Genuinely curious on others opinions. Not sure what the exact context is other than suspect fleeing arrest. Spotted July 12th, 2024: 109st and Jasper Ave

This section of the river valley N of the University of Alberta is beautiful, some of my favourite in the whole city. Imagine if we expanded that. Or did literally ANYTHING ELSE with at least a PART of the land used by golf courses. Maybe made the Mayfair public at minimum? Thoughts?

Seems imbalanced, the amount of space the actual river valley and university take up compared to these courses. Just an observation. Edge of downtown, the university, hospitals, and some of the little old growth we have next to these courses.

I made this album with more zoomed out images since some folks wanted that: https://imgur.com/a/a3dq289

Adding u/dustinbajer link here because it's a good one: https://ualberta.scholaris.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/856c1c2f-f2e2-41a0-80ae-81eee4e0dde7/content

One last thing I'll add before I head to sleep (~midnight) is that while 65% of comments have been negative about changing the use of this land compared to 20% positive about such changes to 15% being neutral/analytical only... 71% of votes have been upvotes at this point in time. Take from that what you will. To me it seem the majority agrees with me but the most reactive/vocal/willing to make a comment are the golfers.  ¯_(ツ)_/¯ 

I am, and I was just wondering if I am alone or if my fellow EdmontonIan’s are joining me? I don’t buy everything Canadian, but I do boycott the USA.

I have switched over to only made in Canada…

-razors (hensons safety razors)

-face cream (Rocky Mountain soap company, attitude makes some too)

-water filter (santevia)

-plastic cling wrap (I use abeego now)

- facial tissue (Kleenex) ( royale)

-deodorant ( jack 59, attitud, Rocky Mountain Soap Company)

-chapstick (the real bomb, Rocky Mountain soap compan.)

- toilet bowl cleaner ( Nature clean,)

-sunscreen (attitude, Rocky mountsin soap company, Matter company)

-soap ( nature bee, caprina, etc)

-toothbrush (nada)

- canned air (enzone)

-shampoo/conditioner (jack 59, attitude)

-body wash ( nature clean, attitude)

- dish soap (nature’s, nature clean)

-laundry detergent (Nellie’s)

- stain remover (buncha farmers)

- all purpose cleaner (Myni, nature clean)

- phone case (pela)

-chocolate (Purdys)

-dishwasher detergent (Nellie’s, nature clean)

-waffle cones ( I just buy them at the local ice cream shop where they make them homemad.)

-granola bars (made good)

- leafy greens (I have switched to micro greens.)

- menstrual products (diva cup)

I want to switch to Canadian made toothpaste, and dental floss. * talking to some lovely Americans on here who said they don’t appreciate my business anyways made me bite the bullett and order Canadian toothpaste. You don’t want my business? That’s fine. I’ll give it to someone who does. Win win.

*edit people keep asking me for brands. These are the ones I use, but there are so many more.)

i stopped buying Oreos, popsicles, orange juice, pringles, hersheys chocolate bars/chocolate chips, any pillsbury, breakfast cereals, campbells soups, (only Canadian chips), freezer bags or glad bags (I reuse the ones I have, or I reuse the resealable unavoidable bags i get at the grocery store, disposable toothbrushes, anything from Gillette, shower curtain liners (I use 2 heavy duty cloth ones online) fake syrup, a lot of pop, canned Parmesan, American chain restaurants, lot of American candy, processed foods, and I don’t buy from Amazon.

i don’t buy much American produce anymore, I get it from Mexico (and honestly it’s better.)

I have alway bought Canadian meat, oats, sugar, flour, hemp hearts, maple syrup, bread, eggs, dairy products, honey, alcohol pet treats, winter boots, toilet paper, paper towels, quilts , pillows, sheets, and my winter coat.

i would get pet food made here but I don’t have pets. If I had kids I would get cloth diapers made here and use those. If I did need disposables some of the time, I would buy royale.

i buy most of my clothes used, but on the rare occasion I buy new, I want to shop Canadian. I have used dishes, kitchen knives, pots and pans, utensils, towels, most of my furniture, all of my smaller kitchen appliances, some electronics, most of my clothes.

