When the Bloedel Conservatory opened in Vancouver in 1969 it must have seemed like an alien spacecraft had landed and taken up residence at one of the highest points within the city. Built with a donation from Prentice Bloedel, the conservatory represents a vision of the future, both in vision and in purpose, and after viewing the archive footage from the opening it’s easy to see how much of the park and city have evolved, the trees have grown taller, and so too have the buildings in the downtown core. Even inside many of the plants seem bigger than they once did, a sort of time capsule of plants.
40 years on and the Bloedel still exists, though for how much longer is in question. It seems that the $250 000 it would require to keep it open is just not in the budget for the city of Vancouver. This to me is a shame, and perhaps I am a little to blame. I’ve lived in Vancouver since 2004 and have just recently visited the Bloedel for my first time. I didn’t go because of guilt or a desire to save the Bloedel, I went for the reason anyone should go, I happened to be there one day, and was looking for something to do. I wish I had gone sooner.
Under the dome I discovered a world of plants, birds and fish that was completely unlike what we are used to on the outside. Vines stretch down from the trees that grow nearly to the ceiling of the glass dome. Part of me wanted to reach up and grab one, swinging through the conservatory like Tarzan swinging through the jungle. I enjoyed the birds swooping around my head as I tried to photograph others, like jealous children wondering why someone isn’t paying attention to them. The air humid, and warm was a wonderful change from the slightly cool dry air outside the dome. I felt as if I had escaped the lingering chill of winter and skipped right to the summer I had been waiting for. I hope the conservatory is around this next winter so I can escape the rain and the cold, and hopefully relieve some of the depression that affects me every year. The conservatory is a wonderful place.
It’s places like these that are so important to cities in Canada because of the escape from winter that they can provide. I am most certain that they are not built for the tourists, but for the residents. Many of us are not able to afford trips to the exotic destinations where these plants exist naturally, but why should that stop us from seeing, and learning about them. Coming from Edmonton Alberta I had many trips to the Muttart Conservatory, a structure that consists of four pyramids, each hosting it’s own separate micro-climate. I enjoyed these trips to the Muttart during my time living in Edmonton, many of which coming on school field trips, but a few on my own too. Admission to the conservatory in Edmonton was free until after the $6.3 million renovation in 2009, and now remains under ten dollars, it’s still an affordable afternoon out.
More important than getting out, conservatories are a place where we can learn about the natural environments the world over, in many cases environments that are becoming increasingly endangered, and places like the Bloedel and the Muttart I feel are also becoming increasingly rare. With Vancouver’s push to be the greenest city by 2020 the city is letting a wonderful educational resource slip through it’s fingers, we should be expanding the Bloedel, not thinking of shutting it down, perhaps creating a facility that rivals the Eden Project in the UK. With the decimation of the environments that these conservatories represent the question we should be asking isn’t about whether we can afford to operate these buildings, but can we afford not to?
Driving through the streets of Edmonton Alberta as a 16 year old youth I failed to consider the implications of my chosen mode of transportation. I was more concerned with the fact that I now had the freedom to travel into the city from the suburbs where my family lived, and my friends could come with me. Lost were many high school classes to the draw of the downtown cafes, and when old enough the bars, I loved to drive and I still do. 
Edmonton is a city that is built around the automobile. It’s precise grid like structure is easy to navigate. Very few of the streets have names, it’s numbers there. The car has made it easy for people to live in the suburbs, my family were commuters, like most people in the city. Housing in the city for many many years was very affordable, and who wants to rent when you can own. People were able to follow their dreams of the two car garage and the white picket fence. I was proud to be from Edmonton. It was the city I grew up in, the city my friends lived. I have many good memories. Spending time outside in the summer sun with friends, attending the fringe festival, or heritage days. A taste of Edmonton was always a favorite. At 26 I moved away from Edmonton to pursue higher education in Vancouver. I held onto these memories, and remained proud of where I was from. It was only after graduation and several years between visits that the luster began to fade on the memories of my home.
What I discovered on my last trip was a city that was trying to be world class. However it is failing. Edmonton it seems has tried to follow a model that was instituted in the 50s, 60s and 70s in the United States. Models that those cities, particularly in the “rust belt” are now trying to change back. Driving into the city from Vancouver the first thing I noticed was the amount of construction. I was unsure where I was anymore. The borders of the city are under construction and somewhat blurred now. Hectares of forest within the city cut down, wetlands behind my family house bulldozed and filled in, all in the name of progress. The ring road being built is in my opinion one of the worst things Edmonton could be doing to reduce congestion. Through the process of making it easier for people to get from suburb to suburb, and around the city is only going to make traffic worse. More people will be moving out to the suburbs, and more people will be driving on those roads.
I don’t think that a comparison to Detroit in the 1960s is unfair. They too built a massive road system, and an exodus to the suburbs followed, fueled in part by massive racial violence in the city, and while it’s not as racially motivated, Edmonton too is a city that is plagued by violence. Open up the paper on any day, listen to the radio, turn on the television and you’ll hear reports of how many people were stabbed the night before. The moniker “Stabmonton” is not unfounded. Friday, and saturday night in Edmonton is awash with young violent drunks looking for a fight, and it’s not just drunks, lets be honest, with the oil boom in Alberta, people working away at camps for weeks at a time, they come from the north into the city, pockets full of money looking to have a good time and that means drugs too. Would you want to live in a city where violence seems to be out of control?
Some of the worst of what is going on in Edmonton is happening on it’s roads. Speaking to a cab driver one night out on the town, he told me the horror stories of what the city has contributed to his profession and the roads at night. Now in Edmonton club goers and revellers can now face a 6.50 charge upon entering a cab, but only after 10 PM thursday friday and saturday, and my driver said “people are just not taking cabs”. but they are still going out, and driving. With the police occupied trying to keep violence to a minimum they have not been watching for drunk drivers on the road. My driver even told me that last christmas season there were no checkstops on the roads. Drunk drivers have been effectively been given a pass, and with added roads, added travel time, so too is there an added risk to these drivers, and everyone else on the road.
It is my opinion that the cities plan has been an utter failure, on many levels. Sure they have been expanding their transit system too, but with the limited hours, and limited routes, it’s not going to get people out of their cars, especially on a friday and saturday night. An expansion of the light rail system seems to be only a token gesture, for critics and environmentalists, a way to contribute to the “solution”, but it’s marginal. The LRT system connects the northeast corner of the city, through downtown, and straight south, and I would estimate only serves a tenth of the population. Edmonton as a city needs to change it’s mentality, and it’s way of doing things, they should spend the money now, serve every corner of the city with a light rail solution, and worry about paying for it later, because it needs to be done eventually, but because it needs to be done now.
A ring road isn’t the answer to Edmonton’s woes. Edmonton needs to be thinking about increasing density and not contributing to urban sprawl. It needs to think not about the now but the future, and create a sustainable thriving metropolis on the prairies. It can be that world class city it so desperately wants to become, by contributing to green initiatives, create a system to get more drivers off the road, using public transportation, and human powered transportation. I get why people want to drive, why it’s desirable to commute, but is it necessary to drive yourself to work in your SUV, or pickup truck. I think not. Edmonton should be encouraging people to move into the city, not away, perhaps in the process revitalize a downtown core that has been devoid of people and culture for as long as I can remember. Even Calgary to the south has done it better. Why can’t Edmonton?
