Eleanor, 71.

She wakes at six because she has woken at six every day since 1971. The furnace is on. The cat wants out. The kettle goes on the burner before she has fully opened her eyes.

Her bank sent an overnight text. Her chequing account is fine. Her US-listed exchange-traded fund — about forty percent of her RRSP — is in limbo because the exchange rate against the new Alberta dollar hasn't been set. Her broker's web page just says "pricing unavailable."

Old Age Security is a federal program. She qualified at sixty-five and the money has shown up on the twenty-seventh of every month for six years. Whether it shows up next month, to a woman who is now technically a non-resident of Canada, is the question she would most like answered.

She calls Michael, her son in Vancouver. The call connects, but her phone shows a small icon she has never seen before: a globe, indicating it's now an international call. She does not ask him about the long-distance rate. She asks about her granddaughter's swimming lessons.

Coffee at the kitchen table. She had planned a trip to Vancouver in July, by train, for her granddaughter's birthday. She gets out a pad of paper and a sharp pencil and starts a column for the train, a column for the hotel, a column for meals. She stops at the meals column because she doesn't know what the dollar will be worth in July.

The morning paper is on the porch. The headline is enormous. She reads the first paragraph and then puts the paper down because the cat is back at the door and the cat does not care about referendums.

At ten she walks to the Royal Bank on Gaetz Avenue. There is a line. The teller, who knows her, says quietly: "We don't have guidance yet, Mrs. Donnelly. I'm sorry." Eleanor says, "That's all right, dear," and means it, because there is nothing else to say.

In the afternoon she calls her sister in Saskatoon. They have known each other for seventy-one years. They talk about a recipe. Neither of them mentions the news. This is, Eleanor thinks afterward, the most honest conversation she has had all day.