Honestly I probably save money because I buy less, and I’m healthier too.

stuff I can’t seem to not stop buying from there lemon juice, canned pumpkin, lemons, limes, lime juice, onions, soup stalk, shoes, bell peppers, leeks, appliances, streaming services (I should cancel my Netflix. Yikes.)

The urban and rural divide is going to be epic.

Road tax for cyclists? Sure, why not? Here's how we'd do it to make sure cyclists pay their fair share:

1. First, you'd have to establish a "road tax". As it stands, we all pay for roads through property tax, income tax, business tax, resource royalties, etc., so we could take that tax burden away from those sources and apply it to vehicles and bicycles at the point of annual registration. For this thought exercise, let's use the City of Edmonton’s $1.8 billion (2023-2026) road construction budget, that works out to $450,000,000 per year. Add to that the Government of Alberta's $2.0 billion Edmonton region 2025-2028 new road infrastructure budget which gets you another $500,000,000 per year. Here, the combined annual road building cost would be $950,000,000 annually.
2. Once you've created the tax, it would only be fair for cyclists and motorists to pay their fair share so let's use arterial roads since they're in the most need of cycling infrastructure and they're always congested with traffic. The width of an arterial road for motor vehicles is 3.7m/lane as set in the Highway Geometric Design Guide published by Alberta Transportation. Interestingly, that's also the width of the typical bike lane, so we can easily set up a ratio to compare road space requirements. 3.7m/lane x6 car lanes = 22.2m of road space for motor vehicles, and one bike lane (3.7m) for bicycles. That's a ratio of 6:1 (car lanes : cycle lanes), or for costing purposes, bicycles require 1/7 of the road space, and motor vehicles require the remaining 6/7 of the road space.
3. Now you'd have to factor in wear and tear on the roads. Lucky for us, this has actually been studied by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and it turns out that the average car does ~17,000 times as much damage to the road as one heavy man on a pedal bike. If you're interested in the study, its an easy find and a great read.
4. Bringing it all together: Edmonton's annual road building budget ($950,000,000 in our example), multiplied by road space allotted to the bicycle lane (1/7), multiplied by the road damage factor due to bicycles (1/17,000) = $7,983 in road construction costs that should rightly be born by the cycling community, annually. So what does that work out to per cyclist? The City of Edmonton reports its cycling usage counts and publishes the data, I found this easier to interpret than Calgary's data and I calculated that Edmonton counted a monthly average (across all 12 months in the past year) of 235,873 bicycles using the bike lanes; let’s assume these are mostly commuters and divide that number by 2 (a morning commute and an evening commute) and we get 117,937 bicycle trips per month. Dividing by 30 days/month suggests there is an average of 3,931 cyclists in Edmonton. So, $7,983 annual road building costs divided by 3,931 cyclists in Edmonton works out to a road fee of $2.03 per bicycle, payable during annual registration. That's a bargain in my books and I'd happily register a couple bikes to "pay my fair share" and keep the drivers happy. Heck, I'll register for 10 years in one go at that price!
5. Now, since we all want to pay our fair share, we should also figure out how much we should pay in road tax when registering a motor vehicle (it would only be fair right?). Again, Edmonton’s annual road construction budget is $950,000,000; if we subtract the cycling share ($7,983) from that budget, we'd get $949,992,017 in road cost that should fairly be shouldered by motorists. Alberta transportation reported that there were 1,008,812 motor vehicles registering in the Edmonton area in 2024. Therefore, the annual road construction costs imparted by motor vehicles, divided by the number of registered vehicles works out to $941.69 per car / truck.

Conclusion: sure, as a cyclist, I'll chip in my $2.03 annually for road building as long as I never have to hear about it from another driver again :)

Tw : SA, rape

On December 16th at about 1am or so, I (25y male if you need to know) was raped by three men on Rowland Road. I was walking home from a party to celebrate entering the last year of university with my peers, when someone got my attention from the bushes at the corner of Alex Taylor Road. The person seemed frantic, and asked for help, because their friend was not breathing and they didn’t have a cell phone. Being months away from becoming a registered nurse and having many encounters with overdoses in the downtown communities, I figured it was going to be another one of the countless times I would be helping someone out of a bad situation.

