I looked in the mirror, Jim. And this is what I saw.

First of all, can somebody smarter than me please explain to me what the hell is going on in this province?? First we were suddenly broke and hemorrhaging money left, right, and centre thanks to sagging global oil prices. Then, somehow, inexplicably, the province was running a surplus. And now gas prices are back up to nearly a buck a litre. And wasn't the whole gas price slide a punitive measure by the OPEC bigwigs against the psycho KGB cowboy in Moscow and his pals in Tehran and Damascus? I don't get it.

Whatever the case, our boom-and-bust economy is now, apparently, bust again, and our esteemed crown prince now tells us, in a nutshell, that it's our own fault. According to Jim Prentice, we all have to “look in the mirror” and take responsibility for the province’s precarious financial situation. OK Jim, I take responsibility. But what I want to know at this juncture is how much responsibility I, personally, should take. After all, I'm not from Alberta originally and have only been taking advantage of government programs and opportunities here since mid-2008. Does that mean I'm less responsible for our present mess than someone who's lived here all their life, while at the same time more so than someone who just arrived?

If we were to portion out blame equally, among all Albertans, we would technically be looking at about 7.6 seconds of penance per Albertan per year. Given that there are now 4,146,000 of us in this province, and 365 days in a year, that's literally how our wages of guilt would be monetized. You know, like the flat tax our esteemed leaders still stubbornly stand by.

But that's based on the assumption that everybody currently living in Alberta is equally culpable for getting us in the pickle that we're in. Which, as I previously mentioned, strikes me as unfair given our current rate of population growth. Alberta's population grew by 3.8 per cent in 2014, which means that of the aforementioned 4,146,000 people, about 150,000 just arrived from elsewhere, and frankly it would be unfair to saddle them with this burden of economic shame. Especially given our provincial leaders' heretofore urgent tone with regards to impending labour shortages here.

This reduces our pool of culpable Albertans to around 3,996,000. That raises our individual burden of guilt to around 7.9 seconds. Still totally manageable. That said, I don't think our dear leader would see it that way. Clearly Alberta's urban centres bear more of the blame than rural areas, given their pesky demands for better roads, better transit, more schools, more . . . everything, frankly. As of 2011 (the most recent statistics available), 83 per cent of Albertans resided in urban areas. That takes us down to roughly 3,316,000 people who are really blameworthy. So if you've lived in an urban area in Alberta for more than one full year, you now officially have to feel bad for 9.5 seconds a year.

Not so fast. At least 20 per cent of the remaining population is 18 years old or under, and clearly they can't be held responsible for the mess we're in - much as we'd like to blame them. So that takes us down to about 2,652,800 culpable individuals, or about 11.9 annual seconds of penance. And that's more substantial - more time than most of us stand with our heads bowed and our eyes closed on Remembrance Day.

And of course we haven't even begun to talk about the province's urban Aboriginal population, from whose ancestors the land now called Alberta was stolen in the first place, or the province's ethnic Japanese, Chinese, Ukrainian (that's at least 10 per cent of Edmonton), and Afro-Canadian populations, who at various times have faced fierce discrimination. Or women, who, it turns out, earn less than 65 per cent of their male counterparts in this province, putting Alberta nearly on par with South Korea, the OECD country with the worst gender wage parity. And while we're at it, LGBTQ Albertans, who still suffer from de-facto top-down discrimination through the provincial government's refusal to mandate gay-straight alliances in schools, get a pass as well.

So who are we left with? Basically a coterie of overpaid straight white men who live in urban centres and occupy positions of power. In other words, people like you, Jim. Perhaps you need to, ahem, take a look in the mirror.

Home is where the food is (a 107 Ave serenade)

Source: Faces of 107 Avenue

Adobo creative suites

Masala motion pictures

Mad about saffron

And high on wild rosewater nocturnes and the sweet Rumi-nations of old Tehran

Footsteps springy like fresh injera

With a fire-roasted coffee and frankincence chasers at my heels

Striding sing-song down the Avenue of Nations

Calibrating my olfactory GPS; new-world coordinates in old-country code

The dhows of Gwadar, Suquṭra, Muqdisho

Safely moored on a verdant bend in the North Saskatchewan

Bringing sustenance and satiety to shivering winter citizenry

Cracked cardamom pods, frim-fram shawarma sauce

Weaponized wild rice and a backup bottle of chili sauce for that extra zing

Here on the Ave this is kind of our thing

Some say home is where the heart is

But the heart falters when the stomach lies empty

Others say home is where the money is

But money for nothing? Have these chickpeas for free!

Home is where the food is

Where continents and condiments collide in cast-iron kitchen pots

With fierce chillies, midnight meat sweats, and moose nose stew with bannock sliders

Treaty 6 treats with Tagalog tagalongs

And palak paneer amid the backdrop of a bigos and kubasonic boomtown

It’s everything that’s good to eat

Right out there on the street

Yeggs benedict for breakfast

E-town empanadas for lunch

Prairie chicken Kiev with a side of doro. Wot?

It’s all here. It’s all us.

Give me a home where the free-range buffalo roam (out at Elk Island)

Where the kheer and the cantaloupe come out to play for dessert

Where seldom is heard a discouraging Urban Spoon word

And the skies are as wide open as our doors, as big as our portion sizes

And as vivid and alive as our spicecraft and foodscape

Welcome home

After the Artery - 6 ways Edmonton's arts community can continue to survive and thrive

Source: John Lucas, Edmonton Journal

If you're a member of Edmonton's arts community, you're probably ready to slouch down on the nearest park bench for a good long cry right now. That's assuming you haven't already done this. We're not even two months into 2015, and the year has thus far, for a lack of a better term, sucked balls. It all started with the heartbreaking demise of the venerable Roxy Theatre in an early morning fire on January 13. And now artistically inclined Edmontonians are reeling from the loss of yet another iconic art space, The Artery, which yesterday announced it would be closing its doors for the last time at the end of March.

Both of these occurrences would be heartbreaking enough in isolation,  but the sad fact of the matter is that it's nothing new in this town. The list of performance and visual arts spaces that Edmonton has lost, or is on the verge of losing, has begun to resemble a list of names chiselled on a war memorial. Last year saw the demise of the Avenue Theatre. In 2013 the Haven Social Club, a jazz-focussed basement dive much loved by MacEwan University music students, bid the city farewell. Further back in time, the legendary Sidetrack Cafe, which once upon a time played host to the likes of Canadian icons k.d. lang, Colin James, and Blue Rodeo, bid the world adieu in 2007.

The list of dead venues in Alberta's capital city has become so extensive that the Edmonton Heritage Council has recently embarked on a Dead Venues Project as part of its Edmonton City As Museum initiative, an admirable attempt to keep the city's indie/alt-rock heritage alive. While tributes are always welcome, such archival projects are cold comfort to Edmonton's artists who continue to see venues yanked from under their feet. No area of town has been harder hit than Old Strathcona, the once-spirited heart of bohemian Edmonton, which, thanks to skyrocketing commercial real estate prices, has seen much of its arts scene migrate to more economical pastures, with the Catalyst Theatre (soon to be relocating to the Maclab Theatre at the Citadel) being its latest economic refugee.

