transit tales from Edmonton

Edmonton, being flat as usual

When I picked up my luggage at the Edmonton Airport, I was startled to notice that my luggage was vibrating. WHY WAS IT VIBRATING. Suddenly I became afraid that a security incident might follow, and I could only see two possible explanations:

1. Someone had planted a bomb in my luggage. Do bombs vibrate?
2. It wasn't a bomb, but something else that vibrates. And then I would have to have an awkward conversation with airport security officers ("I..don't remember packing this. Why would I pack this for Portland?? Also, isn't the more important question how did it turn itself on? ARE MACHINES GAINING SENTIENCE?")

Not wanting either scenario, I immediately dug through my suitcase (with admirable courage, I should add, given Possibility #1) and found the source of the mechanical buzzing.

It was Rob's beard trimmer.

It had been a dramatic trip so far.  When we landed in Yellowknife after leaving Cambridge Bay, we got off the plane just as the boarding call for our connecting flight to Edmonton had been made. But we had to go through security. From the other side of the security gate, we watched as passengers lined up for our flight...and as the line grew smaller.  By the end we got through security - an exercise that seemed purely ceremonial, because I accidentally had my fishing knife on me and nobody seemed to care -  the last of the passengers had gone through the gate. We had just barely made our connecting flight, literally at the last second.

Our next connecting flight would turn out to be just as dramatic. We left Edmonton late and landed in Vancouver with just fifteen left to somehow go through security again, US customs and border security, and then sprint across the entire freaking Vancouver airport to a tiny little gate in Narnia to board our connecting flight to Portland. We literally ran. Amazing Race-style. Carrying all of our carry-ons. I felt so out of shape.

We arrived at border security, panting and sweating like any respectable person you'd like to see at your national border.  The security official told us we had to wait until our luggage was transferred. In the meantime, while we caught our breath, the security official chatted us up about a suspicious Muslim man she had seen in her neighbourhood the other day.  It was an odd moment, especially since she was Muslim herself. I wasn't sure what to say. Was this a test? In the end I just smiled and nodded, and eventually we got to go through. We made our plane, but barely. And definitely panting and sweaty.

But while we were in Edmonton, staying overnight for our layover, it was good to have a chance to relax.  I had stepped off the plane in Edmonton, I felt hot and confused. I had grown accustumed to the -45 degree winter of little Cambridge Bay. All of a sudden I was in the city, hot and confused. There were loud sounds outside our hotel room - were those gunshots or fireworks? (It turned out to be fireworks.) But eventually I let myself unwind.

hotel hot tub

okay fine, I'll enjoy some tuna tacos

Ric's Grill

It was nice to have a chance to explore Edmonton a bit as well. We took a cab to Whyte Avenue, which everyone assured us was the cool neighbourhood. We had forgotten about city concepts like traffic jams and commutes, so it took us a while to get there, but we enjoyed the sights along the way. The endless flat prairies. The signs for the snow hill and the Edmonton gun club. The billboards for Peelerz ("WE SUPPORT BIG OIL"). The endless flat prairies. Yes, Edmonton's pretty flat.

Whyte Avenue

DaDeO's

Dadeo's Po'Boy

checking out my favourite hiptser hotspot (yes, Edmonton has those) - the Sugar Bowl

trying out some Alberta beer

A survey of Canadian cities in seven days: Edmonton

Wrapping up my stories of each Canadian city I visited during my seven day sprint across the country:

Wait, why am I in Edmonton?

Was I supposed to be in Edmonton?

Why is there even a flight between Edmonton and Calgary? The flight attendant sprints down the aisle, sliding cups of juice at us in the few minutes we're level in the air before we make the descent again.  There isn't even enough time to make a cup of coffee. This is one of the most irritating layovers for me, except maybe the Ottawa to Montreal flight. That's even shorter.

my own Amazing Race in Calgary

My idea was to spend my eight hour layover exploring Calgary, a city that I've never visited before.  The original plan was to leave the airport, do a bit of shopping on 17th Avenue, meet up with my buddy J, a Calgary resident, and then grab some dinner at a nearby restaurant where I can try some of that famous Alberta beef.  It wouldn't be the most thorough opportunity to go sightseeing, but I figured it would give me a good little sample.

But all Canadians know that all of your plans must contain an asterisk with the fine print "weather permitting". The weather was not permitting that day. My flight from Ottawa to Calgary was delayed by three hours, which was annoying because I had shown up at the airport at 6:30AM only to found out that I could have slept in.  Luckily, I have travelled in the winter enough times to be totally okay with sleeping under my jacket on the airport floor like a vagrant.

