“They’re called purple knapweed,” Mother said. An avid gardener, she taught us each plant’s correct name.

“It’s beautiful. It’s making the ground all purple,” I said.

Moving quickly, we were hypnotized by its deep colour, blurred through the windows. I recalled my teacher last year, Mrs Henry, telling us knapweed was a noxious and non-native species that was invading the valley. It may have been unwanted, but it was vibrant and strong.

The van wound through the valley, and moments later, we looked up and saw Crowsnest Mountain, guarding the north side of the pass. We were leaving British Columbia. I marvelled at how uneventful it was to cross the provincial border into Alberta. All around us I still saw Ktunaxa territory.

I learned at school that we were in Ktunaxa territory when Mrs Henry was sick and we had a substitute teacher. With Mrs Teneese, we spent a lot of time outdoors, where she explained that we were on the traditional territory of the Tobacco Plains First Nation, part of the Ktunaxa Nation. We looked at a map and I was amazed to see how Ktunaxa territory spread through large parts of BC and Alberta, and even the United States. Mrs Teneese said that the provincial and international borders did not mean that Ktunaxa territory stopped as well. Mrs Teneese did a blanket dance and showed us the artwork on some of the blankets. She also taught us how to weave and bead. We spent a lot of our class time walking through the forest behind the school, talking about nature. Mrs Teneese was supposed to spend the week with us, but she didn’t come back on Thursday. Instead, Principal Waller stepped in until Mrs Henry returned. We didn’t even get to say goodbye.

Our van passed Blairmore, where a large, treelike post with a carving of a mother crow sat in a nest with her little one. Bea and I admired the plummeting cliffside views at the edge of the highway as we careened around the mountain.

Mother urged Father, “Ka kin. Hurry up! I hate this part of the highway. I can’t look. We’re too high, and the crows are too many.”

“What’s wrong with the crows, Mom?” Bea asked.

“The crow is an omen of death. In Hokkien, the word for crow—‘oh ah’—sounds just like the crow’s cry.” Mother demonstrated, “Oh ah, oh ah, oh ah.”

“Mom! That’s scary,” I said, as shivers ran up my spine. “Oh ah means ‘to bite’ in Hokkien. When you see a crow, it means something bad is about to happen.”

“Pfft, Swee Hua,” Father scoffed. “Stop with that! It’s all just stories! They don’t need to hear these things.”

“I am not joking, Ah Loy. My friend Che Eng, remember her? Her father lost a lot of money buying a tea plantation because he made the deal inside the mah-jong hall where a crow had been dwelling in the open rafters. Che Eng told me that her father was warned by the patrons that the hall had been cursed, but he brushed it off. As soon as Che Eng’s father signed the deed to the tea plantation, he heard the crow cry out. Fate left him with a money-losing business, and he was forced to abandon the plantation when the crops dried out and died from disease.”