After this, I had originally planned to go to a Nigerian/African vendor festival, but that one was located in Gold Bar Park, which was too far out of the way, and in the end I didn’t go there. I won’t name the festival because I don’t want to get it caught up with the pictures keyword on Google or something when I didn’t actually visit it. Also it used a weird Eventbrite ticketing system even though the event was free, and the tickets were “out of stock” when I checked this morning, so who knows. Maybe next year.

Instead, I went to Stadium Station, where I learnt that it has this special platform that is used only during high traffic events at Commonwealth Stadium, which was a little behind me in this picture.

The trains that normally run on the track alongside that platform, which I believe are usually the northbound trains but I suppose could be either direction during events, usually open on the platform on the other side, which is in the proof of payment area and only has exits on the very north and very south side of the platform. This side of the platform is much more convenient, especially when headed to/from the stadium, and would be able to handle a lot more foot traffic.

But I guess people who frequent that wing of the LRT line know all that, and to them it’s part of daily life. For me, I barely ever go up that far north, and I’m not sure I had ever stopped at Stadium Station to notice that about it before. So it’s all new and interesting.

But I wasn’t here to gawk (too much) at train stations, much as I love them. From Stadium Station, I walked east and ended up at Borden Park, where the new Official Stop #2 was located. This event was called the CNFC Indigenous Peoples Festival, which I made it a point to visit because Saturday was also National Indigenous Peoples Day:

And it was actually decent. Not super large, but exactly as advertised, more or less, though I didn’t see the indigenous games. There were a number of stalls, though nothing they had was of any interest to me, and they were oddly spread out and different tables in the same row were sometimes facing different directions.

There were the “tipi teachings”, but the teepees were not that big and only a couple of children could enter at a time.

But the big centerpiece was this stage (how cool is it that this park has what basically is a small performance stage in the middle of it?) and the indigenous performers that were playing instruments, singing, and more here.

Very nice. I didn’t stay too long but I enjoyed seeing this scene and listening to the bits of music that I did.

From here, I walked north and west, heading toward Official Stop #3. This was about a half an hour walk or so. My phone battery was not full when I left the house though, and it had been steadily dropping through the day (largely due to me planting flowers and looking for giant mushrooms on Pikmin Bloom while walking around), and by the time I left Borden Park it was around 10% and on power saving mode.

Halfway through my walk toward Official Stop #3 though, I saw to my horror that it had dipped to 4%, so I shut off everything but essential functions, and looked for the quickest way home. I decided to detour the other way at a junction at which turning left would have taken me to Official Stop #3. Instead I turned right, and walked to Coliseum Station, and then took the train home from there. Coliseum Station was a neighbour of Stadium Station so I basically walked a big loop around that neighbourhood, but this station had construction work going on so only one track was active, and the whole station was extremely noisy. Like drills going off at full blast on the platform sort of noisy.

Oddly enough, though this journey home on the train took about half an hour, the phone battery actually survived all the way to Southgate Station, despite me looking for mushrooms at several stops along the way, and I got home with it still at 2%. Safe. I spent about an hour back at home, also known as Distraction #4, and used the opportunity to dump down all the loot that I had — Tigey‘s new friend and the CD — and also transferred the pictures from the first half of my day and started working on the blog a bit. The phone took a little under an hour to charge, something like 5:10 pm to 5:55 pm or so, though I wasn’t keeping track very closely. There were a few dark clouds outside and I did wryly note that my usual stream time was at 6 pm, so I actually had an option here to just call off the rest of my plans and stream at my usual time instead, but I decided not to. So at around 6 pm, I headed back out.

I almost skipped Official Stop #3 again, as I knew that my time window would actually be fairly tight for all the other places that I wanted to go to if I went there, and the Bus 9 that I took from Southgate Transit Centre passed by the bus stop for Official Stop #4 on the way to the bus stop for Official Stop #3, but I decided to go in the end anyway since I had already skipped one stop earlier in the day. So I took the bus and disembarked near Alberta Avenue, and walked east from there to Official Stop #3, which was the Thousand Faces Festival (local).

