EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Pick of the Litter

Edmonton’s Kinsmen field house is a locus for community-minded fitness buffs. Why sweat the hamster wheel of private gyms? It is also a point of departure for cyclists, runners and, in my case, walkers who use the trails that go every which way.

The field house is on flatland, tucked up against a forested slope on the south side of the North Saskatchewan River’s urban valley. On its grounds there is more than enough room to be shared by a playground, a swimming pool, tennis courts, a softball diamond, a football field, a modest museum evoking the city’s birth as a fur trading fort, and, most charmingly, an stretch of simple, plain old, undedicated greenspace. Picnic tables and common barbeques abound.

The expansive manicured grounds are constrained to the west and east, psychologically at least, by bridges which connect the looming north and south ridges. To the west is the immense black iron High Level trestle bridge on its concrete plinths. Hard by that is a newer light rail transit (LRT) bridge with a breezy, swaying pedestrian span suspended beneath it, that much closer to the surface of the wide green river. To the east, just before the decommissioned seven-stack power station and the brick ballpark, are the soaring solar-white arches of the new Walterdale Bridge.

My walking loop begins at the field house. I head to the LRT bridge, cross the river, walk to Walterdale, re-cross the river and arrive back at Kinsmen. Two laps take me about an hour. I do not own a cell phone. Ergo, I do not adorn myself with wearable technology. But I do know that an army marches on its stomach and that the standard pace for infantry on the move in ideal conditions is about three miles-per-hour.

I like walking. I observe my surroundings. I reflect. I write without typing. I plan (but don’t tell God). Perhaps because the sandy dome of the Alberta legislature is always in view I began to wonder if I might not be more productive on my solitary strolls. Last Tuesday I set out on my walk carrying my rubber-coated gardening gloves and a white kitchen trash bag. May as well be useful.

I was mildly distressed when my self-appointed task commenced immediately in the Kinsmen parking lot. I soon set off with a seeded bag under a hazy, smokey sky. I could smell British Columbia burning. The park’s sunlit places had a strange tangerine hue to them. I wondered how far I should deviate from my chosen path to pick up litter. Five feet? Ten feet? I decided that used facial tissues were biodegradable and outside my private mandate. Debris on the ground beside a bin, as infuriating as cigarette butts beside an ashtray, I slam dunked. I filled my bag easily enough however, just one circuit of eccentric civic-minded behaviour.

The pick of the litter, the clear winner, was Tim Hortons coffee cups and lids which easily outpaced candy bar wrappers and salty snack food bags. And doesn’t a crushed, filthy coffee cup say everything about the state of Timmy’s brand under the cutthroat stewardship of Restaurant Brands International? I’ve no affection for Tim Hortons because better coffee is brewed in the kitchen of the Crooked 9. The chain’s media campaigns which peddle soft nationalism, rink rat Canadiana, make me gag even as I wipe a suddenly misted eye. I began to ponder what I could extrapolate from my collection of garbage.

Is Timmy’s the most popular quick service restaurant in Canada based on the volume of litter its customers generate? Or is it simply the national default for a relatively palatable cup of coffee? Are the majority of Tim Hortons customers ill-bred slobs for whom manners mean really big houses? Hard to know. The hard evidence was deemed garbage and thrown out.

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