Edmonton or Calgary?

[ZX14TJ]

Originally Posted by cfrobins

Is accomodation affordable and readily available

Edmonton, just like Calgary, is getting very expensive. Accomodation is readily available. Of course, affordability is all a matter of your wallet.

[snappy]

Born in Edmonton, lived last 10 years in Calgary. Like Calgary better. Close to Banff, chinooks, warmer winters. Edmonton in my opinion does have better culture. Theater, art galleries in my opinion are better there.

[bozazz]

Calgary is a pretty good city. I'm Asian-Canadian so part of the large Asian community that resides here. Despite the news about Calgary being one of the most racist city in Canada it doesn't feel like it. I've ran into a few racists and the odd remarks about (why can't so and so speak english), but mostly I only run into jerks. They aren't racist jerks, they're just jerks to everybody which I guess makes them better. So yeah despite that Calgary is a nice place to live compared to most places.

[smp2010]

I am going to add my two cents since I have lived in both. Not that it will make me popular...
Edmonton has a long terribly hard winter, so if you like that then it is the place for you. Because of the lousy weather most of the year, and with a short mediocre summer, indoor shopping is king. The summer is jammed with outdoor festivals so lots to do for the two months that is summer, but the rest of the year, just drink a lot and smoke and you will forget you live in the arctic...
Not as money driven as Calgary, so if you are a high roller or wannabe high roller move south young man, like 3 hours south... to..

Calgary.(Pronounced CAL-GREEE, not CAL-GARY) A city whose popularity and appeal goes up and down with the price of oil and the unemployment figures of other regions. Mostly devoid of any real culture, unless you think wealth and mass produced art on oil company walls is culture. Really all about the money and hmm, the money. Show how much money you make (while the price of oil is up), buy offensively big bland homes in the bald prairie, buy egregiously pompous vehicles(they just got a Bentley dealership, those look great driving in the snow) and act like you matter. My favorite times are when the price of oil is around 20.00 a barrel and all this is for sale cheap and dusty. Remember after the last oil boom? The eighties? If American congress approves offshore and further oil development, it will be here again. Those nouveau riche will once again meet the foreclosure reaper, the repo man and the bankruptcy courts. Enjoy the show while you can. cause when all the whip cream gets taken away it is just a dusty dirty gritty town in the middle of nowhere, with some big cardboard boxes for sale in the bald prairie. Long, long depressing winters, from October until June. Snow comes in dumps, and leaves in floods. They get a chinook every so often just to lift your spirits about living here, and then when they are done crushes your heart back into the black hole it was in prior. Summers suck, it rains all the time. You get sunshine and feel good, and then it rains, every day. Never gets warm enough for people not to look like baby mice, if they manage to get some sun they look like really pink baby mice. Shorts can be worn in cold conditions to justify buying them for one of the many trips you will take out of here to warmer (places that don't suck) climates. Travel agencies do a good business in hellholes like this. The people all think they matter, but when they travel to cities that do matter, ie NYC, Los Angeles, London, etc, people can only say "where are you from? IS that near Toronto?" On the scale of the world it is about the world equivalent of a mining town. Think Butte Montana in its heyday and look at its subsequent meth years...
Las Vegas is also a popular place to visit for Calgarians, as they like flashing lights and money, and think that is really living. Then when the sun comes up in Vegas they overlook the trash and trailers and are just glad the sunshine doesn't come with rain...
Currently the Calgary downtown is a wasteland filled with suit and tie guys and drug addict panhandlers. The current city council is more concerned with raising taxes and spending money incoherently than about making it a livable city for its citizens. Recycling is not something they think is valid, and to be honest many of its citizens agree. The money makes them wasteful for sure. Anyhow if you had to pick between the two( like choosing between cutting of your right leg or left leg) I would pick Edmonton. At least you don't have to deal with 25 year old kids whose daddy gave them some oil job and bought them an H2 Hummer, at the local watering holes...

[smp2010]

I forgot to add that Calgary also has the summer rodeo called the Stampede. It is a rodeo with a carnival attached that goes on for about a week. It seems the city undergoes a changeover to some bad frontier park look. They put hay bales all over and nail up old wood everywhere. It is silly. Oh yeah, and everyone dresses like urban cowboys and drinks all day and night. Sound like fun? Just wait. The carnival is like the ones you see in mall parking lots around the world, but bigger, with that many more carnies. Really something to see for sure. And people here eat it up. Like they have never seen a zipper or a greasy donut. Anyhow Calgary's big claim to fame, other than Jann Arden that chick from Feist...

[k8swirl]

"I would pick Edmonton. At least you don't have to deal with 25 year old kids whose daddy gave them some oil job and bought them an H2 Hummer, at the local watering holes..."[quote]

I live in Edmonton...unfortunately that is becoming a fairly common phenomenon here too. In one day last week I saw a mazerati, a bentley and a ferrari, all driving around, all just like they were another vehicle on the road. I've never lived anywhere else where you see these kinds of vehicles just tooling around. There are also endless numbers of ginormous trucks, SUVs, etc driven by the 18-25 crowd.

Having said that...I'd say Edmonton too. It has a history and a soul (sometimes this is hard to remember in March when you haven't felt your toes in 6 months) and its summers really are awesome.

[snappy]

SMP2010 Wow - why don't you move back east then.

[Eventus]

Might I take the opportunity that Edmonton is not a blue-collar city in the sense that it has a reputation for being. Although it has a fairly high percentage of blue-collar workers compared to other Canadian cities, it still has far more white-collar workers than blue-.

[jungeon]

Well I'd go with Calgary, bigger more urban, likely less open racism. Alberta does have some historically black communities-which are kind of small though kinda like nova scotia and realise that alberta was a province who's culture was founded by black cowboys from oklahoma and texas and some north west states who had sun down towns.

Also realize that carribeans constitute 62% of the african candian population and that jamaicans are 32% of the entire african population in canada. Calgary has more blacks than edmonton but many of them are not carribean as most of the carribeans came here years ago when the carribean was not prosperous but thats changed. toronto, montreal and ottawa and suburbs are the only places that have black populations like in the mid-west usa.

I will tell you that you will encounter racism, your best bet is to use the human rights tribunal where it is bad or significant or otherwise try to confront it or ignore it. On the other hand because there are few blacks there, you may face less racism because you kinda go under the radar