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Tag: Making Friends

Edmontonians go out of their way to welcome and support new residents and citizens.

Related Stories

  • A Big Giant Hippie Sport - Disa Brownfield
    It’s a good way to meet people. You don’t socialize just with your team. You talk to the person who’s marking you. That’s completely not normal in other sports.
  • A Lesser Known Edmonton - Todd Smith User submitted story
    Within the next year I had come out to my family, which was only possible with the great friends I had met and grown to love, both within the gay and greater Edmonton communities.
  • A Night Closer Than Our Days - Maslah Abdirahman User submitted story
    We all sang the same song holding hands and hugging. The funny thing was when we left downtown after we saw the fireworks we still sang together with a lot of random people on the train.
  • A Pink Year - Treena Fenniak Story has video User submitted story
    Suddenly, a crushing blow hit. I was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, and everything stopped.
  • A Place to Call Home - Amy Carter User submitted story
    The very first day of school I missed the bus, waited for 40 minutes, and was 20 minutes late for class. But it got better.
  • A Soul Awakening in Edmonton - Judy Wollman User submitted story
    A profound moment happened that got me off the street: my neighbor offered to give me some light. I was very skeptical, yet her place was filled with joyous, beautiful, spiritual energy, and I wanted to experience more.
  • A Strange Way of Growing On You - Riki Roy User submitted story
    We were living in Tanzania when our young son decided he wanted to do nanotechnology. I found that the University of Alberta would be starting this program. But where was this place called Edmonton?
  • An Aussie in Edmonton - Meg McCready User submitted story
    The day the temperature reached an inconceivable -36 C, I stayed in bed and missed class. (They say only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. I say only mad Canadians go out in those temperatures.) Luckily for my studies, that only happened once during the first winter.
  • Block Party - Karina Hurtado
    There are lots of opportunities in developing neighbourhoods: room for new initiatives, for people to promote change. Working together we transform the area. We’re attracting community to this neighbourhood.
  • Book + Dog = Reader - Rachel Sentes
    I watched a boy – he was around 12 – who’d never seen this before. There were about 5 dogs in the room. His mom was pushing him. And he’s going “Ah no, too old for this.” Too manly, you know.
  • Christmas Eve Kindness - Kathy Holler User submitted story
    We lived in 2 rooms with the luxury of sharing 1 shelf in a refrigerator which stood in the hallway, and it was rarely filled.
  • Embrace - Lisa Hill User submitted story
    I moved to Edmonton in 1984, from Rhode Island. I was very nervous about my big move, and the only person I knew was my new husband, who had been an Albertan all his life.
  • Feels Like Home To Me - Rachel Foley
    It’s been a long time since I actually felt that a place is home. I stood there realizing, “Yeah, this is home, and they are my friends.” I’m going to be hanging out with them for years.
  • First Canadian Thanksgiving - Travis Groom User submitted story
    Everyone had the same idea that no-one should spend Thanksgiving alone. To my surprise, in support of me being American, they even offered to throw an American Thanksgiving in November.
  • Half a Lion - Ian Meier
    When I was still taking kung fu, I had the opportunity to take part in Edmonton’s Chinese New Year celebrations. The community all comes out and the streets are just filled with people.
  • Hello Neighbor - Ryan Middlemiss User submitted story
    She was the sweetest old lady who would babysit me. She would make me and only me cookies every weekend. No matter how busy she was, she would find time to make them for me.
  • Hippie Family - Patrick O'Reilly User submitted story
    Born into the constant traveling life of a hippie family, I had experienced much of Canada prior to the age of 10.
  • Home - Wendy Jensen User submitted story
    My grandfather had been sent to a concentration camp for 6 months during the Second World War after helping the British army hide weapons on his farm. My father was only 4½ years old at the time of grandfather’s arrest.
  • Homesick For Edmonton! - Olga Rojas User submitted story
    When I arrived to Edmonton for the first time, I was 19 years old. I had come with both my parents, and my three sisters and three brothers, all of us single.
  • I Wanna Be A Rock Star and Stuff - Hannah Karvonen
    RockerGirl Camp is for girls who wanna rock. But 10-year-old Hannah Karvonen Parsons wasn’t sure about going. “I was afraid that everyone was gonna be older than me and that I wouldn’t know anyone.”
  • In the Blink of an Eye - Nashtassia Esteban User submitted story
    Life can be so quick you don’t notice how much you've grown. But I must say: I'm lucky to have lived in Edmonton.
  • Lottery Winners with Winter-Cold Noses - Bev Betkowski User submitted story
    As the human plaything of 3 cats myself, my heart warms when I see a news story about a rescued scrap of fur, and how the offers of a forever home pour in over the next few days.
  • My Skate with the Oilers - M.A. Cox User submitted story
    I moved to Edmonton when I was 4 years old. My parents separated and I had to leave my father, my sister, my pit-bull Lassie, and our house in Montreal. I had trouble adjusting to my new and more humble surroundings.
  • Outdoor Culture - Shirley McCuaig
