Where to begin...?
I don't think that Edmonton winters are "worse" than anywhere else in Canada. They are merely different. I lived in BC and spent most of the winter forgetting the concept of sunlight or a day without incessant rain. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a thing and it's a yuge thing in BC. Edmonton gets about 30 more days of sunshine per year than Vancouver.
The really brutal, -35 temps show up for maybe 2 weeks out of the entire winter and it's a dry cold and usually sunny. I find winters here easier to take than the monsoon season you get in Vancouver. Being dry helps. When your clothes are not constantly damp from rain, you can tolerate -20 better than you can stand -2 and wet. Toronto also has humid winters (and summers) and while it may not get as cold on the thermometer, the added humidity in the air makes it feel colder. It also makes the snow heavier and wetter. In Edmonton, the snow is like powder. You don't even need to scrape your car that often. It just flies off as soon as you start moving.
Calgary gets the occasional chinook but it more than makes up for that with intense dumps of snow. Calgary gets snowstorms earlier and later than Edmonton. And traffic in Calgary, partly due to the extra 200K inhabitants than what Edmonton has and partly geography, is way worse than here. For all intents and purposes, Edmonton has no traffic to speak of.
The area of town where the McDavid's live is more than posh enough. Their house is built on the edge of an escarpment overlooking the river and the downtown skyline. The Glenora district is where the old money resides and the homes there are luxurious. No, it's not Westmount or the Bridle Path, but if you're rich you live quite well. We don't have many "suburbs" but the super wealthy who want to avoid people can buy acreages that are no more than a 30-40 minute drive from Rogers Place.
Again this whole narrative about winters and "things to do" are mostly irrelevant for players. During the season they're too fucking busy and half the time they're on the road anyway. And in the off-season they can go anywhere. It's not like the old days when players had to go and work at the steel mill a week after the season ended. And like I said earlier, 97's wife has business interests here in Edmonton to keep her occupied.
In short, it is not I who is huffing "copium". It is Leafs fan who is huffing glue. Only one of two things is ever going to happen with McDavid. Either he's an Oiler for life, or he goes to a southern US market with warmer weather and lower taxes. He's never going to Toronto because just like Marner, he doesn't really give a shit about the things he gave a shit about when he was 5.
edmontonsun.com
