetic for a community with so much money, but the kids seemed to enjoy it--they did get free candy.

Organizations I've been approaching lately are not really interested in participating in research. Their answers tend either to the "I know too much about this, I would be biased and your research would basically suck," or "I don't know anything, I wouldn't be able to help you." I try to explain that I'm looking for a variety of perspectives on health and environment, experts, non-experts, anywhere in between, but it doesn't work. I think this may just be a convenient way of blowing me off but sounding nice about it. I suppose I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm starting to feel a bit desperate about actually getting enough interviews conducted. I am supposed to be doing research here, after all.

Once again, this week I am resolving that next week's efforts will be more aggressive. My time here is starting to run out, and there are quite a few people I would still like to talk to. Maybe it will help if I loosen the purse strings on the funding money that I got; I have some money to pay people for interviews, so I guess I might as well use it.

Those interviews that are getting done are going well. I'm starting to see that no two people think the same way about environment and health here. My results may not make for an easy paper, but I think it will be interesting. There are so many factors that inform the way that people think about their bodies and their surroundings, and so far, very little of that influence comes from the opinions of experts. So far, it seems that residents are concerned about things that they feel they experience, or that their friends and family experience, rather than what environmentalists or politicians or industry PR guys tell them is happening. This seems to be consistent with the library research that I did before leaving for Fort McMurray--which is a relief. It's nice to feel like I may have some small idea of what it is that's going on here.