Survival Guide For New Arrivals in Your City

[SignalHillHiker]

Well it's definitely more like what you've described than not. But there's a realist element as opposed to just pessimist.

I think the humour in this shows what I mean. This would be a typical urban POV: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=psaDyiR0pHw

But yeah mostly the same. That police shooting? Everyone says we're Detroit. July worst in a generation? Everyone says it's like this every year. Federal political apathy (generally the lowest turnout of the provinces) is another symptom of it. This is definitely something we have in common with you guys.

[1overcosc]

Kingstonians are the opposite. Most think this city's economy is booming when it's actually stagnant.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

I think the humour in this shows what I mean. This would be a typical urban POV: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=psaDyiR0pHw

Is it just me, or is that less of a Newfoundland accent, and more of a Lucky Charms leprechaun accent?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Is it just me, or is that less of a Newfoundland accent, and more of a Lucky Charms leprechaun accent?

Love this formulation!

What about the "Irish Spring soap commercial accent"?

Leaves you feeling clean and fresh, a long long time!

[SignalHillHiker]

She's enunciating quite clearly and there's way more of a theatrical flow/emphasis than would be natural, but the actual pronunciation is typical. It's not even an especially strong accent.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

She's enunciating quite clearly and there's way more of a theatrical flow/emphasis than would be natural, but the actual pronunciation is typical. It's not even an especially strong accent.

I stand corrected!

[jigglysquishy]

Saskatoon

1. The east side has a reputation for being wealthy and the west side has a reputation for being really poor. That may have been true 25 years ago, but the inner west side is booming and the far west suburbs are some of the wealthiest in the cit.

2. The inner west side neighbourhood of Riversdale is easily the most hip place in the province, but is still in the process of gentrifying. The whole process has been very fast. As recently as 2010 it was the ghetto of the city, but is now the coolest neighbourhood in the province. Every time I walk through I see some new urban development.

3. Traffic here is terrible for a region of this size (310,000) and it's normal for people in the far flung suburbs/commuter towns (Evergreen, Warman, Martensville) to have commutes of 30-45 minutes.

4. The core neighbourhoods are very walkable and most of the interesting things in the city are within a 30 minute walk of each other.

5. It gets cold in the winter. But with long johns, a toque, boots, and a proper winter coat you can easily walk year round. I certainly do.

6. Transit here is poor at best unless you live along a major corridor. If you do (8th street, 22nd Street west) then you get bus service every 10-15 minutes. The suburbs you get service every 30 minutes on-peak and 60 minutes/no service off-peak.

7. Our night life is limited to pubs and dirty clubs. The pubs are fantastic, but our clubs attract a really rough crowd. Compared to places like Regina, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, we really have terrible clubs. Again, great lovely pub scene with lots of patios.

8. The Meewasin Valley (river valley) is an absolute gem and runs throughout the entire city. If you're into hiking or cycling I can't recommend this enough. I'd also recommend the Wanuskewin centre. Cool Aboriginal exhibits and the best place in the area to get Aboriginal food.

9. Saskatoon has undergone a crazy growth period. We've gone from 255,000 to 310,000 since 2010. A lot of people in the city refuse to believe it, but you can tell with all the new businesses/faces/buildings ever year. I constantly hear from people that the boom is over, despite growth still hovering around 2.5% this year.

10. Racism against natives is very common, but is mostly limited to the suburbs and the older generation.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

She's enunciating quite clearly and there's way more of a theatrical flow/emphasis than would be natural, but the actual pronunciation is typical. It's not even an especially strong accent.

That's a St. John's Irish accent (also theatrical like you said), but not a typical Newfoundland accent.

[kwoldtimer]

I don't think I could ever get used to a town where you have to wear long johns, a toque, boots, and a proper winter coat to walk year round.

[Harrij]

No one's done Edmonton yet, so I'll take a shot at it. I'm sure someone in this forum could hammer it down better than me, so feel free to add anything that's too Edmonton-y to leave out.

1. Despite being an very auto centric city, the public transit here is decent. The LRT line can take you from the far SW to the NE, with a new SE line opening sometime in the next fiv- uh i mean twenty years. There's a good number of bus routes of varying frequency but you can generally rely on bus transit to get you into the core if you give yourself enough time. Satellite cities such as Sherwood Park and St. Albert have bus service into the city as well.