I was prepared to be somewhat disappointed by this one, because I did note that it didn’t include vendors in the list of highlights of this “festival”, but I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised or something like that. Alas. This was the extent of the festival:

Just one performing stage, and a couple of empty canopy tents and benches and seats. There was a small indoor portion with a film or something that was playing on a screen, but no one was in that room and I’m not completely sure if that room was part of the festival. There was indeed a small area for stilts like the website mentioned:

And the website also talked about a putting zone but uh, this was the extent of it:

There were also supposed to be food trucks here, but what food trucks? Where?

This was a weird event overall and I’m of two minds about it. On one hand, this was a terribly organized event from the perspective of trying to get people to come visit it — for most people, there was nothing to do here except sit down and watch the performances, which is fine, but it’s hardly a “festival” and there wasn’t even any food (left?) by the time I came by at 7:30 pm, for an event that was supposed to last until 9 pm. How were people supposed to get dinner? The stilts actually were fine for a “festival” but the minigolf was just sad to see. And with no vendors, there wasn’t any sort of pull to get people to loiter around and listen to the performances as a secondary thing.

Also, there was a security guard at the front of the entrance to the little square, but there was also a bus stop next to the square and three people were just chilling and doing drugs in the bus stop. Both buses thet serve that bus stop came along and they didn’t take either bus, so obviously they weren’t there for public transit. I believe the Alberta Avenue area is supposed to be the Arts District of the city, but it doesn’t seem to hold a candle to something like Inglewood in Calgary.

But on the other hand, the specific performance that I saw while waiting for the bus to leave the area seemed neat, and I’m sure the rest of them were as well .The stage was set up nicely as the centerpiece of the “festival”, and obviously the people that were there to watch the performances were enjoying it. In fact, this lady seated on her second-storey balcony across the street from the park might have had the best view and most comfortable seat of all:

But I think they tried to market it as more than it actually was, and so it felt like more of a flop than it was, even discounting the fact that I figured out the lack of vendors before choosing to come here. The only reason that any given random person has to come here is to spend a couple of hours listening to the music and performances, and that’s it. That’s the only single attraction, even though it was a decent one. There wasn’t even food. Don’t try to market it as an entire festival (unless improvements are made in future iterations of the event). Instead do it like “bring a blanket, sit down and enjoy performances over a cup of hot tea and cookies” or something.

When the bus I was waiting for came, I tore myself away from the performance area and boarded it, taking it south towards Chinatown and Official Stop #4 – Chinatown After Dark.

This event happens (or will happen) 4 times this year, and I missed the first one due to my trip to Calgary and Canmore/Banff, but I caught this second one. It’s easiest to start the explanation of this one by showing a picture of the event map:

The event was split up over several venues, although I only had about 45 minutes to spend here and so I spent it all in the Main Alley site, and didn’t get a chance to check out the other smaller ones. The problem with this though, and it has been discussed ad nauseum before, is that there are a fair amount of homeless in the area. During an event like this, they aren’t in the actual alleys being used for the event itself due to the sheer number of people there, but they definitely are there on the outskirts and between the spread out locations, and some of them, not all, are drug addicts doing their things too. Like here’s a view of 96th Street, one street over from the eastern edge of the venue, which I passed by on the way there.

And there were similar people hanging out around 97th Avenue, which is a main thoroughfare, too. And here’s a guy walking by the mouth of the Main Alley on 106th Avenue itself, right past the center of the event, lugging his backpack and his black garbage bag as he heads off toward locations unknown.

He meant no harm, and I do have sympathy for their plight, but the event didn’t have security staff, nor were any roads officially cordoned off or anything. The homeless people did not go into the Main Alley itself, and there were lots of people there for the event that made for a “safety in numbers” sort of social barrier, but they were definitely there between and outside of the event sites, and one of the nearby houses even had a homeless tent pitched right up against its outer fence, so the whole thing felt like an uncomfortable mix of “family friendly event” and “unsafe neighbourhood”.

There were lots of people there as mentioned though, including both old people, young people, and little kids, and even dogs, so at least within the context of the Main Alley, it was perfectly safe in and around there, although the main event area was quite small and would take all of 2 minutes to see. There were no item vendors at all here (well, I think there might actually have been one) and outside of a couple of stages, people were here to eat and watch/listen to some live entertainment while eating.

