You Just Have to Care — That’s the Main Thing
Shadow City Interviews: Sameer Singh
The Shadow City Interviews are part of a larger project, Who’s Afraid of Edmonton?, in which, together with long-time residents, I explore the good, the bad, the ugly — and the sacred — in the city.
Sameer Singh
Sameer (Sam) Singh is a community leader in Edmonton who was a key proponent and steward of the Edmonton Shift Lab. Previously, he melded journalism and design thinking with public engagement at EndPovertyEdmonton, the Government of Alberta, and Strathcona County. He also has experience in fundraising at the University of Alberta and business incubation at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. He has made documentary films about climate change in the Yukon and a local male bellydancer traveling to Egypt. He holds an MBA from the Rotman School of Business, an MJ from Carleton University, and a BA from the University of Alberta. He was recognized for his volunteer work by being named a Star of Alberta in 2025.
(The following interview was recorded on March 31, 2026. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.)
What is your personal connection to Edmonton?
I’m born and raised here. My parents came from India. My dad came in 1969 to complete his PhD in physics at Dalhousie University. Once he finished his PhD, he realized there wasn’t much of a job market for that field at the time. So he went back to school, against my mother’s advice. He went back to school as an older student and he got accepted into the University of Alberta’s dental program. He graduated in 1984. I was born in 1977. So I grew up here, and I call myself a “boomerang Edmontonian” because I’m one of those people that left and came back. For the outsider, for somebody who’s new, it’s hard to love, but I think for almost everyone who spends time here, they fall in love with it. The city has a little bit of something for everyone. When I say everyone, I mean everyone in basically every sense, not just demographically or culturally. It’s a liberal city, so it’s more diverse. Whatever your politics are or your sexual preferences or your hobbies, your industry, across the board, it is a city for everyone.
After the University of Alberta, I went to Carleton in Ottawa. I did a master’s in journalism because I thought that’s what I wanted to do. Then I got my first job in the Yukon. I lived in Whitehorse for a year and a half. Then I did some traveling and spent some time in Ukraine, in Kyiv. on an internship. After I did journalism, I did some documentary filmmaking in the Yukon. My good friend Viraj Wanigasekera, the prairies’ only male belly dancer — I made a documentary about him. It was on Omni TV. We traveled around, and went to Egypt for the world’s biggest belly dancing festival. But I got into media right when it was all starting to collapse with online culture. At Carleton, I remember cutting reels with tape. It was precisely the wrong time to get into this industry because it all just started to fade away.
When I came back to Edmonton, I was in a bad relationship. So I went to Toronto and I did an MBA at the University of Toronto. I got into design thinking. I got into social innovation. I came back here, worked at NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology), for novaNAIT, which used to be the innovation arm. Then I worked for the University of Alberta doing fundraising. Then I worked for the City for EndPovertyEdmonton, which was a brainchild of Don Iveson, basically an anti-poverty initiative. I also worked in social innovation in Sherwood Park.
I work for my dad now. My mother passed away in 2019. At that point I just decided, you know, we’ve got this family business that’s going to pay my bills better than anything I’ve done before. It’s hard working for family members. It’s an adjustment, but it’s something I’ve gotten used to. Now I’m enjoying it after a long learning curve.
Is there something about Edmonton that you think outsiders fail to appreciate?
I think they get a very limited perspective because people around the world know Calgary. Edmonton has a much tougher sell. Because the city has always been growing economically, it’s always attracting population. The city’s basically more than doubled its population in 20 years, which by North American standards is a fairly high rate of growth. Because of our economy, there’s more disposable income. Our purchasing power is higher here. You will see luxury consumption at a rate that you wouldn’t see in Winnipeg or Tulsa or Hamilton or Kansas City. People think it’s redneck Alberta, which is also kind of ridiculous given that Alberta had the first Muslim mayor of any major city. Edmonton is very different from rural Alberta. I think people realize it’s a more global, multicultural, multifaceted city now. We’re not just about oil and gas. There is the education sector, there is the life sciences sector, there is a tech sector that’s emerging, and I think people are starting to recognize that.
Is there a particular moment when, at a certain fork in the road, Edmonton took the right path?
Within the last few years, we realized we’re an educational city, like Montreal is as well. We realized that one of our major strengths is that we’ve got five significant postsecondary institutions. Altogether there is probably a 100,000-person student population, which is quite significant for a city of a million and a half. When you think about people coming here from around the world, and they’re here for four years, they may never come back here, but if they have a great catalyzing experience of being a student, having a great time, being independent, living in this city, we can sell the story of Edmonton, to show that this is a great city for young people. It’s a good city, especially if you live in the core, and the core is always expanding. To me, the core is anywhere the LRT goes. I think it’s still a good sell in that regard.
Is there a particular moment when, at a certain fork in the road, Edmonton took the wrong path?
Getting the city to be involved in so many other things that it shouldn’t, things that are not really city building. We don’t have a good track record. I worked for EndPovertyEdmonton. I remember saying, why is it called EndPovertyEdmonton and not reduce poverty or eliminate poverty? And Don Iveson said the goal is to end it. Not to tolerate it. Not to reduce it or ameliorate it. It’s to end it. It seemed bold and it was bold. That’s one example of how the city oversteps its bounds. I have sympathy because of what happened in the 1990s, the age of austerity. The federal government cuts programs, they get dumped down to the province, and the province cuts programs, they get dumped down to the city. The city has to deal with homelessness. It has to deal with crime in a way that the province and the federal don’t. They didn’t have a choice but to try these more utopian solutions. But how do we solve issues we’re not equipped to deal with? In the end, all these overreaching programs didn’t achieve nearly much as much as they were touted to do.
