Page 12 - 07_Sept-2025

EDS
LOSS OF
A BIG CITY
DREAM
I’d barely lived in Edmonton for a year when,
in 2007, I got my first opportunity to interview
then-mayor Stephen Mandel. Running for a second term,
he’d granted an interview to the Canadian Arab News,
and somehow I — a 22-year-old aspiring writer, rapper
and filmmaker (I couldn’t decide) — got the assignment.
I didn’t know the first thing about the infrastructure
deficit, property tax angst or where provincial juris-
diction began and ended. All I knew was, whatever my
creative dreams, this was the city to realize them in.
“Society today spends so little money supporting the
artist,” Mandel told me, responding to criticisms that
city hall should reallocate arts funding to infrastructure
maintanence (read: fixing potholes). He added, “I’ve
never once gone out to admire a sidewalk or road.”
Say what you want about his performance, Mandel
had vision. He made bold, sometimes cringe declarations
about Edmonton as “world-class” and the “Chicago of
the North.” And though it could get embarrassing (like
the time he blew a fuse over a National Post columnist’s
machete-related joke at Edmonton’s expense), it inspired
an era of big city confidence manifested through, among
other things, more arts funding, a public art boom and
public architecture that was indeed world-class.
This continued with Don Iveson, who, in 2013, listed
“Encouraging our city’s artists” as the first bullet point
of his website’s platform page. You can thank the Wayback
Machine for that bit of trivia — and I encourage you to
see for yourself, if for no other reason than to appreciate
how much the political mood has changed.
It’s hard to imagine any of the 2025 mayoral candidates
running on “Kickstarting the innovative city or Building
our LRT network.” Even Amarjeet Sohi’s 2021 campaign
— launched amid widespread economic anxiety —
opened with a vision to improve quality of life, pledging
to help artists and cultural institutions rebound from
the pandemic so they could once again inspire and
entertain Edmontonians.
Whether he delivered on that is another matter
(Edmonton Arts Council funding stayed flat) but the
city’s creative ambitions have clearly faded. The campaign
websites of the current mayoral candidates (including
councillors Tim Cartmell and Andrew Knack and
12 EDify. SEPTEMBER.25
former councillor Michael Walters in what may be a
three-way dead heat) focus almost entirely on affordability,
safety, fiscal prudence and better governance. Their
modest, back-to-basics pledges sound more like crisis
management than city-building. Only Walters’ message
nods toward making Edmonton “feel vibrant, fun and
full of life,” and even then, his vision leans on urban
design, not artists and cultural institutions.
Over the past two months, I’ve interviewed every willing
mayoral candidate for the upcoming issue and Oct. 20
election. Not one mentioned arts or culture unprompted.
Two even argued for scaling back our architectural
ambitions, calling them too costly. Is this absence
of vision, of metropolitan ambition, rooted in the
politicians themselves or in the public mood? Have
rising grocery bills, property taxes, rent, homelessness
and drug overdoses so consumed us that we’ve lost the
will to dream big?
Mandel thinks so. Almost 20 years since our first
meeting, I sat with him again for a recent episode of
the Edify Unfiltered podcast. He said, “We’re not talking
about building an amazing architectural community.
We’re not talking about our arts community and how it
can be better supported. The creative side of the city has
been lost.
“And it’s sad.”
Omar Mouallem
[email protected]
photo AARON PEDERSEN