The Tiniest Albertan Town?
Terry and I decided to take advantage of our beautiful autumn weather and went for a drive north the other day.
It was also a good excuse to listen to the rest of our audiobook , “The Rose Code”, which we both can highly recommend to you as a great read.
While driving under the most billowy clouds feathering across cerulean skies , I looked over and saw a sign that said, “Perryvale”. And since we had been driving for awhile and needed a bit of a leg stretch, I took the turn and headed down a dirt road. We both joked that you know a town is small when the road leading to it is made of dirt.
And indeed, this was the smallest town we’ve yet to come across. I just had to take a photo of Terry standing next to a sign that said ‘50th street and 50th ave.’ because if there were more than two streets we couldn’t see them… ha ha.
The outside of the Perryvale Country Store was just charming. We didn’t think people had used the phone booth in awhile…judging by the weeds overtaking it!
The inside of the store was mostly bare shelves and liquor but I did find a shelf that had used books, homemade candles and doilies. You get the idea : SMALL!
We saw the sign for a “Centre” without the Centre and the walls of a rink that had seen better days. Same for the swings and picnic table. The church was pretty but appeared to be closed and I was excited about the outhouse …until we discovered it was locked. Dang!
There were some houses back down the road somewhere. I looked up the stats :
As a designated place in the 2016 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Perryvale recorded a population of 20 living in 6 of its 6 total private dwellings, a change of 100% from its 2011 population of 10.
The population might have doubled by now!
Our journey continued north…. and will be continued tomorrow……!