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AJX said:
Back in the 90s the mayor of Edmonton (can’t recall his name) was pushing for consolidation of the two Edmonton airports stating a strong airport was part of a strong economy. He was predicting that if YYC got to be too much bigger than YEG, Edmonton’s economy would start to become a spoke on the wheel of Calgary’s economy.
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While it sounds bad, I think it benefits both Edmonton and Calgary if there is an HSR with strong connection between the two cities, creating a Great Calgary-Edmonton region and compete with the lower mainland on the west coast.
 
AJX said:
Back in the 90s the mayor of Edmonton (can’t recall his name) was pushing for consolidation of the two Edmonton airports stating a strong airport was part of a strong economy. He was predicting that if YYC got to be too much bigger than YEG, Edmonton’s economy would start to become a spoke on the wheel of Calgary’s economy.
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I kind of recall that. I think it was Bill Smith who was running for mayor at the time. He was concerned Jan Reimer wasn't pro business enough and Calgary was taking over, and he wasn't wrong as Calgary was passing in Edmonton in population at the time, and had all the momentum. There were some companies that had moved head offices from Edmonton to Calgary - the most notable was Shaw. Shaw cited Calgary's airport as one of its reasons for moving.

Calgary passing Edmonton was a whole variety of different reasons. With Klein in power provincial jobs which were mostly all based in Edmonton at the time, were getting cut back. Also with Klein, there was the privatization of some services and that benefitted Calgary as typically the admin/IT core functions moved to Calgary after privatization. Some companies that were still based in Edmonton like AGT (now Telus) were moving most of the jobs to Calgary. AGT also bought out EdTel, and a lot of those jobs were gone due to redundancies or moved to Calgary. There were some company moves from Edmonton to Calgary, but also Companies moving to Calgary from other cities helped push Calgary. TC moving here from Toronto, CP Rail was a huge one.
 
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Jan Reimer lol there’s a name from the past.

At the time she was quite a progressive mayor, probably too progressive for her time, as I do remember near the end of her term before she lost the election she was taking a lot of heat for being anti-business, and in some cases, she was. I might be incorrect here, but I recall she wanted to keep both airports open in Edmonton while the business community pushed for a single stronger airport. And there’s no question that Calgary’s airport has been a big advantage for the city.

Bill Smith, who is running for mayor of time used the fear that Calgary was overtaking Edmonton because they didn’t have a business friendly environment and it worked. He managed to win the election, and that was the end of Reimer.
After Reimer was ousted, there were many who blamed her 3 terms as mayor as the reason Edmonton fell behind Calgary.

TBH I don’t believe she made much difference one way it another. After Bill Smith was elected, Edmonton continue to fall behind. The two airports merged, and it probably helped to some degree, but in the end, not really. Edmonton falling behind really didn’t have anything to do with who the mayor of Edmonton was but more to do with a couple of other things. Calgary’s geographically superior location as well as Calgary’s superior skilled labour pool.
 
BKha said:
Edmonton fell behind Calgary? I didn’t know they were ahead, must have been before my time.
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Since the beginning of the 20th century, Edmonton was always the biggest metro until the 2001 census. Edmonton was typically between 25 % and 50% bigger until the 70s. Around 1970 Edmonton was 25% bigger ~500k to Calgary’s ~400k, but Calgary made gains through the 70s and trailed by around 40K just before things went bust in 1981.
Edmonton increased its lead through 80’s and was around 80K ahead by 1986.
Things all started to click for Calgary around 1988. Mulroney had scrapped the NEP in 1985 and once oil picked up around 1989, Calgary started to go.
Other things started happening for Calgary, as previously mentioned, Nortel was investing a lot of money into Calgary and other companies were moving here. Klein coming into power resulted in jobs either lost in Edmonton due to cutbacks or jobs were moving from Edmonton to Calgary due to privatization. The 90’s saw Calgary leapfrog Edmonton.

Before that as mentioned, Edmonton was the larger metro and one could argue that it was also Alberta’s alpha city. It has a lot of things going for it, the seat of government and government jobs meant a much more stable economy. It had a much larger, higher profile University and a more diverse economy.

Oil made a comeback for Calgary in the late 80’s but the city really started to change in the 90’s and hasn’t stopped. Each time there’s been a downturn in the oil industry it’s usually affected Calgary more, but each time the difference is less noticeable between the two cities. Less noticeable to the point that when oil had its recent 7 year disastrous downturn, Calgary still managed to grow more than Edmonton.

It would interesting to see someone do an in-depth look at the two cities over the past 30-40 years from say 1986 when Edmonton was 80K larger to 2023 where the Calgary area is now close to 200k larger and see if there are any main reasons or simply several small reasons.
 
Interesting stuff Beltline. I didn’t move here until 1998 and never knew much of the back history.
I’m curious to where the population numbers from past years come from? I couldn’t find much on Google except for this site and I don’t know if it’s accurate.
 
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I actually wouldn't be surprised if a place like Medicine Hat became more popular in the future.

It's climate is arguably the best in the Praries and somewhat underrated within Canada.
 
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