Ottawa fog

By the time I arrived in Calgary, it was a few hours past the time I had thought I would be arriving in Calgary.  Also, apparently Calgary was dealing with a full-blown blizzard.  I had heard about the snowfall earlier, but had paid no attention to it because, you know, I live in Nunavut and it's been snowing since August.

However, Calgary is not the Arctic and also, it's a much bigger city, so trying to get from one end of town to the other was a much more difficult feat.  So we altered our plans and I met up with my friend J for to grab a coffee at a suburban mall, not too far away.

I love traveling and exploring new cities, but I feel as though all of the suburbs in major Canadian cities look more or less the same.  They all have the identical-looking plazas with the same box stores.  In any major Canadian city, you can grab a coffee at the Tim Hortons or Starbucks, a burger at McDonalds, your various household supplies from the Wal-Mart. Maybe your grocery store is a Loblaws or a Safeway, different in name, but once you go inside, it's the same products available. Maybe you've got a St Hubert's, a Harvey's, or a White Spot.  The differences generally are not substantial. To really enjoy the unique features of a Canadian city, you have to get out of the suburbs, either to the downtown core or to the surrounding nature areas.

Unfortunately, I was having difficulty getting out of the suburbs, and back to the airport.  There were no free cabs passing by. I repeatedly tried to call all the cab companies, but their phone lines were busy the entire time.  I later found out that it was because the taxis themselves were insanely busy - there were calls for 200 cabs at the airport alone, for example.

So I wasn't going to be able to cab back to the airport. The time was ticking. The race was on. I was going to have to figure out Calgary's public transit system.  The worker at the mall's Guest Services gave me instructions on how to take public transit to the airport.  As it turned out, almost everything she told me was incorrect, but she did tell me to take the train.  Calgary has a train? I just learned this.

Yes, not only does Calgary have a train, but it also has a transit fare payment system that actually works, unlike some other major Canadian cities (cough cough, Ottawa, cough cough, presto). Calgary also has really cute place/street names that scream Calgary all over, like Deerfoot and Whitehorne. Time to take the train to Saddletowne.  Yes, I said Saddletowne. That was a real actual stop.

I got on the train, got off the stop where I was instructed, and looked for the next bus that I was supposed to take. The people at the nearby bus stop assured me that the bus would take me to the airport. The bus arrived.

"Does this bus go to the airport?" I asked, stepping on. 

"Yes," the bus driver replied, closing the door.  Thinking back, I have no idea why she said yes and let me get on the bus, because after this, she added, "This bus goes to McCallum, which is not the airport."

I was taken aback. "Is that near the airport?"

"No, this route doesn't go near the airport at all."

"Oh," I said, feeling completely confused. "I was told this bus goes to the airport."

"Yes," she said again, "I have no idea why this is called the Airport Route, because it doesn't actually go to the airport."

I got off the bus.

I was starting to feel as though Calgary was full of extraordinarily friendly people who were screwing with me.

The bus driver told me that in order to get to the airport, I had to get back on the train and go farther.  I don't know why I chose to believe the bus driver at this point, but why not? I got on the train.  I got off the train.  We were in the middle of nowhere.

I found the bus stop. The bus stop actually had a little airplane symbol on it, which could have meant that the bus would go to the airport.  Then again, maybe Calgary was messing with me, and that bus actually went to the aviation museum, or the Church of Scientology.

At that point, I saw a taxi driving by.  I abandoned my plan to conquer the public transit system and began to run after the cab, my arms flailing.

That's when this dude swooped in out of nowhere and stole my cab.  He let himself in and shut the door.  I stopped at the taxi, and before I could realize what I was doing, I yanked the taxi door back open.  The dude looked at me, a little astonished.

"Hi," I said. "You're going to the airport, right? YOU GOTTA LET ME COME WITH YOU."

There was either a look in my eyes or the tone of my voice that made the guy hesitate and yield. Maybe it's my superb lawyering skills.  I got in the taxi with him.  Steal my cab, will you? I'll show you. I'll show you by getting in the cab with you and paying for half of the taxi fare.  The dude actually ended up being a nice guy, and we had a friendly conversation for the rest of the ride.

Now that I was finally in the taxi on my way to the airport, I was better able to observe and appreciate the havoc that the snow was causing to the city of Calgary.  There were cars stuck in the middle of the lane everywhere, with drivers frantically pawing at the snow trying to dig their tires out, while other drivers waited impatiently.

"Did the snow just come this morning?" I asked.

"No, it snowed on Sunday," the dude replied. It was Tuesday.