2. While boasting a good selection of mature core neighbourhoods and an underrated, improving set of urban areas, Edmonton is pretty suburban once you leave the core. There's a lot of power centres, strip malls and commercial/industrial districts that swallow up a lot of land and creates kind of a ring effect near the two main urban freeways, Whitemud (south) and Yellowhead (north). Naturally these freeways almost act as divider between the mature semi-urban neighbourhoods, and the more suburban ones.

3. The river valley is borderline incredible and noted as one of the largest urban parkland areas in the world. It's a bit lacking in terms of modern amenities and creative urban interaction but the lushness of it all can make it feel like you're nowhere near a city of 1 million+ people. Multi-use trails, picnic areas and golf courses galore. There's also a few ravines and creeks that creep into the suburban parts of the city as well, mostly on the south and west sides. Properties that surround Edmonton's green ribbon(s) are generally mid-to-high income residential.

4. Safety isn't a huge concern here for the average person, any areas that would be unsafe are merely small pockets that you wouldn't venture near the day because they're uninteresting or lower income suburban areas. The northside generally gets a much worse rap than the southside for violence, sketchiness etc. but even then it's not bad. Downtown has a somewhat of a homeless person problem, but a lot of them just keep to themselves and it's only a few bad eggs that give the word 'homeless' a bad connotation. Of course they're are people who probably view the situation as much more dire than I do, and will steer clear of downtown streets whenever they can.

5. The best area for streetlight and nightlife is probably Old Stratchona, which includes the famous Whyte Ave with it's old, refurbished buildings, gastropubs, boutique and quirky shopping outlets and varied excellent restaurants. It's home to established and newer foodie-bait restaurants. A few places act as eateries during the day and beerhall/hole in the wall type places at night. Edmonton's nightlife generally favours those who want that sort of "grab a couple pints and mingle" atmosphere rather than a typical EDM nightclub type vibe, but most places still have dance areas.

6. Urban living here isn't impossible, but it won't quite be as straight forward and abundant as it is in Vancouver/Toronto/Montreal, or even places like Victoria. Oliver and Grandin border (or feature as part of) Downtown to the west and are both decent urban neighbourhoods while Strathcona and Garneau offer a similar experience just south of the river in and around the University of Alberta campus and Whyte Ave. You may have to make a few car or longer bus trips to get somewhere you might need to go.

7. Most semi-urban and mature suburban areas are relatively nice places to live. The cookie cutter 'burbs near the outskirts are also "nice" but very soul sucking and boring and annoying in that people keep moving out there and developers keep making a killing off them and then decide to make more.

7. Edmonton has good, five-ish month summers and semi-bearable but not great five-ish month winters. Septembers are warm, Novembers can get pretty cold, May always seems nicer than June, and April is brown. The winters are somewhat dry and only have a couple really cold snaps (under -20) that can last around a week at a time. Sometimes -12 feels fine, and sometimes it feels unliveable. Buy a warm coat, wear gloves, wear something around your neck and over your ears.

9. West Edmonton Mall is busy, huge, and well, pretty fun to shop at. It's also a suburban stronghold that's kind of sucked the excitement out of the rest of the city's retail destinations.

8. Edmontonians are generally nice, sometimes not nice, and often self depreciating when describing their city. A lot of people realize it's decent place that could be a lot better if not being constantly let down by poor vision from city planners and government officials, which is where I feel a lot of the angst comes from. There's a lot of uh, lifted truck type dudes here who are prominent enough to be noticed regularly but not dominant enough for most Edmontonians to cease making jokes of regularly.

9. There's a ton of subcultures here, and prominent music and theatre scene. A lot of good musicians and plays run through this city in venues such as the Citadel, the Winspear and the Jubilee Auditorium, and the more humble Starlite Room. Smaller theatre acts are prominent as well. But yeah, subcultures, if you're into something you'll probably find a group who are too. A lot of hipster types roam the city, and there's a burgeoning startup network as well, and those two seem to be spilling into each more often than not. There's a good fine arts scene as well, and the Art Gallery of Alberta generally has some neat exhibits to broadcast in their landmark of a building.