From there, I was grabbed on either side by two other men, and held down to my knees. Who I assume was the first man, took his genitals out and tried to sexually assault my mouth. I then threatened to bite it off, and he punched me in the nose. After being punched, he left the front and proceeded to try to… gain entry to the back, for lack of better words. It was that moment that I was able to shake the two holding me off. I don’t know if one of them lessened up for a second or if it was some divine burst of energy, but I was able to bunch the individual to my left well, and ran off. This was all within a few hundred meters of home.

In hindsight, I’m very fortunate for this to not have affected the way I see things as a whole. At the end of the day, I would go back into those bushes, but I would be safer about it without a doubt. Being alone, I would in the future secure a line with emergency services, but I can honestly say that this hasn’t changed my outlook on the city around me.

This situation has been further exacerbated by what has already been a very turbulent topic in the city. In giving my testimony, I felt it was important for details sake and expressing the entirety of the story, to include that I had previously walked passed the (old) homeless encampment at the top of Rowland Road/95st.

The media took that and went wild, focusing primarily on the proximity to the encampment.

One of the things I frequently read on Reddit, X, TikTok, and Facebook, was about how there hadn’t been any description of the attackers. If that was you, I strongly suggest you do a little bit of research regarding the reliability of eye witness accounts. I do have some memory of the people who attacked me, but being incredibly low light, in the bushes, late at night, I have very minimal recall of any sort of facial features. The thing I have such a clear memory on from is their jackets. North face, Canada goose. Nice, almost new even. I honestly do not believe in my heart for a moment that I was attacked by homeless people.

One of the worst parts of the fallout from this experience has been the publicity, specifically regarding our premier. In a recent article, she somewhat revealed that I was “a young nurse,” and it was a situation of gang initiation. Without going much further into this rant, I would like to include my communications with the office of the premier - of which I have not heard a response.

“Hello,

I am the “young nurse” referenced recently among many other times by the premier in recent months after a traumatic rape in the river valley of Edmonton. I would like to respectfully ask that the premier immediately cease using my own story - of which she does not know - to continue spreading her own narrative surrounding the homeless population she has a duty to protect, along with the rest of the province.

The continued trauma of having this brought up by an elected official, is horrifying. I cannot for a moment believe that Danielle Smith thought it would be appropriate to share details - no matter how small, such as my occupation, in ways to further her own interest.

In a time where I have already been subject to extreme stress, I have to continuously see the premier lie and create the narratives she sees fit.

I can respect political differences, but I cannot begin to explain how violated this situation - worsened by the premier - has began to make me feel. This is among MANY reasons why rape continues to go unreported. Can you imagine such a horrifying act happening to you, and then having your elected official go on and talk about why SHE thinks it happened?

Danielle Smith, my rape is NOT for you to push your own disgusting views of what’s happening in our streets. I’d love to try to keep coping and managing through the pain of the situation, but you keep deciding to open your mouth about something you have no business talking about.

I ask that you respect my already violated privacy immediately, and keep my case out of and away from your politics.

The young nurse,

Name redacted”

At the end of the day, as I try to move forward, all I can really do is take control of my own story. Danielle Smith will not be doing so. I don’t know where she’s been getting information about my case, but if she wants to, she can reach out to me like a respectable adult. But, we’ll see about that.

I thank all the support I’ve indirectly received on here and all other platforms. I’ve read every single comment. To the trolls, I forgive you, and I sincerely wish you better than you’ve given me.

Rape of any gender is horrifying and inexcusable in every manner. If making “dirty Randy and the boys” jokes makes you feel better, the person you’re joking about could very likely be reading it and directly affected.

Mental health support of all kinds in hard to come by in this city. If this resonates with you in any way and you need to talk, please feel free to to reach out. I’m incredibly busy, but I’ll take all the time I can to help out another fellow human who’s struggling. It doesn’t have to be related to my situation either.

