Edmonton Audioguides

Edmonton sits at a latitude where winter means business, and the city has built an entire identity around not just surviving that but thriving through it. The North Saskatchewan River cuts a dramatic valley through the city's centre, and the river valley park system, at 7,400 hectares the largest urban parkland in Canada, is green and vast in summer and snow-quiet and beautiful in January. The valley trails connect neighborhoods that have almost nothing else in common.

The city made its name on oil and fur trade, but it has a cultural life that consistently surprises people who come expecting only petrochemical sprawl.

The Edmonton Fringe Theatre Festival, the oldest in North America, takes over the Old Strathcona neighborhood every August for eleven days of street performance and plays in unusual venues. Whyte Avenue, the main street of Old Strathcona, has good bookshops, Ukrainian bakeries, and music venues that reflect the multicultural character a city of heavy immigration over a century builds naturally.