Guidebook touts Calgary, criticizes Edmonton
It appears the writers at Lonely Planet aren’t massive fans of Edmonton.
In the 13th edition of the highly popular travel guide released April 18, the writers describe the River City as “modern, spread out and frigidly cold for most of the year.”
“Alberta’s second-largest city and capital is a government town that you’re more likely to read about in the business pages than the travel supplements,” the book says.
“Downtown is for the moneyed and the down-and-out. There’s hope that the much-lauded Rogers Place will breathe life into it, but this seems like a tall order.”
Conversely, Calgary gets a glowing review, with the writers finding Alberta’s most populated city “that to non-Calgarians long served as a somewhat bland business centre or a functional springboard has actually become — ahem — cool.”
“Calgary will surprise you with its beauty, cool eateries, nightlife beyond honky-tonk and long, worthwhile to-do list,” the travel guide says.
The guide also lauds Calgarians “self-love and can-do attitude” that got them through the 2013 flood and in 2016 “saw them helping residents of wildfire-stricken Fort McMurray with unquestioning generosity,” but it fails to mention the role Edmontonians played in providing support for those who escaped the fire.
Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson said the part of the travel book that “really hurts” is the omission by the author of Edmonton’s contribution during Canada’s most devastating wildfire.
“The only thing that really bugs me about it is the suggestion that Calgary did all the work during the Fort Mac evacuation,” he said.
Iveson said he would be more than happy to give the writer a guided tour around the city to counter their other observations.
“You know, Lonely Planet isn’t right 100 per cent of the time, so I’m not losing any sleep,” Iveson said.
“The person who wrote the Lonely Planet thing hasn’t been here for a few years. I’d be happy ... to invite them here and show them around myself because they clearly got it wrong.”