- Edmonton has officially recognized Pride Corner, commemorating the resistance of members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community to street preachers who would blast their message on the corner of Whyte Avenue and 104 Street. "This was incredible to have an official proclamation from the mayor and to just be officially recognized," organizer Erica Posteraro told CTV. "A lot of people, especially queer folks, have felt pretty unsafe on this corner due to some religious street preachers that have been in the area and said some pretty harmful and homophobic things."
- Of the 59 homicides in Edmonton involving members of Central and East African communities, 30 are unsolved, members of the Somali community heard at a May 14 meeting with police aimed at better understanding what is preventing the resolution of cases and exploring what can be done to prevent future deaths. "I think somehow there is that … disconnect," moderator Guled Kassim told Postmedia. "So my takeaway is I don't know how many more of these we have to do before they realize that both parties have to communicate with each other," he said.
- An 800-foot extension of the High Level streetcar to a new terminal just north of Whyte Avenue is set to open on May 19 after more than a decade of planning by the Edmonton Radial Railway Society. The society has the largest fleet of heritage streetcars in Western Canada.
- "The playoffs are all the buzz in Alberta's capital city, once the stage for hockey icon Wayne Gretzky, and these days for Oilers star Connor McDavid. But just below the city streets lined with happy fans decked out in the team's orange and blue are train tunnels where an entirely different kind of drama is playing out," writes the Toronto Star's Edmonton-based team in a piece describing a night in the life of downtown as it intersects with houselessness, the opioid crisis, and violence.
- Students at Lillian Osborne High School won Junior Achievement's Big Pitch competition with their company, called Gaia, which turns disposable masks into unique jewelry. They're donating 10% of their earnings to Waste Free Edmonton to support sustainable initiatives.
- The province has promised $70 million over the next three years to add 4,900 student spaces to five Edmonton post-secondary institutions. More than half of the money will go to the University of Alberta to create 3,200+ seats in science, engineering, nursing, and business; the rest will be split among Concordia University of Edmonton, MacEwan University, NAIT, and NorQuest College. The Council of Post-Secondary Presidents of Alberta welcomed the news while noting room for growth, while the opposition NDP called the move "deeply hypocritical" in light of approved tuition increases.
- Swastikas were spray-painted on and near the Ukrainian National Federation Hall at 98 Street and 106 Avenue, an act the Ukrainian Canadian Congress says should be investigated as a possible hate crime. Russia has justified its invasion of Ukraine as an effort of "denazification", and the vandalism seems to be the work of "someone who is obviously influenced by Russian propaganda," the Ukrainian federation's Marco Levytsky told Global News.
- Pope Francis will visit Edmonton during his six-day trip to Canada at the end of July, a sequel to the apology he made in April for the role Catholics played in residential school abuses.
Headlines: May 16, 2022
By Karen Unland