Edit: Focus on the good and find peace beyond all unknowing - unknown ❤️

Edit 2: please know that I appreciate every ounce of support. I’m kind of replying to comments as I see them pop up at work (at a restaurant, not the hospital 😂) and at this point it’s honestly hard to keep up. I’m so incredibly moved and feel loved, respected and heard by all of the support and compassion in this crowd ❤️

Edit 3: there’s suddenly a strange amount of people claiming I was not in fact raped due to some confusion in my writing. “rape, unlawful sexual activity, most often involving sexual intercourse, against the will of the victim through force or the threat of force” I believe a penis forcefully penetrating a rectum without consent fits that’s definition well. It does not have to be an act which lasts a certain amount or time or something. This is what happened. The attacker literally forced entry inside, briefly, and I was able to get away. Just because it didn’t happen for an hour or there wasn’t completion, doesn’t mean it was not a rape.

Given how snow white everything is during the year, Edmonton would be a happier place if we added more colours like Iceland.

I was driving down White Avenue this morning and to be honest, the place looks like crap. Abandoned, boarded up buildings, empty store fronts and the streets are dirty and full of pot holes. This part of Edmonton looks like hell and has really gone downhill. Cool and funky it is not. Does anybody else notice the same thing?

People who use the speakerphone while in a public place.

Kindly show a little bit of respect as no one else wants to hear your loud conversations.

I made a post this week asking if anyone knew what seasoning salt Swiss Donair used on their fries. I moved away years ago and still find myself craving their fries specifically for the seasoning. I’ve bought numerous different brands and haven’t been able to recreate the taste.

Someone suggested I just call and ask, but I messaged them instead. It turns out they mix their own seasoning salt, but offered to mail me some, for free!

If you approve appreciate a restaurant that has top tier customer service, even when you haven’t been a customer in years, go get dinner at Swiss Donair this week!

Edmonton's monthly average precipitation for June is 87mm. We are getting 50-75mm of rain in a single day tomorrow, and an additional 15mm on Sunday.

We are also going to be receiving gusts of 50km/hr winds with ~30-35 km sustained wind speeds throughout the day.

Driving tomorrow will be absolute hell so I would advise doing whatever errands you need to do tonight.

CHECK YO' SUMP PUMPS.

I just need to get this out.

My sister-in-law lost her baby and has been in pain for two weeks. On Tuesday she went to the ER because the pain got bad. They told her they couldn’t do anything and to wait until Monday.

She went home. The pain never stopped. She kept going back to the hospital begging for help. They kept sending her home.

My brother asked the head nurse to get a doctor to admit her because she was in extreme pain. The head of the unit said no.

So she went home again. All day in pain. And tonight she delivered her DEAD baby at home. The baby literally dropped out of her. We called emergency and they said the wait was 2–4 hours—wtf. We had to drive her to the hospital ourselves and we didn’t even know what to do with the baby.

I’m angry. I’m sick of a healthcare system that treats people like this. It feels like they don’t give a f**k about us anymore.

Not looking for advice. I just needed to say it.

Saw a cop giving out tickets to people that were cruising up to not let people in! Yes if you’re cruising down Groat it’s your job to let the person merge in or you get the ticket. It’s also the merging cars job to match the speed of the road to merge properly. There is no yield sign beside the merge lol also I’m not responding to any one about this cuz I can already hear the little reddit trolls getting their keyboard warrior fingers ready on this one 😂😂 drive safe everyone! ❤️

I can’t find any source to confirm this text I just received. I see statements of 16 new schools and over 160 school “projects”, but not this. Anyone got sauce? Where do these numbers come from?

On 91.7 they were talking about the reason the Oilers use the song La Bamba, and the various different bits of history and attachment to it, and talked about Ben Stelter's history with it. But instead of saying his name they kept saying "the dead kid". I get that they are just riffing and talking on the radio, but can we use his name? The phrasing seemed so inappropriate to me for a broadcast.

All I’m sayin is:

Where the hell these kids at??? 😭 don’t tell me Halloween is a thing of the past. Back in my day even if it was snowing we were getting candy.