All this, of course, is happening at a time of great economic uncertainty in the province as a result of plummeting oil prices and a bewildering budgetary Chicken Little sky-is-falling performance on the part of our newly minted Progressive Conservative Pharaoh. (For the hammiest theatre show in town, just pop into the Alberta Legislature when the house is in session.) For people immersed in the arts community, as well as in post-secondary education (and I'm eyeball-deep in both - lucky me), this means cutbacks. Yes, that Alberta speciality. All this in spite of the fact that the government somehow, inexplicably, seems to have come up with a budgetary surplus (because, you know, we're broke) and that cutting funding to the arts to balance the budget makes about as much sense as shaving your head to lose weight.

The irony, of course, is that Edmonton's arts scene has never been more vibrant than it is at present. On any given night in this city there's a bewildering array of performance and visual art on offer in the city, albeit in a slow but steadily contracting constellation of venues. Edmonton is well known for its big-name festivals - FolkFest, NextFest, the Fringe, the Street Performers Festival, the Poetry Festival, and so on, but that scarcely scratches the surface as to what's going on. As a relatively new Edmontonian (a resident here since the fall of 2008), it's taken me quite a few years to fully appreciate the quality and quantity of artistry in my adopted hometown - even in the middle of winter when it's an uphill task to persuade winter-weary residents to trudge through minus-twenty temperatures to check out a poetry slam or a modern dance spectacle.

Yes, Edmonton's arty folk are a stubborn, tenacious bunch who can probably survive anything. But why must their existence always be such a perilous one? The problem is an economic one (as well, let's admit, of economic priorities on the part of the city's mandarins). Regrettably, artists get screwed in both good and bad economic times. In bad times, funding for the arts invariably gets cuts. In good times, real estate prices inflate to the point where theatre companies, club owners, and other artistic stakeholders can no longer stay above water.

So what can be done to support the arts in this city so as to curb the tide of venues going under? I'm no expert, but here are a few ideas.

1) Go see more shows.

This might sound flippant, but seriously, go see something cool. On a random Tuesday evening, even. Edmonton may not have the prestige of Paris or New Orleans, but the flip side to that is that artists in this city are far more accessible than they are in larger centres. There are improbable art galleries run by medical doctors who really love the arts. There's a devoted (and I mean VERY devoted) heavy metal scene. There's typically three nights a week of wild electronic music at Bohemia. And there's no shortage of theatre, dance, and whatnot. Go to yeglive,ca and find something cool - and go to it! C'mon, you're too young to spend every evening crocheting scarves and taking Instagram photos of your cats!

2) Get to know your local community league.

Edmonton's outsized artistic scene owes a large debt to the city's longstanding network of local community leagues. While not an exclusively Edmontonian phenomenon, Edmonton's community league system is, as far as I know, unique in its extensiveness and civic clout, thanks in no small part to steady funding from the municipal government. If you're an Edmonton-based artist, volunteering for your local community not only gives you the opportunity to lobby on behalf of your fellow artists at the neighbourhood level (i.e. where it really counts), but also gives you affordable access to community league facilities, whose purpose it is to serve as a local venue for stuff the community wants. Not an opportunity any artist would want to pass up.

3) Think outside the box in terms of venues.

Capital A "Art Venues" may be in full-tilt contraction mode in Edmonton, but with anywhere between 18 and 22 cranes punctuating the city's skyline like boreal giraffes, buildings are most definitely not. Moreover, with more per-capita green space than any other Canadian city and a larger land area than Toronto (with about a third of the population), the city is not lacking in places to perform. They just might not be traditional performance spaces. Edmonton's perennially overachieving modern dance scene has, out of both necessity and ingenuity, turned the city's great outdoors into its venue, with the undisputed masters of this being Mile Zero Dance and its artistic director Gerry Morita, whose venues have ranged from Churchill Square to the river valley park system to the delightfully trashy Aurora Motel in the city's unloved industrial west end.

Others are doing the same thing. I myself have had the honour of being invited to contribute a spoken word component to the latest instalment of Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy Takes Over The Science Building. Dancer/choreographer/science nerd Jen Mesch is another Edmonton artist with a penchant for improbable locations, ranging from Edmonton's river valley to actual caves. And the University of Alberta, with its picturesque cliffside setting atop the river valley and its motley assortment of fascinating structures, is a cornucopia of potential performance spaces - including some actual performance spaces like the amusingly toilet-shaped Timms Centre.

4) Forge stronger ties with arts communities elsewhere in Alberta.

Edmonton is essentially an island city. At least that's how it feels much of the time. But while it's a relatively isolated city, it's not really that far from other pockets of civilization. Calgary is a three-hour drive to the south, and is no slouch when it comes to the arts. And it's a treasure trove of great venues. Edmonton's once vibrant underground punk scene may be history now, but Calgary's still has quite a bit of life to it thanks in no small part to places like Vern's Tavern, a venue that helped launch the careers of bands like Sheepdogs and Marianas Trench, and continues to provide an open stage to the weirdest, most obnoxious acts around - bands like "witch punk" Riot Grrrl revivalists Hag Face, my current YYC faves.

Even closer to Edmonton is the increasingly energetic live music scene in Red Deer, which, thanks to Alberta's explosive population growth in recent years, now has a population close to that of Reykjavik, Iceland. It's not a scene I know well at all, but reliable sources tell me that it's getting steadily better - at least on the musical front. Even further south in Alberta is the oddball town of Lethbridge, where heavily bearded and headscarf-clad Hutterites and Mennonites rub shoulders with heavily bearded and keffiyeh-clad hipsters from the University of Lethbridge who frequent events like the Lethbridge Electronic Music Festival and more regular arty happenings at Owl Acoustic Lounge.

Anybody who thinks of Alberta as simply Edmonton, Calgary, and a hillbilly hinterland needs a Lonely Planet update. The problem, of course, is that the province of Alberta has a larger land mass than France and a far worse transportation infrastructure, which means that unless you plan on sleeping in your car (which is only a viable option half the year in this province, and even then not a very attractive one), you need lodging in whatever municipality you find yourself in - particularly given that your typical artsy event ends after the last Red Arrow of the night leaves the station for Edmonton. A network of dedicated artist crash pads on either end,in said cities, perhaps modelled on New Orleans' Musicians' Village, would solve this problem.

5) Forge stronger ties with communities within the city.

Edmonton is distinctly unlike places like Vancouver and Toronto in its relative lack of distinct ethnic enclaves. With the exception of the South Asian community in Mill Woods (an area also replete with new Canadians from elsewhere around the globe) and the East African community on and around 107 Avenue (forever the starting point in the city for whichever immigrant community is the most recent), Edmonton's multicultural population is a true salad bowl. There is nearly as much Ethiopian food in Edmonton's Little Italy than there is Italian, and the city's Chinatown is decidedly more Vietnamese than Chinese. And given China and Italy's past predilections for invading Vietnam and Ethiopia respectively, it's poetic justice in a way.