"Are there not enough snow ploughs?" I asked, appalled that the snow, a foot deep in some places, was just allowed to accumulate in the middle of the road.

"Calgary doesn't really plough the snow," the dude remarked drily. "It just waits for a chinook to come and blow the snow off the streets."

The roads were bumper-to-bumper with people trying to move from one end of the city to the other. It didn't help that it was rush hour, a concept I had completely forgotten about while living in Nunavut. Cambridge Bay has a "rush minute" where you are stuck behind three cars at the stop sign on the main strip.  As a result, what should have been a two-minute taxi ride turned out to be a half hour, because we were re-routed due to accidents on the Deerfoot, Calgary's version of the 401 (of course, Calgary's version of the 401 would be called the Deerfoot).

Finally, I arrived at the airport, breathless, just in time. Ready to fly out. Except my flight was delayed.

Like I said, I've gotten used to sleeping on airport floors.

layover in Edmonton: Canadian Hudson's Tap House and the Sugar Bowl

Every now and then, when we're travelling we end up with a long layover in Edmonton, which is a major hub for a lot of Northern travel. While we were in town, I was hoping to check out downtown for the first time, but Edmonton, like many of the Alberta's communties, was busy being flooded that day, so we decided to head over to the Mall instead, where it was dry inside.

By the Mall, of course, I mean the great West Edmonton Mall, one of the largest malls in North America. I had been to the Mall before, but it was my husband's first time and he wanted to check it out.

How large is the West Edmonton Mall? It is larger than the eye can see. As you approach the Mall, you cannot at any point really see its entirely in one shot. Once you go inside, you think, "Eh, it's pretty big, I guess."  But then you come to the realization that you cannot see the entirety of the Mall from the inside, either.  It just goes on and on and on.

morbid art display or lazy display case decorator?

fast food Korean barbecue! What an amazing idea!

Having just come back from a two week long shopping trip, we weren't much in the mood to go into yet another Bluenotes.  However, we were hungry, and were therefore eager to check out the strip of restaurants in the area of the mall known as Bourbon Street.

There were many, many options of chain restaurants, but the one that caught our eye was Canadian Hudson's Tap House, mainly because they were displaying this special menu:

That's right, an entire menu dedicated to bacon. We were originally looking for a place to try some delicious Alberta beef, since we were in Alberta. To be fair, we've probably been eating Alberta beef all this time in Nunavut, but we wanted to eat Alberta beef in Alberta. With that said, it was pretty hard to turn down a bacon menu.

my grilled bacon macaroni and cheese sandwich, combining three of my favourite things: grilled cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, and bacon

 

washing down all that bacon with some local Alberta beer

Rob ordered a brisket sandwich made with beef served with mustard and gruyere cheese, so we did get to try some Alberta beef after all. It was so juicy and tender it almost rivalled my grandmother's jangjorim. Almost.

feeling full after all that bacon

After our lunch, my buddy D came to pick us up.  D has been living in Edmonton ever since he came back to Canada from Afghanistan where he served in the military.  He will be marrying his fiance in Mexico next spring four days after she does an Iron Man. As you can see, my friend D is not a boring guy.

It was still raining outside, and parts of the city were flooding.  Not exactly patio weather.  D took us the Sugar Bowl Bar, which gave us a glimpse of downtown.  Edmonton's an odd city, unlike other Canadian cites I've seen. There aren't very many tall skyscraper buildings, and it's very spread out - even the downtown core doesn't seem very dense.   

"Here we are!" D announced as we pulled up a to plain brick building.
"This is a back alley."
"This is how we get in."
We entered through the back alley, passing two young gentlemen having some sort of ambiguous interaction.
"What are they doing?" I asked.
"They are having a silent stand-off."
At that moment, I unexpectedly remembered that sometimes this city is called Stabminton. 

Despite the unconventional entrance, the Sugar Bowl turned out to be a lovely place, full of young professionals and artsy types. The menu had one page of food and like ten pages of beer, which is why D likes this place: "It's the perfect place to go after a Saturday morning run, to grab a beer and a cinnamon bun."

The beer selection was impressive too; for instance, there was a number of Belgian beers I hadn't seen since the last time I visited Belgium. I ordered myself a bison chili, which was bison-licious.

And then it was time to go back to the airport to fly to Yellowknife.  As usual, my stay was too short. One of these days we'll have a chance to explore Edmonton deeper, beyond the Mall and the airport. Hopefully at a steakhouse.

charity fridays: Alberta edition

For this week's Charity Friday, I'm suggesting we make donations to support those affected by the flooding disasters in Alberta.  I saw some of it while I was in Edmonton earlier this week. It rained ceaselessly all day, flooding some of the streets until the sun finally broke out.

