Welcome To Downtown Edmonton
Mayor and the conventional media I am, perhaps, reading way too much into four simple, oft-heard, even clichéd words, but when Mayor Don Iveson got up on the stage this morning and welcomed a few hundred charity bicycle riders to a charity bicycle ride before the Tour of Alberta race with "welcome to downtown Edmonton," I think he was doing more than greeting and indicating location. I didn't reach that perhapsed conclusion as he spoke. As he spoke, it was, honestly, just more of the usual usual. But then something happened. Or, a few other people happened. First, there was the guy who walked up to us as we watched from a City Centre pedway as, below, the cyclists streamed by. "What's happening here?" he grumbled. Alex explained the Tour of Alberta to him. He listened and then offered this profundity: "And they have to shut down the whole city for this?" He then shuffled away. Content. What is happening here? Then, there was...