That said, Edmonton's artistic mainstream (i.e. white people) could all do a better job engaging with the city's many and varied ethno-cultural communities. The spoken word/slam poetry scene is excelling on that front thanks in no small part to Titilope Sonuga and her heir apparent Ahmed Knowmadic of the Breath in Poetry collective - slam poetry at its least obnoxious and most inclusive. Edmonton is also home to what may now be the country's largest urban Aboriginal population, and with it one of Canada's most energetic Aboriginal arts scenes - ranging from Métis country music to raw rez hip hop and stand-up comedy. It's out there. You just need to seek it out.

6) Fight the power.

Yep, put on your best gold Flava Flav teeth, hang a clock around your neck, and fight the power that be. But in all seriousness, the city of Edmonton would have far fewer historic buildings standing were it not for its citizens' willingness to get organized and fight the forces of organized redevelopment. Much of Old Strathcona would have been razed back in the 1970s were it not for the grim determination of its residence to save its innumerable architectural gems. Today the city's venerable McDougall United Church is the latest historic building on the chopping block, and while its future remains very much in doubt, a campaign to save the building has recently shifted into high gear.

Sometimes you just have to be like Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker books and lie in front of the bulldozer. And call it a work of art. Because sometimes it is.

Enter The Muskwa - My Proposal for a New Edmonton CFL Team Name

This afternoon I was interviewed by CBC Edmonton on a subject I never thought I'd be interviewed about - the issue of politically incorrect sports team names, and in particular the Edmonton Eskimos. When the network contacted me, my first reaction was, of course, "Why me of all people??"

The reason they sought me out, it turned out, was a post I wrote back in May 2012 on the subject of racially problematic team names. The article focussed largely on the Cleveland Indians, in part because I'm a longtime baseball fan but also because the backstory to the name is a fascinating one. But I also took a pot shot at our local football team, a team I otherwise have tremendous admiration for, not only for their on-the-field excellence but also for their superb communications team and stellar track record for community involvement - by players, alums, the cheer squad and their front office. The only thing the Eskies have going against them, in my opinion, is their name.

The Edmonton Eskimos is, in my humble opinion, a terrible name - for two reasons. The most obvious and talked about reason is the fact that the word 'Eskimo', while still in common parlance among Alaska's Inuit, is today considered a pejorative by the Inuit of Arctic Canada as well as in Greenland, owing to the name's alleged origins from an Algonkian term meaning "eaters of raw meat". (The Cree language cognate would be askamiciw, which is pretty close.) Furthermore, even if the etymological roots of the word are in some doubt, the mere fact that the word hearkens to colonial ethnocentrism for Arctic Canada's indigenous people makes the issue worth taking seriously.

But that's only part of my issue with the name Eskimos. In addition to being a now-offensive term, it's also a name that has absolutely nothing to do with the Edmonton region. Edmonton, as anybody with any familiarity with the city knows, is located in traditional Cree territory, and is situated a word away from the nearest Inuit settlement. Geographically speaking, Edmonton is closer to Los Angeles than to Iqaluit, and given the complete lack of ethnocultural connectivity between the Cree and the Inuit, it would make just as much sense to call the team the Navajo or the Aztec.

Defenders of the name will argue that it is a reflection (if a somewhat unlettered one) of Edmonton's historic role as "gateway to the north". But as we Edmontonians know, this epithet has always been something of a kiss of death for us. Just ask novelist and Edmontonian-at-large Todd Babiak what he thinks of the "gateway to the north" boilerplate - a characterization that for many in city implied that we're nothing more than a transit point to other places than a place where people might actually want to stay. The crux of the popular #MakeSomethingYEG campaign has been about changing the way Edmontonians talk about ourselves, because most of our slogans, from City of Champions to Gateway to the North, frankly suck. And having a football team - especially one with hallowed history and an impeccable community reputation - called the "Eskimos" isn't helping us.

No, we can do better than this, and this is why I'm proposing, for what it's worth, a new name for the team. Let's not make the whole Redskins controversy force our hand - let's do it ourselves. Over the phone I was asked what I would like to see the name changed to, and I didn't have an answer. But shortly thereafter a new named dawned on me: the Edmonton Muskwa.

Chubui Manitou Muskwa ("Ancestor Spirit Bear") by Dwayne
Frost, aka Gitchi Manitou Muskwa (source: Artslant.com)

Muskwa, for those who don't know, is the Cree word for 'bear'. But it's more than that. The word muskwa (or maskwa, depending on the romanization) holds a deep significance for the Cree people, as the bear one of the most hallowed figures in Cree cosmology. It's a name that has deep resonance among Alberta's Cree population, as evidenced by the decision by the band councils of the adjacent Samson, Ermineskin, Louis Bull and Montana First Nations (located south of Edmonton) to change the name of their combined municipality of Hobbema to Maskwacis (Bear Hills), a name that long predates European colonization.

Edmonton Muskwa - think about it. In addition to being a nod to the Edmonton region's original inhabitants and a name far more reflective of the region than the Eskimos, here are a few other arguments for the name:

1. It's a classic football name. Muskwa is a protector and defender with a mean arm, surprising speed, and he'll maul you if he has to. And besides, it hearkens nicely to one of professional football's other legendary teams, the Chicago Bears.
2. It also meshes nicely with Edmonton's other great gridiron squad, the University of Alberta Golden Bears.
3. As an Aboriginal name, it still, in a way, pays homage to the legacy of the Eskimos. It just corrects the name a bit.
4. It shortens to the "Muskies", which has the same ring to it as the "Eskies".
5. No pesky pluralization problems - it works as singular and plural. Just ask the Toronto Maple Leaves about this problem.
6. It sounds kind of badass. Like a war cry of some sort. Or like something the Apache Chief from the Super Friends would utter before doing something heroic.

Or we could just do this.

In sum, I would like to see the team's name changed, although not necessarily for the reasons that are being trotted out. Unlike with the Redskins and the Indians (and to a lesser degree the Chicago Blackhawks and the Atlanta Braves), we really haven't seen the kind of polarized acrimony over this issue north of the border.

My sense is that this is because we're a little easily inflamed people than our southern neighbours, and Edmontonians in particular are a sanguine bunch who don't come to anger quickly (unless it's over Neil Young making silly remarks about the black viscous livelihood to the north). That and Albertans are a pretty libertarian bunch who tend to take poorly to being hectored by the standard bearers of political correctness. Moreover, the Eskimos have never had a racially caricatured mascot like the Indians or the Redskins have had, which has, I think, allowed the Edmonton public to disassociate their team name from the ethnic group it was once applied to. To most Edmontonians, the word "Eskimo" means football - and nothing else. Hidden in plain sight.

