The weekend of March 20 saw the Edmonton Boat and Sportsman Show.
Attendance has increased ever since the show was cancelled just a few hours before opening, due to COVID, in 2020.
It’s a big show, the biggest expo in Western Canada next to a similar boat show in Vancouver. We don’t have attendance records handy. But our general impressions are, being there, the number of boats on display, if not even more and certainly bigger boats, is back to the old days before COVID. Meanwhile, the number of smaller exhibitors still hasn’t recovered. The show might be a reflection of retailing right across Alberta.
Small retail businesses find it tough competing against the combinations of big box stores, Amazon, and even Temu. Keep in mind the likes of Amazon, Ikea, Costco, and even CTV or CBC usually don’t show up to support your local sports teams, service clubs, food banks and so much more. Not in the way local businesses, industries and governments do in our small centres. Hats off to those true community supporters!
It doesn’t help at all when Canada Post, and yes, CBC, also get huge taxpayer subsidies to deliver their products. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge this newspaper gets federal assistance.
On that, we see one bucket of cash supports local reporting. Our bucket, compared to what CBC gets right here to do local stories. is a thimbleful.
A second bucket, interestingly, is a subsidy to pay the ever-increasing cost to have Canada Post deliver subscriber newspapers. The delivery subsidy, from taxpayers, helps because bigwigs at Canada Post figure they can make more money delivering ad flyers and parcels in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and even locally than they can delivering newspapers in a small community. Seems like the idea is to price local news right out of business instead of listen to their whining.
Which brings us back to a favourite whining topic: tourism promotion in Alberta.
Alberta, and the provincial department known as Tourism Alberta, loves talking about mountains. If their advertising is believed, Alberta might have a cowboy and some cattle.
But only in the foothills of, of course, those mountains. Fishing? Sure! Check out this mountain trout stream. Camping? See this cute little place where you watch the sunset going behind, yup, some mountains.
There were no mountains at the Edmonton Show. Cold Lake, Bonnyville, Lac La Biche and more had local government displays. M.D. of Opportunity was there. Private businesses Joussard Red Sky, Kinuso Sunset Park and Valleyview Crabbie Goat from the entire – get that! – entire rest of northern Alberta. Nobody from Banff or Jasper. Pigeon Lake? Sylvan Lake? Nothing!
Sure, some places are swamped with visitors. So many in fact, many permanent residents in Banff want them to go away. Or pay much, much more just to park a vehicle and walk around.
Sadly, most places in Alberta, tourism wheels are really squeaking. But some wrong places, grease just keeps on coming and coming.
Jeff Burgar