Cambridge Bay bake sale for flood relief

People have been really good and even creative about providing their support. It amazed me to see how people in Cambridge Bay, who often face poverty (not to mention extreme weather), organized a bake sale to raise funds for the Alberta flood victims. If these modest folks can spare a little change, so can we, right? Especially if even very poor Cambodian orphans are donating to the cause. Orphans!

So here are some ways to help:

• Donate to the Red Cross, or even volunteer for the Red Cross. They are especially looking for volunteer truck drivers or fork lift operators (403-461-6206) 
• Donate to the Calgary YWCA
• Donate to the Calgary Humane Society. You may have heard the story about the Calgary zoo hippos that made an attempt to escape into the river while flood volunteers transported other animals, but other animals have been displaced too and need support.
• Some of the communities that were the most affected and devastated by the floods were the Aboriginal ones, including the Siksika and Stony Nations. You can offer a donation here to support the rebuilding of their communites.
• Donate a graduation dress to girls who are about to graduate but had their dresses ruined.
• You can also donate a number of other things according to this Canadian Home Builders Association list including dumpsters, garbage cans, flashlights, food, generators and shovels 
• If you're in Edmonton, participate in the local bottle drive, "Cans for Calgary"

  Feel free to post other links to other charities that could use some support for the flood victims.

So what has been happening in Cambridge Bay since I've been away and not blogging? We missed out on a lot of things happening in Cambridge Bay:

• Most notably, kids caused an oil spill in Cambridge Bay. Apparently some children got curious about the tanks that hold used oil, and opened up a valve, apparently causing 15000 litres of oil to spill out into the Arctic Ocean.  Luckily, much of the ocean is still frozen so separating oil from the ocean was not as complicated as it usually is, but clean up is still going on around here. 


• Somebody spotted a grizzly bear wandering around on the street behind me.  My friends went out on an imaginary bear hunt, but with no luck. I heard someone from town tell a story about how people kept spotting a grizzly bear in town but whenever hunters went to go find it, they could never find it.  Finally, they discovered that the bear had been sleeping under one of the houses.  Excuse me while I go check the space beneath my house... 


• As a side note, grizzly bears weren't all that common up here on the island for a long time, but lately they've been making the trek all the way up here and hanging out. And breeding with polar bears.  This is a terrifying thought. Two of the scariest bears making scary bear babies....


• Folks have been complaining about kids swimming in the puddle in front of the elementary school. As I mentioned before, during spring time when all that ice is melting, there are huge puddles that form in the road.  Well, I guess it's all just too tempting for some of the local kids, because they have been putting on their swimming trunks and actually swimming in the puddles.  This is kind of a gross thought, not just because we're talking mud puddles (that are possibly also containing oil spill run off), but also because other kids have been spotted peeing in the same puddle. Oh, kids these days.  Sometimes they are raising hundreds of dollars with their lemonade stand of peace situated across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church; sometimes they're causing oil spills into the ocean.

in Edmonton, kind of

I arrived in Edmonton, completely overdressed in my winter coat and wool scarf. I was sensibly dressed for the Arctic, where I'd be heading next, but for now, during my layover in Edmonton where it's sunny and warm, I looked mildly ridiculous.

The flight was relatively smooth, minus the part near the beginning where the pilot announced that one of the motors wasn't working but don't worry, we'll take care of that within five minutes. Despite my skepticism, he was right.

I had approximately twenty hours to spend in Edmonton, which was just enough time for me to go out and try to get a taste of Alberta, if I could decide on what I wanted to do.

West Edmonton Mall was not my first choice of sightseeing attraction, although I wasn't sure what was. I remember reading tips in music magazines on how bands can avoid getting stabbed in stabby Edmonton. When I asked my friend from Edmonton what would be a nice walking tour of downtown, he replied "Oh no, don't bother walking around downtown."

My friend had suggested that Whyte Avenue would be nice, so I asked the front desk at my hotel how to get downtown.

"Downtown Edmonton or downtown Leduc?" the hotel clerk asked. He suggested that I go to downtown Leduc because it turned out we weren't actually in Edmonton proper anyway.

"What's there to do in downtown Leduc?" I asked.

"Oh, not much," he replied.

Sigh. I decided to go to West Edmonton Mall. Capitalism always makes it easy to go shopping.

Because West Edmonton Mall is one of the top tourist attractions, I was able to climb into an airport shuttle to get there, one of those old white vans that reminded me of the sketchy combie buses I use to ride all over Namibia. I sat next to a sullen young woman who punctuates all of her sentences with disdainful sighs. The other passenger, an older male, tried to engage her in conversation.