Still, I say let's change the team's name and start a new chapter of sporting history here in Edmonton. Do it because "Eskimos" is really a silly name for a region with no relation to the Inuit, and because we have a beautiful cultural inheritance of our own in this city. In my January 2014 post on Edmonton New Year's resolutions, I challenged the city to take more ownership of its Aboriginality - after all we're, by some counts, the most Aboriginal city in Canada. Adopting the name Edmonton Muskwa for our beloved football team would be a decisive step in that direction.

That and it would be fun. And it's a cool name. At least I think it is. MUSKWAAAAA!!!!

To see my interview with CBC Edmonton go to 15:30 here.

New Music Edmonton's 'Body of Colour' will mess with your mind!

Seeing tonight's performance of Body of Colour at the ATB Arts Barns in Old Strathcona reminded me of why I adore Edmonton's arts scene. In artistic terms Edmonton is truly the Goldilocks City - big enough that there's always something interesting going on but small enough that the local scene is accessible, friendly and relatively free from the sort of tribal fault lines that tend to carve up the scenes of the world's larger cities.

A number of years ago I interview Mile Zero Dance artistic director and Body of Colour collaborator Gerry Morita for an article in Avenue Edmonton magazine. When I asked her what it was that kept her in Edmonton after having lived and worked in Vancouver, Montreal and Tokyo, she responded that, among other things, it's Edmonton's natural inclination towards interdisciplinary artistic collaboration, a trait she attributed to the city's lack of 'tribalism' in the arts.

Having had the good fortune to be New Music Edmonton's blogger-at-large, I've come to realize how true this observation really is. Spend enough time in artistic circles in this town and you tend to see many of the same names in projects and contexts that you'd never expect. In this particular performance, Morita, the 'big name' on the ticket, opted for a supporting role for the show's real 'star', mezzo-soprano Michelle Milenkovic, whose magnificent instrument was matched only by her incomparable stage persona.

Nobody - not even NME director Ian Crutchley - really knew how to introduce this show. A few minutes into it revealed why. Body of Colour is in essence a collective brainstorm run wild, courtesy of singer Milenkovic, dancer Morita and stage, set and lighting designer Daniela Masellis. The dramatic set pieces (giant musical score canvas screens) and jarring lighting, combined with Milenkovic's haunting musical soliloquies, gave the show the dramatic tension of a Greenaway or Pasolini film, while Morita's understated choreography, much of which was behind the giant screens, had all the impish mystique of Balinese shadow puppetry.

The show began with a piece originally conceived for Mile Zero's Bodies in O show, featuring one of Edmonton composer Shawn Pinchbeck's characteristic noise soundscapes shoved against a lachrymal aria from Henry Purcell's opera Dido & Aeneas. The performance focused largely on the innovative solo voice compositions of Greek-French composer Georges Aperghis, an innovator best known for his blended singing-spoken word text looping compositions written for French stage actress Mariane Viard, as well as vocal works by NME favourite Luciano Berio.

An excerpt from Georges Aperghis' Récitations (source: sepia.ac-reims.fr)

But there was none of the dry, antiseptic sting that often comes with this sort of music. The show's steady parade of unlikely props, which included (in no particular order) a wheelchair, various carpentry tools,  playing cards, a bathtub and honest-to-god shots of grappa kept things interesting.

The second half of the show was particularly rivetting. After some particularly flirtatious and sarcastic material by Aperghis, the mood shifted to the emotionally roller-coastery with a gut-wrenching performance of Cigane, a Serbian-language Roma (Gypsy) protest anthem that was adopted as the official Roma anthem for the First Roma Conference in 1971. (Spoiler alert: this is when the grappa shots were distributed among the audience. Ziveli, y'all!)

The show concluded with some re-imagined Mahler lieder centred on nostalgia and the beauty of the ephemeral, as represented by the 'Lindenbaum' (linden tree). And this too was taken to its dramatic logical conclusion, with Morita morphing into a shadowy forest imp and Milenkovic donning a tree goddess crown and assuming the role of some sort of Jesus of Nazareth/Lorax hybrid. These things don't explain themselves, but as a BC boy who's had his share of transcendental experiences in forests, I think I get it.

The incomparable Michelle Milenkovic
(Source: New Music Edmonton)

The second-last performance of the 2013-2014 NME season might just have been its highlight. Funny, sexy, intense, disturbing at points and totally compelling from start to finish, Body of Colour is, if nothing else, a great showcase of what this city's artistic community does best - put a bunch of creative people in a room together (usually in the dead of winter) and get them to come up with something cool and improbable. And if you're in Edmonton and are looking for something interesting to do tomorrow night, I highly recommend checking this show out, which runs again tomorrow night at 7:30 at the Arts Barns.

And if you can't make it, at least carve out some time this summer to get down to the river valley with your Dr. Dre headphones, find an isolated corner of the wood and meditate to some Mahler. Or some Berio. Or whatever. We're a cool, weird town here - we all owe it to ourselves to take full advantage of that fact.

(Poem) Sun Structures

(source: trekearth.com)

 

Deserts form where seas once reached

Where water carved and sunlight bleached

On seas of stone and painted sand

The sentinels of Shadowland.

 

Rocky sinew landscape formed

The tower guards with caps adorned

They ring of time and streams run dry

Telltale tattoos of time gone by.

 

Like pillars to the sun they stand

Since Old Man Napi walked this land

Through canyon folds and sanded curves

Primeval language to the nerves.

 

The threshing storms and solar flairs

And endless pounding windy wear

Do none but deepen old resolve

As countless starry nights dissolve.

 

A sunburned splendour comes to life

As dawnlight trickles through the blight

The somber guardsmen rouse anew

As Napi’s dream is once more true.

 

Deserts form where seas once reached

Where water carved and sunlight bleached

On seas of stone and painted sand

The sentinels of Shadowland.

Compose Something Edmonton (Why New Music Edmonton is the best show in town)

Back in March of 2012 I wrote a post about possible new names for Edmonton International Airport. Based on the premise that many of the world's most famous airports are named after famous individuals (John F. Kennedy, Lester B. Pearson, Charles De Gaulle, Indira Gandhi etc.). I came up with a list of 10 famous Edmontonians that might be considered airport name material, of which my personal favourite at the time was Leslie Nielsen International Airport, in homage to his career-transforming comedic breakthrough in Airplane.

I missed one. I definitely should have included Violet Archer on the list. After all, composers figure prominently among major airports. Rio de Janeiro has Antônio Carlos Jobim International. Budapest has Ferenc Lizst International. Warsaw has Chopin International. And of course New Orleans, where I recently visited, has the wonderfully named Louis Armstrong International Airport. Who do we have? We have the Montreal-born pupil of Béla Bartók and Paul Hindemith who joined the U of A music faculty in 1962 and remained a fixture in Edmonton's music scene until her death in 2000. Edmonton-Archer International Airport - I love it!

Who says we can't be great up here? Edmonton's
own Violet Archer. (source: musiccentre.ca)

Of course I'm scarcely holding my breath for our local airport to be renamed after an avant-garde composer who the majority of Edmontonians haven't even heard of. Nevertheless, it is heartening to know that the spirit of the city's greatest exponent of new music is alive and well in the form of the organization she inspired, New Music Edmonton, the city's leading standard bearer for wild and woolly musical experimentation.

