Wait, a Calgarian Praising Edmonton - Say, What?
I remember listening to a CBC radio interview years ago with none other than Stompin’ Tom Connors. He was grumbling (rightfully so) that Canadian cities were all starting to look the same. Back in his early touring days, he could wake up in any town, peek out the window of his tour bus, and know exactly where he was. The main street, the local joints, the faces—each place had its own unmistakable stamp.
But today? Welcome to the Algorithmic City. Cafés all run the same Scandinavian-minimalist playbook. Main streets? Thanks to the big-box hydra—Dollarama, Starbucks, Edo Japan, Shoppers Drugmart—they’ve become indistinguishable. Glass office towers reflect one another into oblivion. Strip away the skyline, and if it weren’t for the odd weather cue, how could you tell one city from another?
Here’s the thing: what makes a city special isn’t the steel and glass, the roads or even the skyline. It’s the people. It’s the ideas. It’s the arena districts (kidding, but not kidding).
A city is its people. Scratch through the ice, stomp the snow from your boots, and you’ll see it. You’ll feel it. There’s a warm indie spirit here that’s uniquely Edmontonian—part scrappy, part communal, all in.
As a Calgarian, I know my city’s pioneering mythos is real. Got a big steak of an idea? Yahoo, let’s rustle up the right people and get ‘er done! Calgary’s got fertile ground for getting stuff built, dreamed up, and shipped out. It’s an opportunity town, through and through.
But when I look at Edmonton, I see something similar, but different. The creative force here moves collectively. It starts as a whisper, turns into a murmur, then a groundswell, then a roar. Ideas don’t just launch, they gather momentum. And there’s a generosity in how people show up for one another, sleeves rolled up, ready to make something happen. Edmonton’s got something in the water, and I like it.
Here’s the thing, though: we need more bridges between us. Calgary and Edmonton aren’t rivals; they’re two sides of the same coin, two energies that, when intertwined, could spark something even greater.
We need more co-mingling of our people, our ideas, our creative forces. Let’s blur the lines, trade notes, and see what happens when we connect our pioneering spirit with Edmonton’s rolling-up-the-sleeves magic.
Hello friends. Consider me one of those bridges.
So roll down the QE2. Come visit. Let’s build something big, something wild, something unmistakably ours.
