Slave Lake: Where I actually have been spending most of time

So although I moved to Peace River as the new Crown Prosecutor, I actually haven't been spending much time in Peace River. The Peace River Office is the regional Crown office for northern Alberta. Our office is in charge of criminal prosecutions for most of Northern Alberta, as we service most of the North aside from Fort McMurray. To give you a sense of the terrain we cover, here's a map of all the district points for Peace River. Peace River will be marked as an A on the map.


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A: Peace River
B: Falher
C: High Prairie
D: Slave Lake
E: Wabasca-Desmerais
F: Red Earth Creek
G: Fairview
H: High Level
I: Fort Vermillion
J: Assumption

And here's a map to show how much area we cover in Alberta. Also you can see that it's 5 hours north of Edmonton, and 8 hours north of Calgary by car.


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As you can see, that's a lot of driving. What we do is we break up the regions into three circuits: the North, the Central and the South. Each Crown goes on a three month rotation through the different circuits.

I have been assigned the South Circuit as my first circuit. The courts I go to are Slave Lake, which is a town of about 6000, and Wabasca-Desmerais, which is a hamlet located within a reserve. The map below illustrates my weekly commute. It takes about 2.5 h to drive from Peace River to Slave Lake, A to B, and then about 1.5 h to drive from Slave Lake to Wabasca-Desmerais, B to C.
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I usually leave on a Monday or Tuesday and get back on Wednesday or Thursday. Basically I spend 3-4 nights a week at the Holiday Inn Express at Slave Lake. Alberta Justice covers my mileage and hotels so gas meals and hotels are covered. Podcasts that I listen to for those long roadtrips, however come at my expense.

So this has been my life for the past 2.5 months, and my rotation ends at the end of March.