"Are you here to party on campus?" he asked her.

"I'm here for a funeral" she answered. I decided to let her be sullen, and watch the scenery. Edmonton is flat all around, and the suburbs look like the suburbs back home. Do you ever notice that Canadian suburbs all look the same, no matter where you go? I love the Canadian landscape.

West Edmonton Mall is pretty big. But then, when you hear about the biggest shopping mall in North America (and the fifth largest in the world), you've got a lot of expectations about something monstrous that you'd get lost inside, like the casinos of Las Vegas designed to make you lose track of time so you can wander inside spending money infinitely. Like I said West Edmonton Mall was pretty big. You certainly couldn't fit the whole structure inside a single camera picture. I was full of so many questions. What is inside? What kind of stores do you have to fill up the continent's largest mall? And was that a sign for a shooting range? Oh, Alberta, I have arrived.


The shuttle dropped me off at the Fantasyland hotel, which was once the subject of a major intellectual property litigation case against Disney that we learned about in law school. I hurried through the lobby and took in the sights. Little boys getting military buzz cuts at the barber. Little girls in pink shirts carrying fake pistols, pointing them at babies in strollers, also holding fake pistols (oh Alberta!). Young Asian couples speaking to each other in sign language. A young skateboarder, sleeping against a wall on his skateboard. Immigrant kids learning to skate wearing jean shorts, speedily passed by white dads training their little boys for hockey. Adventure golf, two word I never thought to put together.



Not to feed the flames of old litigation, but the whole place reminded me of a Disneyland for adult consumer whores or maybe a Las Vegas for teens. There were different sections of the mall with different "themes", like Europa Avenue, designed to look like the streets of Europe (or maybe kind of like Disney's perception of Europe?), and Chinatown, which not only featured Chinese gates but a T&T market. As well as other traditional Chinese shops like Rogers Wireless and Stitch It.




There was also a Bourbon street, which contained a lot of the restaurants that we don't have in Ontario that I've missed since I lived in Vancouver - Earl's, The Spaghetti Factory...and of course there was a Hooters.




There was also a huge food court with like five Chinese fast food places with no discernible difference between any of them. That was where I spent my lunch. Hey, I am not always classy or cultural. In fact, I am rarely so.

It was only after my big greasy lunch that I discovered the roller coasters. Galaxyworld is the world's largest indoor amusement park, with the world's largest indoor rollercoaster. The rollercoasters made loud boom sounds that sounded like jets. I was, as you might expected, disappointed that I had discovered the awesome rides only after eating my large lunch. Unlike Canada's Wonderland, there weren't any lines for any of the rides.




West Edmonton Mall also has the world's largest indoor water park, which features a fake beach area with a fake beach bar, a huge wave pool, and numerous water slides. It obviously has a fake feel to it, but it's also quite brilliant to have all these things indoors, given how cold Edmonton gets for a big chunk of the year. It's nice to escape the cold winter for a few hours and catch a few waves in the warm 26 degree water park.



Oh yeah, the world's largest indoor water park also featured the world's biggest indoor bungee jump. Which looked, to me, incredibly scary, but then so did the wave pool, maybe because I almost drowned in one when I was younger, trying to save another kid.

After a while, I realized that I'd spent all this time in the mall without ever coming across the shooting range. I began to question whether I was actually in Alberta. Also, I began to wonder if the mall featured a nap room. There was just so much to see! Sea lions, real ones (I had thought they were fake until one ran along side the pool to follow its trainer). A marketplace chapel. Next to the chapel, a store that I accidentally walked into that appears to sell apparel for strippers. A tattoo, piercing and hair salon, a combination that I guess makes sense, but I'd never seen before.


what do you suppose it's like to be a sea lion trainer in a mall?



Despite having spent hours wandering around the mall (I did a circuit around the whole thing four times) I didn't end up buying much. Ever since I moved back from Africa, I haven't been really in a mood to buy things. You'd think it'd be the opposite, emerging from a shopping drought after spending the past year living in modest Namibia, but I guess I figured out how to live with less stuff. I've been wearing my stuff out, even if my family and friends are begging me to throw them out for getting so holey. Still, even though I didn't walk out with a pile of shopping bags, I was glad for the chance to experience the largest mall in North America. Now if only they could build a fake beach with a fake beach bar and indoor wave pool in Ottawa. Next time I come here, I'm eating lunch after I visit the amusement park. Also, I'm trying out the shooting range - if I ever find it.

this was the closest thing i found to the shooting range - a kid's game