9. There's donair places everywhere in the city. And a lot of chain restos too. But the indie food scene is quite exciting as well. I have a huge list of places that I've tried and want to try. Tres Carnales downtown, Three Boars in Garneau, and El Cortez in Strathcona off Whyte are a few of my faves off the top of my head. There's so, so many places that you could pretty much try something new every time you go out to eat for a while and never have to see a chain again.

10. I can't believe I haven't mentioned this yet, but Edmonton kills it when it comes to festivals. Summer is festival season and gives you something to do every weekend. The Folk Music Festival is one of my favourites as it takes place in Gallagher Park on a hill that overlooks the river valley and the downtown skyline. The Fringe festival is also very highly rated and takes place in Strathcona every August. Heritage Days also takes place next weekend and is very good multicultural experience right in Hawrelak park, probably Edmonton's finest urban park area.

[middeljohn]

I'll add a few more tidbits on Edmonton, having been here for 15 months now.

1. Summers here are very nice the vast majority of the time. It rains just enough to keep the vegetation green but is over pretty quickly. Vast majority of the time it is just pure sun baby! Most days seem to fall in the 22-26C range but due to the northerly location we get the occasional summer cold-snap where the daily high can be in the mid-teens. Of course we also get stretches of a few days in a row where temps are in the high 20s to low 30s. If you're from the east the first summer will be quite different due to the lack of moisture in the air. From about 25C onwards you'll notice it feels completely different than you're accustomed to.

2. If you're from Toronto or Montreal... people here drive very slow in comparison. This is partially due to the speed cameras they have all over the place, and partially due to a much more laidback attitude. In the GTA I'm an average speed driver. Here I'm consistently one of the fastest cars on the road.

3. The city has undergone rapid growth over the last few years and it's highly noticeable. Most of the buildings you'll see are less than 30 years old. Furthermore, it's obvious when going about that this is a demographically young city. There are plenty of 20-somethings here, at a rate I haven't experienced outside Alberta.

4. A warning: the road surface conditions are subpar at best. It's annoying as a driver and dangerous as a cyclist. Always be on the lookout for potholes. Also, on a stranger note, contractors seem to be lazier about making manholes/drains level with the road, so even on recently paved roads I'd recommend continuing to keep an eye out.

5. The winter coldness is overblown. The rumours are true, -20C here is not nearly as bad as -20C in the east. This is due to an overall less windy climate and the fact that the winters are sunny. I also noticed that I barely ever had to scrape my windows in the morning.

6. Drought-like conditions are common. It's fairly standard to get multiple two week periods per year without precipitation.

7. It's a solid mid-size city with everything to offer that you need without the congestion of larger metros or the isolation of smaller cities.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Spocket

Sorry but we're going to have to agree to disagree here. Winnipeg gets the big ticket concerts and tour stops not because it's special or anything but because it's the only place within a day's drive to hold a concert. Yes, Minneapolis gets the big concerts and tours but it's a different market. Either way, the fact that Winnipeg is getting the same stops that a city 4 or 5 times larger is getting tells me that it punches above its weight.

Except the point is that it doesn't get the big shows that Minneapolis does. The standard tour route in North America for major acts is the northeast, then Montreal and Toronto, then the midwest and the south, and then after Minneapolis they skip over to Denver and/or Seattle and do the west coast, most often including Vancouver.

Friends in Winnipeg have told me that Minneapolis is still the mecca for the major rock shows that don't make it to Winnipeg, just like it was a couple decades ago when I lived there. For example, U2 has only made appearances in Winnipeg on about half of their tours.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by middeljohn

5. The winter coldness is overblown. The rumours are true, -20C here is not nearly as bad as -20C in the east. This is due to an overall less windy climate and the fact that the winters are sunny. I also noticed that I barely ever had to scrape my windows in the morning.

Wait a minute...you know as well as I do that -20 almost never happens in Toronto, and if it does, it would only occur at about 6 in the morning during an extreme cold snap (these last few miserable winters excepted). Even -15 is rare.

