Article content continued

Having said this, another Canadian city is quietly outshining Toronto when it comes to truly innovative environmental practices. It’s a city that, ironically, is neighbours with oh-hey-we-just-started-this-recycling-thing Calgary. It’s also considered the corporate base for those working in Alberta’s tar sands and, earlier this year, it was named the homicide capital of Canada. Yes, we’re talking about Edmonton.

It gets a bad reputation, if it gets any at all, but the city has a unique political advantage when it comes to the environment: It forms a left-leaning,

NDP-voting pocket in an otherwise Conservative-voting province, and when it receives money from the Alberta government, which is wealthy enough to give at least some cash to its urban centres, Edmonton’s council often allocates these funds to green initiatives.

One of these is the revitalization of the North Saskatchewan River Valley, which runs through the middle of Edmonton and — at 48 kilometres, with 22 parks along its route — represents the largest expanse of urban parkland in North America. In fact, there’s a staff of eight urban park rangers enlisted to protect it. Like most rangers, their job is to protect people from nature, and nature from people (although this team must contend with more drunken inline skaters than lost hikers).

What’s noteworthy, however, is that Edmonton actually puts aside money to ensure full-time supervision of its parks system, unlike Toronto, which has numerous volunteer associations dedicated to preserving the Don Valley river and ravines but limited resources devoted to monitoring any of it. Part of the reason may be that while Toronto tends to view its waterways as just one of its many natural features, Edmonton considers its so-called “Green Ribbon” to be part of its soul.