    I wanted to get back out West, where people like to do outdoor things. That’s how I ended up here.
  • Peace in the Dog Park - Madeleine Howard Story has video User submitted story
    Edmonton is a vibrant community with many hidden treasures. I find my peace at a local dog park. Mill Woods is a south-side neighborhood with great restaurants and walking trails.
  • Potluck - Nan Gai
    When I first arrived she helped me with the transition to this culture. To the community, and school especially. It saved a lot of time, because when you’re new to a country, sometimes you just don’t know what to do.
  • Pulse of the City - Melanie Teichroeb User submitted story
    I'm a small-town girl, born in the Parkland County and raised on dreams I found etched in the prairie sky.
  • Purple City S'mores - Lisa Bromley User submitted story
    The security guards stopped by once or twice to see what exactly it was that we were up to. Each time we smiled sweetly and offered them a marshmallow, and each time they politely declined.
  • Scooting Around Town - Igor Woroniuk Story has video
    I’m a visually inspired person, obviously, being an artist. The views in Edmonton really grab me. Standing on top of the river valley, you can see the whole city. Sunsets. The moon. Clouds sweeping through.
  • Spring Tryouts - Guillaume Petit
    Imagine 4 football players in a car driving 48 hours nonstop to get here for spring camp. It was a cheap way to go, only about $700 for the car, gas and everything between Quebec City and Edmonton.
  • Stories From The Bench - Gord Sheppard
    The guys took care of my car and took me to the hospital and took care of that stretch of things. They’d been debating which hospital was the best to go to while I was still on the ice. There was a familiarity to it.
  • The Jackrabbit Made Me Do It - Rebecca Szoladi User submitted story
    I got a crappy job, had no friends, and it was -35. I was miserable and really missed the Okanagan weather and the life I'd had there. I wondered what the heck I had done to my life by moving to this godforsaken place.
  • The People Make the City - Chris Brainerd User submitted story
    It's possible to look at Edmonton and simply see the sports teams with their championship legacies. Or just West Edmonton Mall, the river valley, and all the festivals. But those who only see these things are missing the most important aspect of the city – the people.
  • The Wild West - Dr. David Bressler
    Edmonton is a young city in a lot of ways. I don’t want to say it’s the Wild West, but it kind of is. There’s a lot of opportunity for people who are ambitious and want to try and do things and make an impact themselves.
  • Things I Must Do - Sandy Mowat Story has video
    Sandy moved to Edmonton with her husband. She is getting to know Edmonton with new friends and getting involved in the community by volunteering.
  • All the Stories Stay Together - Lisa Thang Story has audio
    One of Lisa's favourite memories involves chopstick day, and she was really excited to find out that it still existed when she returned to Kildare to teach.
  • Azimuth - Murray Utas Story has video
    He had to go through certain workshops in case a young person was to disclose anything to him. He doubted that that would happen. After his first show, a young girl, 13, approached him. He was shocked.
  • Converting a Calgarian - Ryan Jespersen User submitted story
    The number 99 haunted me growing up. Unlike most present-day Edmontonians, I grew up wearing red and yellow hockey sweaters - not orange and blue. Wayne Gretzky didn't make my childhood hockey dreams come true...he killed them. To this day, it frustrates me to no end, knowing there's no rebuttal for "Five Cups."
  • Shop Girl - Elizabeth Hudson
    I bought the store 2 days after I got married and left for my honeymoon the next day. I didn’t have time to think about it. Yeah, owning a business feels crazy sometimes.
  • A Different Type of City - Brad Fossen
    I came here from rural Alberta. Back home it’s a different kind of life. I don’t want to say Edmonton’s like a small town, but it’s a different type of city.
  • A Memorable Journey to Edmonton - Catherine Zhou User submitted story
    Read some entries Catherine wrote in her diary during her stay in Edmonton. She was visiting from Chengdu in China's Sichuan province. Her friends call her Rabbit.
  • Edmonton is Not Cold - Sheng Xue User submitted story
    Oh, it's cold there! Really cold! This was the only thing I heard about Edmonton when I told people in Toronto that I was going to be the Writer in Exile in Edmonton for 1 year. I was scared of the cold in Edmonton.
  • Edmonton: City of Discovery - Erin Despas User submitted story
    When I do go into Edmonton though, with my mother as I don't drive, I am forever being amazed at something new that I find.
  • Impact Edmonton - Grant Shepherd User submitted story
    Little did I know that 27 years later, I was going to marry one of the girls who rode at that stable. (I know - I am a fast mover for sure).
  • Rent At The Jube - Christian Mena
    There’s something about the concept of coming to do a show like Rent in your hometown, at the Jubilee Auditorium, a place I’d never performed at. I mean I’d performed in that space but not on the actual stage.
  • The Chengdu Visit - Ashley Chung User submitted story
    When the Chengdu youths arrived in Edmonton, there was a welcoming dinner. It was nerve wracking as I reluctantly made my way to sit amongst them. I was thinking of so many different things at once! Would they like me? Was my Chinese good enough?

Brought to you by the City of Edmonton & Edmonton Economic Development Corporation