But I'd always assumed that Edmonton was essentially the same as Winnipeg in the winter, where -20 is very common as a high temperature in the middle of the day, sometimes for days on end. The winter in Winnipeg is not something you would describe to any Canadian (outside of the prairies or the Arctic) as being "overblown," much less someone from anywhere else (outside of Siberia). But, now, according to you the winter in Edmonton is "overblown"?

Interesting. Either you and I have a vastly different concept about winter cold, or Edmonton is remarkably, palpably warmer than Winnipeg in the winter. Though the latter seems unlikely to me.

[Xelebes]

I believe middeljohn has only made it through one winter or so in Edmonton. Last winter was very warm and this winter is looking to be even warmer. Last winter, there were several days where we saw rain instead of freezing rain or snow.

[ciudad_del_norte]

Ok... I can't resist being that guy, but at it's coldest point, Edmonton is on average around 5 degrees warmer than Winnipeg in winter. Although not as dramatic as Calgary, Edmonton is much more prone to bursts of pacific air that tends to dissipate in effect moving east.

The prairies in general all get the same blasts of arctic cold, the main difference is that they tend last longer in the east, and thaws are more dramatic in west. In the depths of winter Edmonton's winter averages are closer to Ottawa than Winnipeg.

The scenario reverses in the summer...

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by ciudad_del_norte

Ok... I can't resist being that guy, but at it's coldest point, Edmonton is on average around 5 degrees warmer than Winnipeg in winter.

Okay, I guess that goes some way to explaining it.

Originally Posted by ciudad_del_norte

The prairies in general all get the same blasts of arctic cold, the main difference is that they tend last longer in the east, and thaws are more dramatic in west. In the depths of winter Edmonton's winter averages are closer to Ottawa than Winnipeg.

The scenario reverses in the summer...

Erm...what? You're saying that the prairies have less arctic cold than Toronto, and more "dramatic" thaws?

That's obviously not true. Though Toronto has had unseasonably frigid winters these past few years without any thaws whatsoever, which is extremely unusual.

[Pinion]

The whole country is unbearably cold except for Vancouver and Victoria. You're welcome.

-an Aussie living in Vancouver

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

It's the same here but there's definitely a strong urban/rural heritage divide. People whose families have been in St. John's for generations seem far less likely to have the "Everything sucks" attitude. If I post a link to a news article on FB, you can pretty much divide the positive comments into a pile labelled Townie, and the negative ones in a Bayman pile.

It's the same with the "I'm bored" kids, the "this place sucks there's nothing to do" kids. They are hardly ever properly rural or urban but live in the suburbs and exurbs.

Meh I don't think the + or - attitude really works here.

I'd argue most folk here are more structural in their way of thinking.

I.e. your one of the postive ones, yet you shit on the burbs quite consitantly(not that I disagree)

I'm clearly the -, but I still think st john's is one of the top 10 cities in the country.


My issues are pretty consistantly, one of the three.

The lack of sunlight, it's hard to argue against this one, I don't give a fuck about temps, but sunlight is crucial. And this place happens to be one of the worst in the world. Granted it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the reduced mobility in the winter. ( They don't clear the fucking sidewalks)

Lack of transit, and car based sprawl living, when we clearly would have an advantage in urban if anyone gave a fuck.

This runs into my main complaint. This bizarre classism, where transit is associated with welfare, and the entire transit system is geared towards people that don't Fing work.

In turn you have a middle class that are obsessed with cars because the there is no actual class distinction between welfare and themselves.

Than you have the pseudo upper class that are the minions of orthodoxy, who have no interest in changing anything at all.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by Pinion

The whole country is unbearably cold except for Vancouver and Victoria. You're welcome.

-an Aussie living in Vancouver

Yawn, cold above -30 windchills you can dress for quite easily.

Me being part MikMaq/Mountain MAn/Bear/VIking/Wookie, I laugh at your weakness.

[ciudad_del_norte]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Okay, I guess that goes some way to explaining it.


Erm...what? You're saying that the prairies have less arctic cold than Toronto, and more "dramatic" thaws?

That's obviously not true. Though Toronto has had unseasonably frigid winters these past few years without any thaws whatsoever, which is extremely unusual.

Lol oops no. Meant eastern prairies vs. western prairies.