I think of Blatchford. The idea of closing the airport to build a net-zero community. Why did it have to be net-zero? I understand you wanted to highlight the groundbreaking technologies that are environmentally friendly, but did it have to be there? This is prime land minutes away from downtown. You could have sold it to a developer who could have put in 10,000 or 20,000 people living there. They could be living there by now. I feel that the infrastructure planning is silly. Like, the way we built our LRT, what purpose does it serve to not have crossing arms? Each collision is probably going to be at minimum $100,000 to fix the car, the train, the disruption. Couldn’t 19th-century technology have stopped this? It’s another example of these utopian ideas of what a city can do that is going to be so cool and beneficial, but in the end is just much more wasteful.
Tell me about something in Edmonton that feels sacred to you.
I think it’s cliché, but I think the river valley really is our one natural advantage. I was at Notley Park during June or May, right before a hockey playoff game. I remember taking a photo. You could show people this completely serene, quiet, beautiful panorama of our river valley, yet only 10 minutes from here, there are 30,000 people going raving mad for the Oilers. There are two completely different realities, this close to each other. I feel like one thing that we could do more of is to have river valley-view restaurants or nightclubs or bars. In Amsterdam for example, there are so many restaurants that have a great view of the canals. So they know that’s the view, that’s what people want to see. And I feel that we could allow that level of development without ruining the valley, without impeding it or taking away the special feel of it.
I also think the diversity of this place is sacred. It could be minus twenty in January on a dark winter night, but you can go anywhere. You can have cuisine, coffee, or alcohol from anywhere around the world. And there is a community of people with their own religion, their own language, their own music, all of that stuff. That is true about Canada in general. A friend of mine was the executive director of the Africa Centre, and he’s from Zimbabwe originally, lived in Halifax, and now is here. And I remember him saying that every single weekend he was exhausted. There are 55 countries in Africa and every single weekend, one of them is celebrating an Independence Day and you have to go and attend. You don’t have to think of Toronto or Vancouver for this incredible level of diversity. We have it here. We’ve had it here for decades.
If Edmonton had a Bond villain, past or present, who would it be?
The person that pops in my mind would be Daryl Katz. The fact is, he’s making a killing. The Oilers are the third most profitable team in all of professional sports in the world. Only the Dallas Cowboys and only the Golden State Warriors are more profitable than the Edmonton Oilers. It just blows me away. Each hockey jersey is $200 or $250. So Darryl Katz is making a mint off this. All the real estate developers of the world — Trump and Katz and all these guys — they make a killing. They probably don’t pay their fair share of taxes, all that stuff. But also, this new arena downtown with these gleaming new towers, the JW Marriott — would you have that without him? I don’t think so. He was able to concentrate a lot of wealth around the arena. I think if you want to be a city in the big leagues, you want to do what Edmonton has done. Almost all of the top 40 touring acts stop in Edmonton. They don’t go to Calgary, in part because of the way the Saddledome is shaped. The acoustics are really bad and it’s hard to do rigging for equipment, so for speakers and all that stuff and pyrotechnics, you can’t do that. Every major comedian I wanted to see has come by here or will come through here. But you still need that mass, you still need that critical mass of a shopping district, a nice five-star hotel, some good restaurants, all that stuff. From that you get comedians and rock stars and authors on book tours who will come here, and then everybody else — the middle class, the working class — everybody else can benefit. I do feel like it does trickle down a bit.
Should other Canadians care about Edmonton, and if so, why?
If they care about Alberta, if they care about Confederation, then it’s important to pay attention to Edmonton. If they care about the big industries that we’re in — education, life sciences, pharmaceutical sciences, health and wellness — they should care about Edmonton. If they care about the North and if they care about the Arctic and sovereignty and critical minerals and all those things, Edmonton has to be part of that conversation. With a growing economy at the leading edge of many industries, I think it’s important for the rest of Canada to know about us.
It’s also a city with deep working-class roots. It’s a very progressive city. It’s a city with a lot of left and liberal values. This place is a gem. It’s so easy to come from anywhere and within two years be deeply invested in the community here and excel at whatever your profession is, whatever your industry is, whatever your sector is. You just have to care — that’s the main thing. Just be willing to be committed and the world’s your oyster in this city.
NOTES
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Sources
Image: Air traffic control tower at Blatchford
https://blatchfordedmonton.ca/our-story/
“Edmonton Oilers tie for 3rd on Forbes’s 2025 list of top-20 most profitable sports teams,” Nicholas Frew, CBC News, February 2, 2026
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-oilers-forbes-list-profit-9.7070143
Further references
“Welcome to Blatchford.”
https://why.edmonton.ca/stories/welcome-to-blatchford/
Alberta Aviation Museum. There is a huge archive of historical resources here about Blatchford Field, which served as Edmonton’s municipal airport for close to a century.
https://albertaaviationmuseum.com/