Sunshine Sketches of a Beautiful City
User Story
By Carolyn Hall
Looking for the best place on earth to live? Then focus your Google Earth search on north Edmonton and hone in on Beaumaris Lake, a delightful and relatively unknown amenity. Like Edmonton, with its forested river valley and canopied older streets, Beaumaris boasts a mature habitat. Here the stately elm-lined main roadways lead to the lake. And, for me, this charming pocket defines Edmonton: safe, clean, natural and sustainable.
Beaumaris Lake offers a park-like setting lined with an abundance of towering aspens, cheeky amur maples and graceful willows with their rough trunks contorted into balletic pirouettes.
From early morning to early evening, friends and neighbours greet one another as they make their way on the quiet public walkway following the perimeter of the largest stormwater collection lake in Edmonton.
By 7 a.m., in a delightful wooded corner retreat, you’ll observe a determined elderly man facing east while he performs his well rehearsed tai-chi movements under the spell of the lodgepole pines. Young mothers push their babies in carriages, enjoying an opportunity to share the day’s news. Two toddlers show the minnows what they and their dad have netted by the water’s edge. After work, runners take to the 3.5-kilometre path along the horseshoe shape of the lake to log in some cardio time. The Edmonton city police trainees from the nearby training centre at Griesbach often run the course here, committing a ma’am every time they pass by on the paved path.
Birdwatchers are delighted to identify many species of local birds: blackbirds (including red- and yellow-winged varieties), ducks (including grebes, merganzers, ruddies and mallards), coots, herons, seagulls, terns, chickadees, sparrows, woodpeckers, nuthatches and red polls. Young and old delight in feeding the birds who are tame—perhaps too tame—but this is urbanity.
It is a real treat to catch a glimpse of a small, shy ruddy duck with its gorgeous rusty plumage and vivid blue bill as it emerges from its hiding spot amongst the shoreline reeds.
You may also luck out and see a baby grebe crawl up onto the back of its mom and poke its little head out to view the world from the safety of mother’s protective feathers.
Even in winter, the lake, like the city, is in full use: cross-country skiers glide along the snow-covered water, while others pull on their winter gear and walk along the lake enjoying the ever-changing views. The mornings with hoar frost provide a magical ambience with air so clear and cold you feel the stimulation on your cheeks for hours. Those foggy winter days force you to be in the moment, dissolve the past and ignore the future, meditate about the bountiful beauty in this place we call Edmonton. But, more often than not, the sun is beaming producing those deep indigo shadows on sparkling snow.
Beaumaris is a sustainable and healthy community in which to live. It is possible to walk everywhere: to grocery stores, medical services, restaurants, video stores, the gym at the Y for active living and to the well-stocked Castle Downs library, a favourite of mine and many other folks from toddlers to seniors. For those who need to get elsewhere, there is an excellent transit system that zips downtown or to the south side in half an hour, with no worries about rush hour traffic or parking fees.
Like Beaumaris, Edmonton is small enough to be accessible, yet large enough to offer amenities, both subtle and specific. This thumbnail sketch literally represents the best attributes of our wonderful city.
