Edmonton may not be such a high profile town for South Africans but it has it's attractions and culture.
It probably deserves more attention in the forum.

The pink palace in the center is Canada Place, where you go for PNP or PR cards.

I can show some more pictures if I can get it to load. In the beginning I could attach a picture but the last few times I tried, I keep on getting the error that I can't load that file type and it is a ".jpg" filetype. That is the type my digital camera saves in. My pictures are also not large because I don't like to move a scroll bar to be able to see the whole picture, but they are a little bit larger than 102400 that is allowed for a picture on this forum.

Edmonton doesn't have the location of Calgary, but other than that, it doesn't stand back for Calgary. You can hear that I have adapted At this stage I will even move to Medicine Hat before I move to Calgary if I have to move for location, because I am absolutely in love with the roling hills of the badlands.

Some mor einfo on Edmonton:
We pay more in car insurance than Calgary, the insurance companies' excuse is that the drivers are worse in Edmonton. We do have roads that we can drive 60km or 70 km where you will find the same type of road (location) in Calgary with only a speedlimit of 50km.

I've read aposing of Kolla once on this board where she said that the City of Calgary is not cleaning the streets regularly, they depend too much on the Chinook. This is something that I hav eno problem in Edmonton. If it snowed overnight, by the time we go to work in the morning the snow trucks already sanded the highways. I have no idea how early these guys get up to do that. Our house is also on a bus route and it is cleaned everytime we have a snowfall with enough snow that it needs cleaning ofr the buses. I really can praise the City of Edmonton on cleaning the main streets during the winter.

I don't know if we just don't here about murders in Calgary but I hardly hear of murders going on there while in Edmonton we had our 22 murder for this year. All gang related, but that indicates that Edmonton has a gang problem.

Edmonton like its culture, it has the Frinch (no idea if I spelled thsi correctly)festival and Ukrainain festivals. We have the Ukrainain Village 25 minutes drive east of Edmonton that is really worth a visit. I personnaly do'nt think the Devonian botanical gardens is worth the entrance fee. If I get married and want to hav epictures in the Japanese Garden taken, yes, then it is worth because it is the only part of the garden that is always beautiful.

WE live in the West End and I really enjoy this partof Edmonton. It doesn't feel like I live in a city of almost a million people. But I I should hav elived in the south of Edmonton and had to make use of Edmonton south Common as a shopping centre, then I would have noticed it that I live in a very big city. It is extremely busy down there with traffic problems. The west end have all the shops: Revy's , Home Depot, Superstore, Safeway, Michaels, Chapters, Pet Smart, restaurants, Toys R'Us, Futureshop, Canadian Tire, Marks work warehouse, Staples, all the car dealers you can think of, Walmart and more. Most of these shops are between 90 Ave and 100 Ave and between 170St and 178St. So, it is really easy to get everything you want without all the traffic jams. It is also more open on the westend with wider streets. Well tha tis how it feels to me anyways.

Whitemud is not so bad as people think. Most of the problems occur on the south and east par tof the city on Whitemud. West we hav eonly the Quesnel bridge where we sometimes have problems with a stalled car or slow traffic.

The most beautiful part of our drive to work for us, is Fox Drive. It has a horse farm. When you come from the Belgravia Rd, westbound on Fox drive
and you round the corner, you get the view of spruce trees in the background but this openness with white fences and horses walking. It is beautiful.

One other place people also can go to for a Sunday trip, is to drive trhough Lamont County. This is east of Edmonton and look at all the Greek Orthodox Churhes. It is also beautiful. You will get here the biggest easer egg and the biggest duck and the biggest Mundare sausage.

It is not so bad to live here. You just have to be willing to drive 300 km to get to a camping site worth taking a picture of or a 41/2 hours drive to get to the mountains.

Lets see if I can attach photos now on the new forum. Attached is the turn off to Fox Drive just after the Quesnell bridge

It worked ! Well let me attach more pictures. Attached is one of the many car dealers just north of West Edmonton Mall. As jou can see, the streets are wide and one gets the feeling of openness.

We stay on the edge of the city. Next to our neighborhood is still a farmer's canola field. Attache dis a picture where it is in full bloom.

We stay in a suburb that has wetlands as the central point. the developer wanted to bring nature to our doorstep. I absolute love it because we have birds in the park and we have geese and ducks that breeds here. Attach is a picture of the park with geese sharing the walking trails with us.

We already had our first snow fall. It was around the 8th or 9th of September. Luckily it melted the same day.

Here is a picture of Whitemud. You will hear a lot of people who doesn't use it regularly say that it is a terrible road, too busy with a lot of accidents. We didn't experience it like that. I like Whitemud a lot. It takes me 20 minutes to go from the most western part of Edmonton to 50 St on the east if i use Whitemud. That is pretty good. Note that the picture was taken over a weekend. normally Whitemud is a bit busier.

Karen, this one is just for you. I remember you once told Pierre that you liked the houses in Fort McMurray because it is not so dull. Looking at the colours, one can see it is not a Canadian that is living here. Allthough I had comments from some of them that they like my chosen contrast colour and that it looks unique. So, it seems they like colour as well, so why choose the dull colours? (The orange paint goes actually around the window on the 2nd storey, the shadow just prevent you from seeing it). Our area is architectural controlled, but the guidelines indicate that they encourage a 3rd contrast colour. I just didn't select a 3rd colour from their prefered list. The colour that was one, was just a darker shade of green. I'll play dumb if they ever find a problem with it, I can't see why one will, because it looks great and warm and i always liked it to be just a wee bit different

I'm just thinking of a funny saying the contractor used that must build a concrete deck for me (don't like the wooden ones). I always thought it was only the British people who spoke like that. The contractor is from Italy and he always says: I kid you not! (with a very serious face) and then I have a problem keeping a serious face. It sounds so funny and cute.

Dlam you have a good memory.
Keep up with the pix - makes it more visible to others.
Here is a view of the famous Whyte avenue. Being an old city there are lots of large trees lining the streets and adds to the atmosphere.
Also a pic of the condo near the UofA where my daughter lives.

Our second dump of snow here in Edmonton. We had 21 cm this past weekend and it looks like another 3 cm today. They said this morning that last year on the 18th we were at 18 degrees celsius.

It is not really cold, but too much snow and with the mixture of ice rain and snow, are the roads really slippery. It took us tonight 1 hour to get home on a trip that usually takes us 30 minutes.

By the way, what do you guys/girls think of my new patio. We have decided we didn't want a wooden deck, we opted for a concrete one. The lwan was a bit damaged, but will lo0ok great again come spring.

This winter the snow came with a bang, not gradually as usual.
I remember in 2001 it was still in the high teens in mid November. People said.... it's you South Africans bringing the warm weather with you.
This year November came early....