Smoky skies day after day in August and early September were the reminder in Central Alberta that elsewhere on the planet, the human species faced natural disasters.
A week of rain washed away the smog here and canola farmers welcomed the moisture as long as it dries out again for a mid-September harvest.
It will take many years for forest fires, earthquake and hurricane survivors in North and Central America and the Caribbean, many of who are holding funerals and waiting for electric power to be restored, to find the new normal for their lives.
Since we live in the global millennium, it gives perspective to remember that there have been 19 hurricanes - typhoons - in the Asian Pacific this year and more than 150 people have been killed in them.
Another perspective is that there is no reliable count of the hundreds of the Rohingya minority slaughtered in Myanmar's ethic cleansing. Like hurricane survivors, the Rohingya have lost everything material. Tens of thousands of refugees have crossed the Myanmar border into Bangladesh.
Before science discovered the "how" of earthquakes and hurricanes, the explanation for natural catastrophe was the finger of God or the gods.
Then came science and the exploration of the planets and the universe beyond.
Last week the 13-year Cassini satellite probe of Saturn, its rings and its moons, came to a fiery conclusion when the robotic explorer crashed into the plant.
This was the most recent milestone in space exploration, but not the only one in the new millennium.
Scientists have discovered that on the planets in our solar system there are hurricanes and earthquakes an order of magnitude greater than on earth.
In planetary terms, the natural calamities of 2017 on Earth are minor. The difference is that on Earth, human life is always affected.
As human population increases and spreads, no corner of the globe is unaffected by major weather and geological events.
When natural trouble happens, we now have the ability to capture and transmit images of natural events and their impact on humans and deliver them to laptops, iPods and other electronic communications devices in minutes.
The climates on all the planets in the solar system change, and climate change on earth is at the forefront as scientists parse the severity of this year's hurricanes and typhoons.
The human population - 2.5 billion when I was born and 7.5 billion in 2017 - has a carbon footprint that contributes to climate change.
But there is science that there are other contributors. Solar flares have been studied by astrophysicists in First World nations and they rank them as equal to, or more important than, human cause.
A majority in society have discarded God. But it is bad theology as well as incomplete science to replace God with humans as the sole cause of natural calamities.
Science and religion deal with two different realities - the physical and the spiritual.
In recent weeks we have seen that when the scientific explanations for the "hows" are finished, the spiritual search for the "whys," and for the solace that science cannot give, step in.
- Frank Dabbs is a veteran journalist, author of four books, editor of several more and is working on the history of Trimac Transportation and the McCaig family of Calgary.
