Today I left Edmonton, Alberta—my Canadian home base—to go to Vancouver, British Columbia, where I’ll spend the next three weeks. On the walk down to the Asian supermarket after I got in, I was trying to think whether there are two major U.S. cities that are as different as Edmonton and Vancouver. I eventually stumbled on Dallas and Seattle as a possibility, not realizing at first that those are, indeed, their two American analogs, respectively. (Actually, Edmonton’s official sister city in Texas is Austin, but I say it’s a toss-up whether Dallas or Austin are more similar to it.)

Anyhow, starting tomorrow at 7:00 AM PST I’ve got a breakneck three-week schedule of visiting a whole range of legal nonprofits here in what has been called, variously, Canada’s most liberal, vibrant, beautiful, vegetarian-friendly, diverse, communist, and expensive city.