The Main Alley location that I visited looked like this:

And the way the food system worked was that there was a central tent one could buy tickets from, at $6 a pop (and $29 for 5, and $55 for 10, but the $29 discount was so small as to be meaningless, and the $55 one was for way too many tickets except for a big family — although I did consider buying in bulk and using them at future events.). Then you could redeem a ticket or two at each participating restaurant for some food from the table outside their back door.

The helpings I had were fairly filling for $6, and I did hear from others that that was the general sentiment — unlike other Edmonton food events like the Taste of Edmonton, which I might try to go to this year regardless, a good amount of the food servings here were fairly close to actually being worth its cost in tickets, although that might be a function of how restaurant food is wildly overpriced in Edmonton compared to Asian cities rather than the actual cost of the food itself. Even though they were filling, I still thought that the items I had were a dollar or two overpriced.

This was Shanghai Noodles from the China Marble restaurant (1 ticket):

A couple of scoops of noodles from a near-empty tray and a single broccoli from another tray. Barely any meat. And this was Sticky Rice with Pork from Shan Shan Bakery, unwrapped and cut open slightly to show innards:

This one was nice and had not only pork but also salted egg inside. Yum. I ate them while listening to Chinese people trying out a rap battle in English over a mic that was so bad at picking up the contestants’ screamings that I could barely understand any words they were trying to say, even though I could hear the DJ just fine when he was talking.

Despite my misgivings about the neighbourhood, I will almost certainly be back for either the 3rd or 4th iteration of this event this year, as I do want to try out the food from the other restaurants as well as support the local Chinese community. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that the local community is trying to revitalize the neighbourhood, and it is a single direct, if long, bus from my place to there after all. I just wish Edmonton had a proper Chinatown, a proper Chinese festival, and proper Chinese markets and shopping malls and community events like Vancouver or even Calgary does. I do not think the city at large cares in the least about supporting the community. Neither the local MLA (David Shepherd) nor the local city ward councillor (Anne Stevenson, who I had previously seen at Churchill Square) had any presence at all in this event, for example.

At about 8:25 pm, I left the area and used Uber to find a driver to take me to my final event of the evening, and Official Stop #5, which was a night market in River Cree Resort and Casino. This one was located far on the western edge of the city, and in fact I think was considered to be in a separate township of its own, Enoch, just outside of and adjacent to Edmonton’s western city limit. The night market closed at 10pm, and bussing there from Chinatown would have taken an hour and a half at the least, so that was not an option.

The Uber ride that picked me up featured a glass sunroof, and this was the first time I had the pleasure of being in a car with a little transparent panel in the ceiling. That made the ride into the west, toward the sunset, even more pleasant, and I felt quite special as we saw some amazing angel’s ladders in the sky on the way there, possibly the most prominent ones I’ve ever seen, though I was not able to take a good shot of it from any angle. The driver also donated a bit of money to someone who was panhandling with a sign on the concrete island in the middle of the road next to a traffic light, which I thought was nice of him. I’m not sure I’d ever have the heart to do that sort of thing, but at least I gave the driver a slightly bigger tip for that.

We reached the casino in about 25 minutes with no issue at all:

And I learnt from talking to some of the staff at the door that the event was inside, past the casino area:

Cool. Uh. But there was a problem. That’s not what the website said at all. The website here (local) clearly states, for this specific event:

Where is the market located?
Located outside in our tent.

Is the festival still happening if it’s raining?
Yes! We happen rain or shine (hopefully it will shine ever day!)

How should I dress?
Prepare for the weather- sunscreen, hats, umbrellas, etc.

Bullshit bullshit bullshit. All of it was inside, and I think it was planned from the start to be inside, since there was no rain forecast this evening, and there was a “Night Market – 2025” vendor map for the inside too that showed that it wasn’t just an emergency one day move or something.

But I guess this sort of nonsense is what one can expect from a two-faced hotel website (local) that uses marketing lines like “We offer the best entertainment in Edmonton in our 100% smoke-free facility, also featuring Embers, our smoke-friendly gaming center.“. Which the heck is it, are you 100% smoke-free or not? “Smoke-free except the huge secondary casino on the ground floor” (see map above) is not “100% smoke-free”! The website just states whatever they feel like.

