Having come from a tougher, poorer city, Winnipeg, I find the decent politeness of people in Edmonton getting off the bus saying "thank you!" to the bus driver to be a bit of a mind-blower. I wonder who started it. Or is it like people getting off a wagon train FROM Winnipeg saying "thank you" because their trip is finally over.
Edmonton isnt a weak town by any means, but it is a place favored by immigrants, so there is much more of a presence by recent arrivals. Winnipeggers are mostly people who are born there and die there, and much of the color comes from the Metis people who built the culture there. Native-ish people named by the Scot or Frenchman who knocked up their grandma in 1800, Mackay or Desjarlais, Sinclair or Lambert. Lots of Slavs and Polish or Russian Jews in my part of town too, the Nort End (which sadly, is much wasted by crack and meth now. Booze treated it more kindly). Those Slavs and Jews who used to work on the railway or run barbershops or delis made sure their kids owned their businesses or became dentists or whatever, and the Nort End is a shadow of what it was when I was a kid in the 60s-70s.
I live and work on the south side in Edmonton, on the northern edge of Brown Town. LOTS of people from India, Pakistan, and the middle east came here in the 80s, and they are still coming. And sponsoring their grannies to come and mind the kids while they are out working. Take the #6 bus from Southgate, you'll get it. I work with and enjoy folks from those parts, we get the good ones: politeness standards much higher, work ethic solid, they take care of the grannies n kids.
Vancouver, I think, has areas which are dominated by other cultures, Richmond is Chinese, Surrey is Indian, but here, everybody is more trying to be part of the whole. Lots of other countries of origin I havent mentioned, you can get really good Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese food, Somalia has contributed beautiful women and drug goofs who shoot each other, you do hear Polish and Russian spoken on the LRT, but everybody thanks the bus driver. Which is nice.
