 | this labour day, i came back to edmonton to visit with my mother to celebrate her birthday. my sincere feeling is that there are only so many of these occasions left to celebrate and i would hate to feel that i had squandered these moments for fear of spending a few hundred bucks. my visit with my mom and dad was everything that i had expected and hoped that it would be. it was full of emotion, drama,happiness, sadness, difficulty, and joy. i'm incredibly glad that i had this chance to tell my parents that i loved them and cared for them and want to look after them and make their retirement years easier and happier for them, but there was a downside to my trip that i had not expected. i arrived late on sunday night into edmonton and took the $15 sky shuttle into the downtown core. gateway boulevard, the main path into the core of the city was 75% blocked off between 56th and 87th avenue - like a tourniquet strangling off the main arterial flow of traffic - it appeared that my home city was sick, poisoned, or maimed, and that was not a good sign. i arrived downtown, expecting that the economic boom that was occurring here would have made the downtown core where i once lived and worked strong and vital and full of the kind of life that i had grown to expect in toronto, even in my sleepy neighbourhood of bloor west village. but i was terribly terribly wrong. it was the last weekend day of a long weekend - monday was off for labour day. there was no reason to go to sleep early - no reason to close down at midnight. i was expecting that i could go to a restaurant, to a bar, to some establishment catering to professionals visiting the city. i was gravely disappointed. i was greeted by empty streets, carousing teenagers, and a downtown core devoid of culture, civilization, community, and even commerce. it was miserable. i checked into a hotel around midnight and headed out to get a drink or a bite to eat - in that specific order. i was amazed at the number of bars and restaurants that i had known and loved in my not so younger days had vanished completely, only to be replaced by signs indicating vacancy and emptiness. two or three predictable spots in the downtown core remained open and were overrun by drunken, loud, lascivious teens struggling to find validation in one another's wretchedness and drunken degradation. it appalled me to think that i was once so young - but terrified me to think that young people today could be so wanton and senseless. i walked further west along jasper avenue, the main downtown thoroughfare, to the place where residences were more costly and the residents more metropolitan, hoping to find a more sensible form of nightlife, like the kind that i would find in my high park, or in downtown manhattan, but again, i was frustrated. empty streets, empty shops, emptiness all around were all that i could find. the part of me that holds a loving memory of my early adulthood shouted and wept at the desolation that i found. no traffic. no people. no energy. no life whatsoever. just stretches of concrete and $200,000 condos were all that i saw. and i saw it all stone cold sober. this region of canada is the most developing and growing centres of canada's economy. as the need for oil and alternate sources of oil increases around the world, the money and bodies pouring into this area give rise to unprecedented opportunities for prosperity and economic opportunity. but the consequence seems to be an urbanity that is completely devoid of value and values - devoid of vitality and virtue. it was utterly terrifying to think that at one time, i could walk along these streets and encounter dozens of characters with some purpose and some intent walking along these same streets - and now, it seems worse than a ghost town. i love my home town. i love the city that taught me the lessons that i've learned about life and how to live it. but i hate what it has become and i (almost) never want to come here again. i love my parents and i do not want them to have to live in a city so devoid of interest that they would allow it to rot from the inside out. and most of all, i hate the kind of world that would allow an entire city to have its heart cut out with so little fight. or maybe i should just know better than to come to edmonton on the last long weekend of the summer. i tend to take things too seriously from time to time. but in case this is not one of those times, i would suggest that if you are planning a trip to edmonton in the future, that you consider going somewhere else. anywhere else. - g song of the day for watching the world you once knew end: panic, the smiths.
video game of the day for experiencing things change in a peculiarly bad way: a mind forever voyaging |