Anyway, since I was here already, I took some pictures of the “””night market””” (with a small outdoor food truck area) to chronicle it regardless:

And as a standalone craft/artisan market, this one was actually fairly good, although I was hoping for an indigenous tea stall and there were none of those, just lots of jewellery and clothing. There were two really nice art stalls though, and I took their business cards for the future… just in case.

I also bought this for Tigey:

A little dream pillow for $5 from a local indigenous crafter called Darlene Callioux from Eaglewoman Stitching. Indigenous lore says that this pillow with herbs helps with inducing and inspiring dreams and visions. I already have a scented pillow though, but now Tigey will have one too as he lies beside me at night. I like it very much and thought it was more than a fair price, as well as being a unique keepsake for my little one.

I went home after this, except I was loathe to spend $30 or so to hire another Uber home. I had already taken one to get here, but that one was at least partially discounted by a promotion that Uber was running, however that promotion was no longer there to help out with the cost. An Uber would have taken only 20-25 minutes though, whereas taking public transit home would take upwards of 1h 40 minutes or so. It would save me the entire cost of the discretionary non-food spending that I did today though — $10 for the CD, $9 and change for the plushie, and $5 for Tigey‘s dream pillow, so this was what I opted for in the end.

In fact, I wanted to experience a walk through the neighbourhoods as I had never been here before and likely will not again for quite some time, so what I did was that I walked from River Cree Resort and Casino all the way to Lewis Farms Transit Centre, which was about an hour away. That was nearly a full hour’s walk, from around 9:30 pm to 10:20 pm, and took me past some picturesque neighbourhoods and parks.

The only problem with this hike is that the route along Winterburn Road NW, seen in the map immediately following this paragraph, had no roadside paved path at all, so I was alternating walking through grass and weeds and a dirt path left by others all the way up from River Cree Resorts until Rosenthal Boulevard, where the pavement finally started. There wasn’t even a pedestrian light at I think it was Chief Lapotac Boulevard and Winterburn Road intersection either, whereas at Whitemud Drive and Winterburn Road there was thankfully a pedestrian crossing but there wasn’t an actual path on either end of the crossing, just overgrown grass and a super narrow road shoulder. It was a very weird walk.

Nevertheless, I eventually reached Lewis Farms Transit Centre and took the bus route #4 to South Campus LRT Station from there, and then caught the next train home. The phone camera made things seem brighter than they were, but I tried to leave River Cree Casino at around 9:25 pm or so, got lost “behind” the casino trying to find a shortcut out and around the building (construction and the lack of walkable paths stymied me) and had to go back in and through the casino and out the front door again, actually finally left the casino at around 9:35 pm, reached Lewis Farms at 10:20 pm, South Campus at about 10:55 pm, Southgate at about 11:15 pm, and home shortly after that.

I actually had a small case of the butterflies in my stomach/sense of loss and loneliness while I was at Lewis Farms here, and I again wonder if it is linked to evenings and being far away from home.

Because Southgate Mall was closed, I had to circle around the outside of the mall to get home, and I took the chance to take some pictures of the shuttered Hudson’s Bay store from the outside. For some reason the lights in the building were still lit:

I also saw some people also trying to take pictures of the inside of the store from outside one of the locked doors. See, I’m not the only person totally invested in chronicling the shutdown of the iconic company! I’m sure they were doing it for the exact same reason that I was at 11:20 pm at night!

My Pikmin Bloom app clocked me in as having taken 29,223 steps by the end of the day, which was more steps in a day than any single day during my recent trip to Canmore and Banff, including the 5 hour hike day that I did, or any other trip that I’ve tracked steps on, and I believe actually sets a new personal best for me. I’ve never broken 30k in a day as far as I know, but after 5 (of 6 planned) Official Stops, 4 Distractions, and an hour long late night walk to save $25, this got close. But boy were my legs sore at the end of the day. I did a bit of blogging, but basically collapsed at some point and had a very satisfying sleep, and thus had to finish the blog up on Sunday instead. Hello from Sunday!