|
About Edmonton
The natural beauty of Edmonton is prominently displayed in the deep, wide North Saskatchewan River Valley that winds through the city center. Edmonton's downtown overlooks the north bank of this picture-perfect river. Its stately Old Strathcona historic shopping and entertainment district and the University of Alberta overlook the south bank.
Edmonton is a bustling metropolitan center that is home to about 800,000 people. As Edmonton has grown, it has remained a place of beauty and prosperity. Unlike some other oil boomtowns, Edmonton has never allowed uncontrolled development. Now known as "Canada's Festival City", Edmonton has developed an amazing park system, world-class sporting facilities, and a cultural ambience that attracts major annual events of the highest caliber.
The city is well known as the home of the West Edmonton Mall, the largest shopping and entertainment complex in the world, with over 800 stores and services. The Mall is located in the city's west end, and all freeways seem to lead directly to it. The Mall has the world's largest parking lot, an indoor wave pool, indoor waterslide, and an indoor rollercoaster. To make a visit to this exciting megaplex even more enjoyable, there is a hotel in the Mall, as well as an area featuring its own nightlife district (Bourbon Street), complete with a Las Vegas-style casino.
Other major Edmonton attractions are the Muttart Conservatory and the Alberta Legislature Building, both noted for their architectural design, and Fort Edmonton Park, considered to be Canada's largest living history museum.
Edmonton has turned its greatest natural resource, the North Saskatchewan River valley, into a 17 mile greenbelt of parks and recreational facilities. As the seat of the provincial government, the city has an unusually sophisticated atmosphere that has generated many fine restaurants and a thriving arts community.
Summer activities include golf, bicycling, swimming, jogging, racquetball, squash, and spectator sports. Edmonton is home to three professional sports teams. The Oilers play hockey from September to April; the Trappers excel at baseball in the summer months, and the Eskimos play football from June to November. In the winter there is cross-country skiing, ice skating, dog sledding, and snowshoeing.
For visitors who prefer the indoors, there is an extensive system of underground and overhead pedways in the downtown area that make it possible to travel in comfort regardless of the weather outside. For ease of access, phenomenal natural beauty, and a wide variety of year round activities for the entire family, Edmonton is unsurpassed.
Edmonton's site attracted aboriginal peoples for thousands of years before the arrival of white settlers, thanks to the abundance of local quartzite , used to make sharp-edged stone weapons and tools. Fur traders arrived in the eighteenth century, attracted by river and forest habitats that provided some of Canada's richest fur-producing territory. Better still, the area lay at the meeting point of the territory patrolled by the Blackfoot to the south and the Cree, Dene and Assiniboine to the north. Normally these aboriginal peoples would have been implacable enemies, but around Edmonton's future site they were able to coexist when trading with intermediaries like the North West Company, which built Fort Augustus on Edmonton's present site in 1795. The fort was joined later the same year by Fort Edmonton , a redoubtable log stockade built by William Tomison for the Hudson's Bay Company (and named in fine sycophantic fashion after an estate owned by Sir James Winter Lake, the Hudson's Bay Company's deputy governor). Though the area soon became a major trading district, settlers arrived in force only after 1870, when the HBC sold its governing right to the Dominion of Canada. The decline of the fur trade in around 1880 made little impact, as the settlement continued to operate as a staging point for travelers heading north. Worldwide demand for grain also attracted settlers to the region, now able to produce crops despite the poor climate thanks to advances in agricultural technology.
|
|
