It’s pretty much a futile exercise, yet every December we repeat it. Perched on the precipice of another New Year, we gamely speculate on what the coming year may hold. Rarely are we correct, and if so, then usually only by luck or a remarkable vagueness in our predictions.
Nevertheless, it remains our role to attempt these prognostications, no matter how inaccurate they turn out to be. So we’ve turned over the cards, read the tea leaves and analyzed the star charts in order to bring our readers the following forecast for Athabasca and area as we head into 2015:
We haven’t a clue.
Though that may seem like a cop-out, we don’t intend it that way. It’s just that when we look ahead to what awaits us in 2015, it seems so much more uncertain than the start of years past.
For starters, we enter the year with oil prices in the middle of a nosedive, which is the cause of much apprehension in a resource-driven region such as ours.
Politically, we’re headed towards a federal election later this year with all-new candidates in all-new ridings, so it’s really anyone’s guess how that will turn out. And provincially? After everything that transpired in 2014 – particularly in the last three weeks – the future is about as clear as mud.
More specific to the local scene, it seems that many of the things we’re anticipating for 2015 are the same things we were anticipating at the start of 2014. At this time last year, we were talking about a new secondary school in Athabasca, and we’re still talking about it now. We were talking about a new swimming pool and library; we’re still talking about it now. A new arts academy in the old Brick School, a new community/seniors centre in Boyle, a decision on the route Highway 63 will take; the list goes on and on.
That may seem like nothing got done in 2014, but that isn’t entirely the case. Many of these are massive projects that don’t conveniently fit into a calendar year. Work took place on all of them, and hopefully they’ll all move closer to completion in 2015.
So unfortunately, we don’t have much to offer you in the way of predictions other than the same vague standbys: new businesses will open, others will close; projects will proceed too slow for some, too fast for others; annual events will be planned, held and evaluated; there will be consensus and disagreement, debate and discussion, controversy and apathy.
And each of us, in our own way, will do our best to make 2015 the best it can be.
Happy New Year. Enjoy the ride.
