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For most of us in Alberta, the end of 2018 can’t come quickly enough.

It feels like one long struggle, where no sooner than an iota of progress is made in one area than a whole mess of trouble is immediately dumped upon us from another.

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If not pipelines then it’s oil price differentials, if it isn’t ballooning provincial deficits then it’s the absurdity of equalization payments going to provinces with much lower jobless levels.

And this was supposed to be our bounce back year. Yet unemployment here in Calgary is mired around eight per cent and far too many downtown office buildings remain worryingly empty of actual working people.

Nope, most of us won’t be shedding any tears or bidding some fond farewell come midnight for the past 12 months we’ve collectively endured.

Yet some folk will be wide-eyed with hope and wonder as they look forward to 2019 and the promise of their first, full year as proud residents and newly minted Albertans, up here on the high northern plain in this remarkable Wild Rose Country.