Last month I launched a series of blog posts about this great organization with a review of the NME-produced world premiere of some spooky Ligeti-inspired electroacoustic music by ex-pat Toronto composer Chiyoko Szlavnics by the Montreal-based Ensemble Transmission. And this past weekend I had the pleasure of attending NME's Now Hear This festival, focused on the work of Canadian modern music icon R. Murray Schafer.

While Schafer was the festival's main attraction, Now Hear This felt like as much of a tribute to Violet Archer owing to the prominent role of the newly formed Violet Collective, a new Edmonton ensemble formed under the aegis of NME and named in honour of the late musical experimenter. While I was only able to attend the Saturday program of the three-day festival, what I heard reminded me of why I have crazy love for my adopted hometown. Our winters may be awful and our alleged professional hockey team even worse, but when it comes to artistic experimentation, we've got it made. With local ensembles like the Violet Collective, the Windrose Trio (joined by dancer Gerry Morita from Mile Zero Dance), Pro Coro Canada and the Strathcona String Quartet as well as hometown sonic explorers Shawn Pinchbeck and Gene Kosowan doing their thing, it was the best local festival you probably didn't hear about.

Highlights? There wasn't much that wasn't one. Violet Collective reedwoman and U of A instructor Allison Balcetis demonstrated exactly what the saxophone in all its permutations is capable of, deploying the full saxophonic range from soprano to the rarely seen bass sax on Colin Labadie's minimalist Strata and Brazilian composer André Mestre's Passion of Christ-themed Sorrowful Mysteries. Chilean-born, Edmonton-based composer Raimundo Gonzalez used the space of Old Strathcona's Trinity Anglican Church like few others by piping (literally) the sound of violinist Tatiana Warczynski through electronically doctored copper pipes, creating otherworldly sounds that you truly had to be there to experience. And Vancouver composer Bob Pritchard conspired with Edmonton flutist Chenoa Anderson to deliver one of the day's most electrifying performances, the audiovisual Rebirth, featuring electronic armband-triggered surround sound effects and mesmerizing visuals.

The evening continued with some classic R. Murray Schafer vocal works courtesy of Edmonton choral group Pro Coro, most memorably the wonderful Magic Songs - a composition inspired by Schafer's famous hippie retreats in the Ontario backwoods (to which he would invite select friends and colleagues), replete with firefly chirps and Whitmanesque barbaric yawps. And then the evening got even wilder, delving into deep improvisational territory with bassist Thom Golub and dancer Kate Stashko, some very dark electroacoustic landscapes with Gene Kosowan's The Ghosts that Guard the Gateway featuring Allison Balcetis' otherworldly bass saxophone, and then some mad live improv by local lunatics Pigeon Breeders - featuring visuals by Montreal-based Edmonton filmmaker Lindsay McIntyre.

Edmonton's Pigeon Breeders (source: inb4track.wordpress.com)

Admittedly, I missed much of the R. Murray Schafer content on which this particular festival was focused. That said, the man's influence was all over the music on the menu. Now Hear This was, above all, about 'soundscapes', a concept that Schafer pioneered during his studies at Simon Fraser University in the 1960s, through which he sought to foster a deeper appreciation of sound as a whole by way of cutting and pasting sound from its original source to a 'musical' context (which he famously referred to as schizophonia). As with much of Schafer's output, the works on display at Now Hear This challenge the very notion of 'composition', and the late-night 'Astral Ghosts' session featuring Kosowan, Pigeon Breeders and others pushed well outside what many would consider to be 'music'.

But as experimental as the proceedings got, it never ceased to be fun. Fun and totally unpretentious, a fact that anyone who's been forced to sit through a "highly serious" program of serialist music by the likes of Schoenberg, Webern and so on. Somehow the program managed to exude a certain Edmonton-ness, which I can only characterize as self-deprecating cleverness. In this town you can be as smart as is humanly possible provided you never lord it over your audience. That's the hallmark of the Edmonton Fringe and many of our other festivals - we'll happily do 'challenging' but only if you don't throw unnecessary forbiddingness into the mix. And on this front New Music Edmonton and its incredible cast of artists hit it out of the park once again.

I'm sure Violet would have approved.

5 Reasons Why An Edmonton-Calgary High-Speed Train Is A Bad Idea

Source: Wired.com

This week has seen yet more discussion of the on-again, off-again proposed high-speed rail link between Alberta's two largest cities. In an article in yesterday's Calgary Herald, reporter James Wood contends that a number of Alberta MLAs are once again smiling on the concept. With real estate prices on the rise along the Calgary-Edmonton corridor, some proponents argue that the longer the province delays, the more expensive the project will become. Others argue that while the time is not yet right for the province to build it, the time will come when Alberta's population will be more than large enough to support it.

The last time I wrote about the proposed Alberta bullet train was back in 2010 in an article for Alberta Views magazine. At the time I voiced cautious support for the idea, noting that some countries (notably Norway and Finland) have made high-speed rail work in spite of having relatively sparse populations along similar lines to Alberta. And I still agree that low population, the most oft-heard argument against building a bullet train, is not necessarily a reason not to build it. After all, Alberta has a similar population base to both Scotland and the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, both of which have relatively fast trains (although not, strictly speaking, bullet trains). It could work here.

Nevertheless, the more I've looked at the issue, the more I've come to think that making a bullet train between Calgary and Edmonton a priority at this juncture would be very much misguided. As a longtime ex-pat in Japan I'm a huge fan of high-speed rail, but having thought a great deal about the issue I'm forced to conclude that it makes virtually zero sense here - especially as far as Edmonton is concerned. Here are my reasons why.

1) We don't have adequate urban transit infrastructure to support it.

There's a reason why high-speed rail works in places like France and Japan, or for that matter in Norway or Sweden. All of these countries' major cities have superb urban transportation systems, which efficiently move people from residential neighbourhoods to the major downtown rail hubs, where they can connect to fast intercity trains. We don't have anything like that here. Calgary is rather further ahead than Edmonton on the urban rail front, but both cities have a long way to go before they're on par with Munich, Seoul or Oslo. If we were to build a train tomorrow, you would have people driving to the train station on the departure end - only to arrive at the other end without a car and not a whole lot of other options for getting around.

2) The proposed system would benefit Calgary far more than Edmonton.

Edmonton and Calgary are very different cities. Calgary, with its relatively compact downtown and dense array of corporate headquarters, would attract its fair share of train travellers, who would be able to get off and do whatever they need to do downtown. Edmonton, by contrast, is an enormous sprawl, with the lion's share of economic activity situated in its periphery. How many Calgarians doing business in Edmonton are going to opt for a train that leaves them downtown, which still leaves them a trip to Sherwood Park or Leduc that, in rush hour traffic, will take them nearly as long as the train trip itself? Until Edmonton invests in far better public transportation and encourages far more business in its downtown core, this is going to be a flop for Edmonton.

