A Love Letter to Routine: Edmonton Edition

You don’t realize you’ve fallen in love with a city until it starts loving you back. Not in dramatic, fireworks-over-the-river kind of ways, but in the slow, quiet details. In the routines. In the tiny nods of recognition that only come with time.

Edmonton isn’t the kind of place that flirts with you right away. She’s a little awkward. A bit moody. She’ll ghost you for months under a blanket of grey skies, then suddenly show up in a sun dress at 9:45 PM in June and remind you why you stayed.

But here’s the thing about this city: she rewards the ones who stick around long enough to notice.

Like how the barista at my local café doesn’t ask anymore. She just sees me walk in and grabs the almond milk. Adds a sprinkle of cinnamon. Hands it over like a peace offering from the universe. And I swear, that tiny act of caffeinated clairvoyance is enough to carry me through most Mondays.

Then there’s the man with the Dundee hat.

Every morning. Same fluffy dog. Same route. And for the longest time? Not even eye contact. Nothing. I was a ghost on his sidewalk. But slowly, painfully slowly, something shifted. It took six months of consistent head-tilts and friendly energy before he cracked. Now? I get a nod. A dignified, solemn nod like we’re old war buddies. It’s the kind of unspoken Edmonton respect you have to earn.

It’s not just people either. It’s places. It’s patterns.

It’s the way the sunlight hits the High Level Bridge just right on those crisp fall mornings—like the city’s exhaling gold. It’s late-night drives down Jasper when the roads are empty and the streetlights glow like they’re winking at you. It’s how you can find a Ukrainian church, a Vietnamese bakery, and an auntie selling bannock out of her trunk all within three blocks—and somehow, they all feel like home.

Routine in Edmonton doesn’t mean boring. It means belonging.

It’s walking into the same bookstore off Whyte Ave and seeing your favourite second-hand poetry collection still sitting there like it waited for you. It’s the bartender who remembers that you like your gin dirty and your small talk honest. It’s getting excited when the trees on your block finally leaf out, because damn, they made it. And so did you.

It’s the quiet pride of knowing which potholes to avoid. It’s running into your cousin at Superstore. It’s finding peace in your favourite dog park, where the same slobbery retriever steals your scarf every other Tuesday like it’s part of some inside joke you never asked to be in on.

Edmonton isn’t slick. She’s not flashy. But she’s got this soft, rough-edged charm that sinks in when you’re not looking. And when you start falling into your rhythms here, the city starts to feel like it’s falling into rhythm with you.

And that, my friends, is the real romance of routine. It's not just the latte. It’s being known. It’s being part of the strange, beautiful choreography of a city that doesn’t pretend to be perfect—but knows how to hold you, just right, when you need it most.

So here’s to routine in Edmonton: the cinnamon, the nods, the potholes, and the lowkey magic of being exactly where you are.

~smy