It’s not so long ago that Bill Smith, former mayor of Edmonton, liked to frequently declare that Edmonton was the best city, in the best province, in the best country in the world. As the leader of the biggest municipality in the capital region during an earlier time of economic adversity the city needed a booster and he did his best to assure people that in his mind Edmonton was at the top of the heap.
People like being at the top. They like it better when other people put them there. It makes everyone feel like they’ve made the right choices. And what could be better than that? (We at the Gazette certainly enjoyed the fleeting prestige of being nationally judged best newspaper in our class in years past. But nothing lasts forever.)
That’s why, when MoneySense magazine (circulation about 130,000 nationally), named St. Albert as the best overall city to live in in Canada, in March 2014, local boosters were overjoyed. The list compared our local burg to 219 Canadian communities.
“I think that we all know that we live in the best city in Canada and that’s why we do what we do and why we do it here,” St. Albert chamber CEO Lynda Moffat boasted.
The magazine makes such choices by assigning points in a number of categories including household income, real estate, access to health care, amenities, crime rates, the number of new cars on the road and even the weather. Weather? Has anybody from the magazine been outside here in February when faces hurt? Nevertheless, a win is a win.
Last year, alas, we dropped from the top spot to No. 4, though St. Albert was still judged to be the best place to raise a family. “I’m a little bit disappointed, but on the other hand (it’s) still a very high ranking in Canada,” Mayor Nolan Crouse lamented at the time.
To think that only two weeks ago, Coun. Wes Brodhead warned council that it should be thinking about the MoneySense listings as it moves to review its land-use bylaw in relation to back alleys. “Don’t forget that we’re the best city to raise a family in the nation and I hate when we all of a sudden take a look at ourselves and say we are not good enough.”
This year the city has slipped again in the MoneySense survey. St. Albert is still in the No. 4 spot as best city, but we are down to No. 4 as best place to raise a family. Who are these people?
“We do have an outstanding community here and the fact that we are in the top five or in the top four is certainly testament to that, testament to what we all – the ones that live here – already know and believe to be true,” Moffat said this week. Chins up, people!
Crouse, who led the city during this grave retreat, gave a politician’s response: “There is a certain amount of pride we have and I think that we have pride in our community safety, we have pride in our youth programs, we have pride in our neighbourhoods, we have pride in our not-for-profits and this (ranking) just continually reinforces the pride that we have.” Indeed.
The best city, in the best province, in the best country, in the world. Today maybe, but tomorrow everything will change if only to spread the good news around a bit.