3) The train would kill Edmonton's airport.

Here's the other problem for Edmonton. Edmonton International Airport, while most definitely on the ascendency, is still only half the size of Calgary International, which now has its sights set on an expanded Asia-Pacific role. The latest proposals for a Calgary-Edmonton high-speed rail link hint at a stop at YYC - but notably not YEG, which would make this train little more than a glorified extension to the C-Train. Even with a station stop at EIA, it would severely endanger the progress Edmonton has made in air service development, and without one it would be suicide for EIA. After all, why would anyone use EIA when you can simply take a bullet train to YYC - and get there in about as much time (and more comfortably) as you would taking the bus to EIA?

4) There are far less expensive ways of reducing single-occupancy car traffic on the QEII.

One thing that Edmontonians and Calgarians will doubtless agree on is that something needs to be done to reduce single-occupancy car traffic on the Queen Elizabeth II Highway - as well as within the respective cities. Here's an idea. How about creating dedicated bus lanes and up-gauging the Red Arrow bus system to an hourly articulated BRT service more resembling a train? Having ridden the Red Arrow myself, I can tell you that it's a wonderful service with all the comfort you'd expect from a rapid rail system - while costing a fraction of what building TGV tracks and stations would cost. And creating dedicated bus (and perhaps carpool) lanes on that highway would significantly shorten the travel time, while reducing vehicle emissions.

There are other strategies the province could take on this front. What about a serious campaign to promote car-sharing? Both Calgary and Edmonton now have car-share co-ops. There are also new technologies coming down the pike that could, by the time a high-speed rail system is in place, make such a system obsolete, like electric driverless cars. It's not hard to imagine a megaproject like this amounting to little more than an extremely expensive anachronism.

5) What about Fort McMurray?

The Calgary-Edmonton corridor is not the only transportation vector in the province with a serious need of overhaul. While exact numbers are hard to come by, travel between Fort McMurray and Edmonton has grown by epic proportions over the past decade, and in doing so is presenting a formidable transportation challenge. Fort McMurray International Airport is now easily the country's fastest growing airport, with growth far outpacing either Edmonton or Calgary, and Highway 63 between Edmonton and Fort McMurray has quickly become Alberta's most feared roadway. Passenger rail between Edmonton and Fort Mac once existed, and the rails are still there waiting to be used. And it wouldn't necessarily need be a full-fledged bullet train. Surely something along the lines of VIA's Windsor-Quebec City corridor trains would do the trick.

Those, in sum, are my thoughts on the subject. A bullet train between Edmonton and Calgary would, at this juncture at least, be a colossal misplaced priority, in my opinion. Improving public transit in both cities would not only improve overall quality of life in both but also probably do more for the environment than a high-speed intercity rail system would, as congested urban traffic creates rather more air pollution than intercity highway traffic does. Best, in my opinion, to concentrate capital spending on that while augmenting bus service between the two cities in a manner that is well integrated with their respective transit systems.

Moreover, as an Edmontonian I fear that, as things stand currently, an Edmonton-Calgary high-speed rail system would simply amount to a train "to Calgary" that would contribute very little to Edmonton, and potentially cause great harm to the city. Given the nature of Edmonton's geographic spread and its transportation deficit vis-a-vis Calgary, it's not hard to imagine a system such as this turning Edmonton into a glorified suburb of Calgary as opposed to a thriving city in its own right.

Agree or disagree? I would love to hear your thoughts.

NME Concert Review - Ensemble Transmission

Ensemble Transmission (Source: ensembletransmission.com)

This is the first in what I hope will be an ongoing series of performance reviews for New Music Edmonton. For those of you familiar with NME, this 25-year-old arts organization is Edmonton's leading promoter of new and experimental music, with a particular focus on new works by Canadian composers. By reaching out to new audiences through new performance spaces, NME continues to do what Edmonton's artists and arts promoters have always done: bring daring new creative works directly to the people without a shred of pretense or elitism.

That said, NME was, until recently, completely off my radar - until I was approached by NME President Ian Crutchley about reviewing its current concert series. That's the trouble with Edmonton: too many shows but not enough PR, with our artists generally too humble to blow their own proverbial trumpets. But as I argued in my review of Mile Zero Dance's most recent Salon Series performance earlier this month, most Edmontonians have no idea what an artistic treasure trove our city is. Consider this review series my own humble attempt to do it justice.

Last night's NME concert at Muttart Hall featured Ensemble Transmission, a dynamite sextet from Montreal and the current ensemble in residence at the historic Chapelle du Bon-Pasteur in the heart of the city's arts district. (Montreal's arts and culture organizations have been the saviour of the city's innumerable old churches in an era where barely anybody attends mass anymore.) Founded in 2008, Ensemble Transmission consists of flutist Guy Pelletier, clarinettist Lori Freedman, violinist Alain Giguère, cellist Julie Trudeau, percussionist Julien Grégoire and pianist Brigitte Poulin - and for this performance was joined by Toronto-born, Berlin-based electro-acoustic composer Chiyoko Szlavnics on live electronics for two of her new works.

The show, while perhaps not for everybody's tastes, was nonetheless very eclectic. The opening piece Reimsix by clarinettist Freedman seemed to consist of a series of prickly, cut-up statements (none more than 30 seconds in length) with shrieking sforzandos and tonal extremes more reminiscent of Ornette Coleman or Albert Ayler than of the avant-garde classical cannon. This was followed by Omaggio a Burri by Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino (probably the best known of the bunch), a delightful trio for alto flute, bass clarinet and violin featuring various extended techniques, including percussive effects by the two wind players.

The third piece Feuilles à travers les cloches (Leaves across the bells) by French composer Tristan Murail was among the concert's highlights, a haunting, spectral work clearly inspired by Debussy for flute, violin, cello and piano that seemed to eerily capture the cold darkness of Edmonton in February with its dark piano intervals, chilling flute vibrato and incessant violin pizzicati. This was followed by more new music from Italy, Il volto della notte (The Features of the Night) by Paolo Perezzani, a playful and sarcastic trio for flute, bass clarinet and piano that swings from pure cacophony to sublime lyricism.

Chiyoko Szlavnics (Source: anechoicpictures.com)

After a short break the concert continued by two new works by ex-pat Canadian soundscape artist Chiyoko Szlavnics, Openings I and Constellations IV, both world premieres commissioned by New Music Edmonton. In stark contrast to the dense atonalism that characterized most of the first half, Szlavnics' twin works were characterized by sparse intersecting planes inspired by artwork - very much reminiscent of Ligeti's works from the 1960s and 1970s. Constellations IV was particularly striking, a crystalline creation that seemed to conjure up the winter night skies of northern Alberta.

The performance concluded with another Italian work, Encore / Da Capo by Luca Francesconi (a pupil of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio), which completely shifted the tone again to almost a party atmosphere with a toe-tapping pulse and dramatic crescendos in which the sextet managed to sound like a full orchestra.

