EDMONTON - CITY OF THE DAMNED?

This weekend, Agents, I was on a Field Assignment to the city of Edmonton, some 265 kilometres north of my current position, to attend a family wedding.

I have, over the years, sojourned to the City of Edmonton many times. And each time, I find something fundamentally disturbing about the place that I just can't shake.

Before I go into this, I need to make a disclaimer: Although I live in Calgary, I was not born here; I may be Calgarian but I don't buy into this Calgary/Edmonton rivalry and really couldn't care less about it.

Secondly, if you're from Edmonton or love Edmonton, I don't care. This isn't about you. It's about the city. Cope.

Long ago, the indigenous tribes of what would become Central Alberta gathered for a great battle, which was fought on the site of what would eventually be the capital of that province. Secret deals in the dead of night were followed by betrayal, and blood-slaughter on both sides of the conflict. The white man and the red man fought each other, with the white man emerging victorious through lies and trickery as well as superior firepower.

But the Shamans of the tribes gathered together in their despair for one last curse, that nothing should ever be good again in this cursed place. Years passed, and the curse was forgotten as, on the very site of that last battle, a great city was built..."

--"A Made-Up History of Alberta"
Agent M

...at least, I'm pretty sure that's how it went. It MUST have. Edmonton feels like a city that has been cursed by some ancient someone or other; every time I enter its boundaries I immediately feel like something has just gone wrong.

Firstly, the city has decrepitude everywhere. While I've never seen what you'd call "ramshackle" or "tumble-down" buildings, I did observe that no matter where you went, there would be a cloying sense of tawdriness to everything. As if it had seen better days, but could still put on a good face-- in the same manner as a prostitute who was long since past her prime.

Yuppie coffee shops next to Adult Source Video and King's Liquor, just two doors down from the Mac's store where the kids hang out.

(It is interesting to note that, while there are Second Cups almost every block, not once did I see a Starbuck's anywhere in Edmonton. And when a franchise the size of that particular Coffee Giant is notable by its absence, it really should give one pause, don't you think?)

People of various descriptions in various neighbourhoods, all uniformly downtrodden with a hint of decay about them. Dirty people. Loose, shuffling people. Not just in some "Oh, we don't go there, that's a BAD neighbourhood" places, but EVERYWHERE I went.

Maybe someone hired actors to give me a surreal sensory experience; maybe it's some anti-Calgarian plan the Edmonton Tourist Bureau has put into action; I don't know.

Even the Tim Horton's-- TIM HORTON'S, Agents, the lifeblood of CANADA here-- donuts appeared and tasted like they were shat from a soulless technocracy and placed in ordered rows for our consumption-- not that we would consume them by choice, but because it was perfunctory tradition that we should, so who the hell cared what they looked or tasted like?

I cannot believe that this is the same city that was home to the Edmonton Oilers during the Gretzky Era, when he was (arguably) the Greatest Canadian Hero; that this bleached, crumbling craptasmic vista of a city is the headquarters of BioWare, the (again arguably) most popular current PC and console game making company in the world; that this faded-glory interruption on an otherwise tranquil prairie gave birth to the West Edmonton Mall, the largest mall in the WORLD and, in the consumer-driven 1980's, the shining pinnacle of Canadian Tourist meccas.

HOW can the city I see every time I venture there be that same city? I see nothing to recommend Edmonton; it seems dour, internally taciturn, turning its face away from the sun as if it didn't want light shed on its troubles.

And yet, somehow, it survives. It remains Alberta's capital, though I think that title should have been wrested from it long ago. It has suffered tornados and other natural disasters, yet it recovered and still stands.

But when I visit there, I wonder if it really did. It seems like a ghost town to me, or a place that pays a terrible price for its existence and if you stay too long you will discover its horrible secret-- and then be unable to leave. You will darken to the sun-stained color of the Edmontonians in the summer, blanch to an almost blue-white in the bitter cold of its winters, and nevermore will you dream of the sunlit lands, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis.

Edmonton is a sad town to me. A sad town that no longer has the energy to lament itself-- it just plods through time, waiting for an inevitable end, and this somehow ironically gives it the strength to keep surviving, year after year. Should someone shoot it and put it out of its misery? It seems too cruel, an unnecessary euthanasia for a city whose only issue seems to be that it just never quite realized its potential.

Except, obviously it did. Its sports record and industry, being the provincial seat-- it has a lot to recommend it. So why does it still FEEL so out of phase? So subtly wrong?

Anyone know?

Posted by Agent M at September 08, 2003 11:16 AM