I Heart Edmonton

Our Neighbours By Emil Tiedemann We couldn’t have asked for better next-door neighbours than the likes of St. Albert , Sherwood Park (Strathcona County), Fort Saskatchewan, Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Leduc, Nisku, Devon, and Beaumont!  These nearby communities that surround our city limits offer that small-town mentality on those days when you just need to get away from the hustle and bustle of a large metro like Edmonton. The Capital Region, as it is often referred to, is really just one large community at heart, each offering their own special personalities and attributes.    Downtown St. Albert. St. Albert, for example, is one of Canada’s “best-kept secrets,” according to MoneySense magazine, which consistently ranks the small city of about 64,000 as one of the best places to live in the whole country, even reaching #1 on the list as recent as 2014.  That says a lot about the people who live in St. Albert, practically and almost literally a hop, sk...

A group from St. Albert hopes to raise funds for mental health support and a memorial bench in honour of their friend Dynan by michelle landry I N December 2014, our friend Dynan Greaney lost his battle with mental illness . A mural at the St. Albert Skatepark done by artist Justin Moose in honour of Dynan. These are his friends (from left to right) Michelle Landry, Drew Buhr, Warren Ollis, Megan Hobbins, Erin Sharkey, and Lyndon Golanowski. He was always smiling and making people laugh. He had a huge heart and gave the best hugs. Dynan was one of our best friends growing up. He is the reason we have so many good memories to look back on and laugh at. He was a special person and touched everyone’s lives. Dynan did not talk to many people about his struggles. I wish he felt he could have. We as a group want to start today to break the stigma of this unspoken topic. It’s a tough world out there, and we need to feel we can lean on one another. There is not a lot of ...

Tupelo Honey's "Not Alone" (2008) O KAY, technically, Tupelo Honey hails from that town next door, St. Albert , but we're gonna go ahead and take credit for them. That goes for Mark Messier and Jarome Iginla , too. The band, christened after a popular Van Morrison song, was formed while the members were enrolled in Grant MacEwan 's music program. They had each performed in other bands prior to starting Tupelo Honey, in February 2003. From there the band--made up of vocalist Matt Landry , drummer Greg Williamson , bassist Steve Vincent , and guitarists Dan Davidson and Tyler Dianocky --issued a self-titled EP (2006) and played their first live show, at Stage 13 in Camrose. They've since opened for the likes of Bon Jovi , Three Days Grace , Billy Talent , Sam Roberts , Default , and Theory of a Deadman , and released a couple more EPs on Fontana Records. Their last effort, '08's Machines & Robots , featured national hits in "Morphine" an...

St. Albert-based custom cake business caters to anyone in need of a dessert out of the ordinary BY EMIL TIEDEMANN " I REMEMBER trying to make angel food cake," said local cake designer Michelle Andrade (pictured below), reminiscing about her earliest memories in the kitchen. "I tried three times and ended up going through three dozen eggs trying to make it...we ended up picking up an angel food cake at the store." That last resort is no longer an option these days, as people now come to her when they can't seem to figure out how to construct a cake recipe. But the recipe is the easy, almost manual part of the picture. The design, now that's the icing on the cake. Pun fully intended. Michelle is everything behind the scenes of Bogato Custom Cake Design , a "fusion between cake and art" that has been the Edmonton-born dessert chef's baby since early '09. That's when the Toronto-trained cakexpert ( new word...copyright pending! ) had an ...

During the Olympic Games Edmonton area athletes reminded us why we're called the 'City of Champions' BY EMIL TIEDEMANN I 'VE never really watched past Olympics, Winter or Summer, and I had no intention in starting with the 2010 Games in Vancouver . But, like so many fellow Canucks, I was drawn into the spectacle that would connect a whole nation like nothing before it had. Patriotic Canadians from coast to coast revelled in every bronze, silver and gold medal victory of our hometown heroes, themselves fuelled by a united pride that caught many of us--and outsiders alike--offguard. For seventeen days, millions were glued to TV sets as we not only ended our dubious distinction of being the only country not to earn a gold medal on home turf, but went onto win a record 14, more by a single country in any previous Winter Olympics ever! By Sunday (Feb. 28) Canada had logged 26 medals in all, enough for third place, behind the U.S. (37) and Germany (30). Some of those medals ...

Local curling superstar and co. sweep the Norwegians to take the gold at the Vancouver Olympics BY EMIL TIEDEMANN P RIOR to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Canada had never won a gold medal on home turf. Last night (Feb. 27) Edmonton curler Kevin Martin led his team to our nation's 13th gold medal of these Games! This was also Martin's first trip to the top of the podium, previously taking silver in 2002. The 43-year-old Martin and his hand-picked team of Canucks' John Morris , Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert beat Norway's Thomas Ulsrud et al 6-3 on Saturday to give Canada its 25th medal for 2010. "We put this team together with the idea to get to Vancouver and we did it," Martin said. "It was a lot of hard work to try and get back in the Olympic Games and with all the hard work, we made it to the finish line." Ironically, it was Team Norway who kept Martin from taking gold at the '02 Games in Salt Lake City, though neither team made it to t...

Bored? Then check out our new sidebar 'Calendar' for something to do I N order to shine a light on even more upcoming events happening in Edmonton, or in surrounding areas ( St. Albert , Sherwood Park , etc.), I Heart Edmonton has included a new feature in our sidebar to the left. " Events Calendar " will highlight some of the concerts, festivals, exhibits, showcases, or other events that will be hitting up the city in the coming days or weeks. They will be brief what-when-where updates that can be clicked on for more information. And don't forget to follow I Heart Edmonton on Facebook and/or Twitter , where we let Edmontonians in on local events coming up. We'll continue finding other ways to guide all you beautiful, sexy folks through what's going on in the city of Edmonton year-round. Cheers, from I Heart . e