As a lot of you might already know, I’m Southern Alberta born and raised. I grew up in a little town an hour south of Calgary. We had to drive an hour, both ways, to go see a movie, and if you wanted to buy a new pair of jeans it involved a well-planned trip into the city on a Saturday morning. The only time to get to Costco or Ikea were, heaven forbid, the middle of the day on a weekend. I moved to Calgary to go to university and ended up calling it home for about eight years before I made the move to Edmonton just under a year and a half ago.
If you know Alberta, you know there is a hotly contested battle between the province’s capital and its largest city. I’ll admit as a former Calgarian and Southern Alberta kid there was little worse than the idea of Edmonton. Edmonchuck. Edmondump. Deadmonton. Before I moved to Edmonton, I had been here a total of 3 times. Once in elementary school to visit the legislature building and twice as a 20 something year old to visit my brother who also calls this city home. This, of course, is not enough to judge a city’s character, but boy, did we ever.
She Rambles 