Why does everyone say “skip Edmonton” when visiting AB?

[u/Zestyy-Gold]

I’ve seen a lot online where tourists will ask for a Alberta itinerary, which I understand they are excited to see mountains…but people would add the extra “skip Edmonton” line even as if there’s nothing to embrace here. I have never been to Edmonton, but as the capital of Alberta, is there really nothing to see as a traveller? I read that there is an interesting food scene, cool museums (Reynolds, Telus World of Science, Royal Alberta Museum, etc), chill neighborhoods like Whyte Ave, and a big ass shopping mall? Do people say this just so the city wouldnt be clustered with tourists or is the city really that skippable? I don’t think anyone expects it to be a Vancouver, Montreal, or Toronto…but I’m sure it still has it’s charm?

[u/Cautious_Clothes_285]

Should you also go up to Ft McMurray to see the oilsands?

Unrealistic but in my opinion far more people should actually go up to Fort McMurray to get a scale of the oil sands and human consumption in general. These things are generally kept out of the public eye except when being used in one way or another (arguing for or against fossil fuels, climate change, etc). That's not just limited to the oil sands, but mining in general, logging, and various other resource extraction activities. There's a big coal mine just east of Hinton but for the most part you can't see it from the highway, and out of sight = out of mind. Like literally just off the highway and up a hill.

I have lived in the Edmonton area my whole life and only recently made it up to see some oil sands sites for work and it has been perspective altering, for sure.

The size of the areas being mined is somehow both huge and tiny. The amount of money being spent to extract these resources is incredible. The size of the equipment is crazy. When you start thinking about the big picture and how the oil sands only represents a small percentage of global oil production (let alone other resource mining operations), seeing it first hand helps the whole thing make sense. It's helped me want to be less consumption driven; I know the common line right now is that it's all mega corps and as individuals we can't do much about pollution but I just circle back around to the idea that at the end of the day, if we all reduced our consumption those mega corps would scale back as demand falls and so on.

Anyway, I do wish oil sands tourism was more common, I wish more people could access these sites as visitors, I wish there was more open education about it from people on the ground, and I wish more people got to see even a small sliver of what fuels global consumption.

[u/ClassBShareHolder → u/Cautious_Clothes_285]

As an Albertan I agree.

But for different reasons than seeing the Jasper Parkway.