For the record, I enjoyed the performance much more than Edmonton Journal reviewer Mark Morris did. While I agree with him that the works performed were less groundbreaking than they were a throwback to the avant-garde chamber music of the 1960s, I found the performance to be thoroughly warm and engaging. I would like to have heard it in a cozier, less staid performance space (perhaps the UniThéâtre), but there are only so many concert spaces in this city for all the ensembles and troupes lining up to use them. My feeling is that any lack of warmth or humour on display last night, such as Morris alleges, was much more to do with the venue than the performance itself.

Like Mile Zero, New Music Edmonton should be applauded for bringing challenging art to the masses via social media, inventive choices in venues and sheer grim determination - not to mention the unwavering support of backers like the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Edmonton Arts Council, CJSR Radio and, in this case, the Wee Book Inn - and beloved Edmonton literary institution with three locations in town. While the music of Ensemble Transmission is certainly not for all tastes (and indeed not all the music they do is up my alley), there are far more people out there interested in this sort of out-there music and art than there were in the audience, and it actually wasn't too bad a turnout for a crappy Friday night in February in Edmonton.

Edmonton may be cold and sprawled out and have inadequate public transportation, but don't let anyone tell you we're uncultured here. And if you live in Edmonton and are a fan of out-there musical experimentation - and aren't already acquainted with New Music Edmonton (as I wasn't until recently), please check out their website as well as their Twitter and Facebook pages. Groups like this need all the support they can get.

Mile Zero Dance Will Save Us All (When The Next Great Depression Comes)

When it comes to the arts, most Edmontonians have no idea how good they've got it in their own backyard. Sure we've got our summer festivals and our world-renowned symphony orchestra and a Ukrainian dance troupe or two, but that barely touches it. Edmonton's arts scene is as lush and untamed as the vegetation of its river valley (the longest interconnected urban park system in North America), and on any given Saturday night you can walk into any given theatre or live house and be pretty sure of hearing something either inspired or highly skilled or, more often than not, both.

Consider Edmonton's own Mile Zero Dance. One of the city's best kept secrets for over a quarter century, MZD is its own festival - and one that doesn't shut down during the summer. For those who haven't had the pleasure of seeing them, MZD is a dance troupe best known for their irreverent avant-garde performances (often in public places) that have ranged in style from the NYC José Limón school in the 1980s to the macabre world of Japanese ankoku butoh and Noguchi Taiso under the stewardship of current artistic director Gerry Morita. They've also - with very little fanfare - emerged as one of the greatest promotional platforms for the city's most outlandish artists, both within and outside the medium of dance, through their cabaret-esque 'Salon' performance series. For a newcomer looking to sample Edmonton's wildest creative output, Mile Zero's Salons are a great place to start.

MZD's latest Salon-series performance, The Great Depression, was held last night on a suitably bleak late-January Edmonton evening at L'UniThéâtre, the cultural and artistic hub of francophone Edmonton. The theme: depression, both the 'great' one and the psychological condition by the same name, and how great they are. Yes, both of them. At a time when Edmonton's well-heeled denizens are plotting their latest escape to Manzanillo or Maui and the rest are commiserating about the frigid darkness on Facebook, MZD urges us, in Morita's words, to "find new ways to break the spell of winter and embrace our creative collective with the talented artists among us." In other words, creativity will keep us warm. And if The Great Depression is any indication, it certainly can. At least in this town.

Dance conspirator Jen Mesch (dance-conspiracy.org)

The show opened with "Psychology of a Strip Tease" by MZD fellow traveller Jeannie Vanderkhove, which featured a remarkably compelling 'reverse' stripper routine (yes, involving getting dressed and complete with backwards burlesque music). This was followed by a very matter-of-fact appearance by Edmonton poet laureate Mary Pinkoski, who delivered two of her trademark poetic torrents on the show's subject matter.

This was followed by a brutally intense dance performance by Edmonton's own Jen Mesch (of the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy) entitled "Anna and the Other Anna" featuring the noise soundscape accompaniment of Edmonton-based sound artist Scott Smallwood - a performance that more than any captured the grinding blackness that I've always associated with the dread word 'depression'. The first half finished with a lecture-turned-barn dance party led by University of Alberta folklorist and accomplished Ukrainian folkdancer Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky, which ended up with over half the audience on stage recreating a 1930s-style prairie diaspora hoedown.

The second half of The Great Depression kicked off with a Chaplinesque trapeze performance by the very talented Edmonton circus performer Annie Dugan followed by an experimental film montage entitled AurA centred on derelict farm equipment by filmmaker aAron munson - with a soundtrack evocative of Boards of Canada's woolier moments.Following this was a montage of archival photos from Dirty Thirties Edmonton courtesy of the Alberta Provincial Archives (which MC Kristine Nutting described as "like a prison, except more fun"), an interlude that allowed local noise punk deviants Rubber Nurse to set up their elaborate stage setup consisting of 'prepared' guitars, electronic gear and a 1980s-vintage school overhead projector, featuring a procession of night terror-inspired transparencies. Rubber Nurse's nerve-jangling performance "Sister Missing" was followed by the prodigious and absurdly charming Edmonton rapper/multi-instrumentalist Mitchmatic, who delivered his own heartfelt take on the titular subject to close the show.

Gentleman rapper Mitchmatic (dealerofpeopleemotions.com)

The Great Depression was more than simply a good show. It was akin to an audio-visual mix tape that Edmonton could hand to any other city with a reputation for artiness and knock its proverbial socks off. The show made me think of another Nordic city that Edmontonians have been crushing on of late, namely the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, which starting in early March will be a non-stop flight away from Edmonton International Airport. Thanks in no small part to the international success of alt-pop pixie Björk and the molasses-paced post-rock of Sigur Rós, the pint-sized Icelandic capital has become magnet for hipsters and genuine freaks alike. Are we as cool as Reykjavik here? Well, we don't speak a living fossil language little changed from Old Norse, nor do we have glaciers or thermal pools within an easy day trip of the city. And unlike Iceland, our winters are genuinely bone-chilling. But in artistic terms, surely we're in the same league.

We are that cool here. We just don't know it. While the Make Something Edmonton campaign has done an admirable job raising local awareness of our truly creative and outside-the-box nature, we're still too hung up on being an Oil City, a northern Houston or Abu Dhabi, and have yet to truly embrace our inner Reykjavik or Berlin. But the time will come when we're going to need to. Iceland experienced its own miniature version of the Great Depression in 2008 when its entire banking sector imploded and the country teetered on the edge of bankruptcy - while its arts scene surged, aided by an influx of currency devaluation-driven overseas tourism. Ditto with Berlin, the capital of the beleaguered hyperinflation-plagued Weimar Republic, capital of cabaret and all things racy in the 1920s. Economic history clearly indicated that our runaway oil and gas economy will eventually sputter. And when it does we'll need other things to fall back on.

If we're smart, we'll realize that our arts and culture sector, which unfailingly injects vast swaths of capital into our economy on less than a shoestring, is one of our greatest economic assets. It's also a sector that always seems to thrive when everything else is in the crapper, while simultaneously making bad times a little more bearable. Eventually our runaway oil and gas leviathan will grind to a halt, either slowly or precipitously, driven by plummeting world prices that will once again render bitumen processing unprofitable, and possibly exacerbated by another global recession. It'll suck, but so long as we continue to nurture our arts community we'll always have the likes of Mile Zero Dance waiting for us with open arms, ready to teach us how to enjoy the coming depression.

Leaflets from heaven, courtesy of the Provincial Archives (photo by author)

6 Potential New Sister City Partnerships for Edmonton

Commemorative stamp featuring Edmonton's Harbin Gate (source: CTV News)

Edmonton, it is often said, has an identity problem. In spite of the fact that the city is regularly ranked as among the best places in the world to live, it is still a place that most of humanity has never heard of or is barely aware of. And most of the people who know of it, if we're honest, probably think it's a boring, colourless frozen wasteland whose most interesting features are a giant shopping mall and a has-been hockey team.

In defence of the rest of the world, however, it should be noted that Edmontonians have, until recently, not done a particularly good job dispelling this notion. The latter half of the twentieth century saw the Alberta capital fall asleep at the wheel as its downtown core died, its stature as a transportation hub faded, its once vibrant community of corporate head offices disappeared and Calgary became the uncontested economic engine of the province. All the while, Edmonton's notoriously self-deprecating denizens failed to trumpet the city's enduring treasures - its festivals, orchestras, green spaces, universities and research institutes, world-leading construction companies etc. - and as such Edmonton became Canada's Lost City of Atlantis, somehow just off the map.

Fortunately, the Edmonton zeitgeist has changed dramatically since the dawn of the Mandel era in 2004. Edmonton's downtown is vibrant again, the airport is booming, the city's architecture is bolder and more imaginative than ever, public transit is at last being prioritized and the economy continues to thrive. Nevertheless, Edmonton's dream of becoming a global trade and logistics hub continues to be hindered by the city's lack of global profile. People simply don't know who we are as a city.

There are many things we could be doing as a city to change that, some of which might seem frivolous on the surface. One possible tactic would be to expand current our sister city partnerships. While many cities have numerous city twinning arrangements, Edmonton has only four such partnerships, specifically with Gatineau, Quebec, Nashville, Tennessee, Harbin, China and Wonju, South Korea. Of these, Edmonton's partnership with Harbin, the economic hub of China's northeastern Heilongjang Province, has proven the most economically fruitful, with the two cities signing a tourism and business cooperation agreement in 2011.

What other cities around the world would befit a sister city arrangement with Edmonton? Here are six suggestions.


1) Adelaide, Australia

Source: hubaustralia.com

With the notable exception of its famously sublime climate, Adelaide, the capital city of the state of South Australia, is arguably the world city that most closely resembles Edmonton. Its population is virtually identical to Edmonton's, as is its status as Australia's fifth largest city. It also serves a similar transportation and logistics role to Edmonton as the main air gateway to Australia's vast mining operations in the country's geographic centre. Want more parallels? It's also home to a thriving arts and culture scene, including the biggest fringe festival in the southern hemisphere. And as I pointed out in my recent post on Edmonton's airport predicament, it's also a city that has faced some of the same hurdles as Edmonton in building connections with the outside world. Adelaide - it's more or less Edmonton in the subtropics.


2) Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine



Source: Wikipedia

Why the hell do we not have a sister city in the ancestral homeland of at least one out of every ten Edmontonians? While other Canadian cities have entered into civic partnerships with Ukrainian counterparts (Toronto with Kiev, Winnipeg with Lviv and Vancouver with Odessa), Edmonton, one of the most Ukrainian cities outside the Motherland has notably not done so. The central Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk would seem to be an obvious choice. Not only does it not yet have a Canadian sister city, this riverside metropolis is of a similar size and economic profile to Edmonton. It is also a major educational centre in Ukraine, whose many post-secondary institutions include the National Mining University, a world-leader in resource extraction technology.


3) Concepción, Chile

Source: ab-imagensincriveis.blogspot.com

While it scarcely compares to the city's Ukrainian contingent, Edmonton's 3,000-strong Chilean community, most of whom came as refugees during the early Pinochet years, maintains an outsized presence within the city's Latin American population. Chilean accents dominate Spanish-language radio in Edmonton and empanadas and ceviche share shelf space with perogies and kubasa in the city's 'ethnic' grocery stores. Which Chilean city would be the best fit with Edmonton? The southern city of Concepción, with its metro population of just over one million, its renown as a "university town" (it's home to 15 universities) and its thriving music scene, would be a strong candidate.


4) Astana, Kazakhstan



Source: Wikipedia

A little-known fact about the Ukrainian diaspora of the late nineteenth century is that at the same time thousands of Ukrainian farmers migrated to the west, ultimately settling in the Canadian prairie provinces, an equally substantial contingent migrated eastward, settling in the steppes of what is now Akmola province in northeastern Kazakhstan. Today Kazakhstan is an independent republic that bears more than a passing similarity to Alberta, with its mountain and prairie vistas, extreme climate, multiethnic population and fast-growing economy dominated by oil and gas. At the centre of Akmola province is the country's new capital city of Astana, Kazakhstan's northern metropolis - and its Edmonton. (Almaty, the country's largest city to the south, is very much its Calgary.) Edmonton's architecture may not be as garish as Astana's, but the cities' roles, and the countries' historical and economic parallels, would make for an intriguing pairing.


5) Pasig City, Philippines

Source: Wikipedia

Of Alberta's total immigrant population of around 644,000, nearly 70,000 - about 11 per cent of the total - are of Philippine origin, making them the largest single immigrant group in the province. Edmonton's Filipino population is over 26,000, representing nearly three per cent of the city's total population. If Ukraine represents the city's ancestral past, the Philippines clearly represents its present. So who would we partner with in the land of Jeepneys and adobo chicken? With Winnipeg partnered with the Manila proper and Vancouver with Quezon City, that leaves Makati and Pasig among major Metro Manila cities without a Canadian partner. Makati, with its major agglomeration of banks and corporate head offices, might be a better match with Calgary, with Pasig, a major educational centre, home to the highly respected University of Asia and the Pacific, would be a logical partner for Edmonton.


6) Juba, South Sudan

Source: ssdnnetwork.com

Edmonton's increasingly diverse citizenry includes around 3,000 immigrants from the recently independent republic of South Sudan. The vast majority came to Canada as refugees in the late-1990s and early 2000s during the worst of Sudan's torturously long and cruel north-south civil war. As a relatively new contingent from a country still beset by instability and destitution, Edmonton's South Sudanese population retains a strong vested interest in their beleaguered homeland. Some have even returned to South Sudan to help set up infrastructure, while others continue to lobby on behalf of the country's people, which last month faced renewed unrest. A sister city partnership with the capital city of this young nation, especially one with strong ties to Alberta, would send a strong signal of solidarity to a country still struggling to survive.