It has been a fruitful few years since the city's Botanical Arts brand has taken root and has produced some interesting sprouts. In my esteem, the garden has just become a wee bit wild though.
Everything “St. Albert” has changed into a vernal pea green motif because of it. I’ve watched these new green buses roll lazily down the Botanic Loop, passing by every neighbourhood street sign that now features those weird ‘leaf symbol’ additions to them. I’m curious how much those leaf thingies cost us and to what purpose.
Frankly, it's been a bit much: contests for the most beautifully botanic front yards, bike racks artistically designed to look like leaves … we get it! The city loves the leaf! We cultivate life everywhere. Enough! I’m surprised that the Floral Arts Guild hasn’t been given the key to the city and the Botanic Park hasn’t been deemed our official promenade too.
Sure, Father Lacombe and Bishop TachĂ© decided to set up a mission here in no small part because of how fertile the land was. It’s a pretty place too, with a lake on the side and a river that runs through it. Holes has been a prominent destination business here since time immemorial. To call us the Botanical Arts City is a no-brainer.
The self-imposed green distinction is not necessarily a bad idea but I've wondered in the past if it would have been better if our esteemed administrators had settled on “St. Albert – the Red Light District.” This is partly because of how our traffic lights are timed but also because of how our new photo radar technology posts and vans make me never want to go over the speed limit again.
While we’re all stopped at those lights, we should admire the newly planted rows of grasses and flowers in the medians and boulevards of some of our main strips. They’re beautiful and a fine improvement from the cracked and heaving cement wastelands that formerly decorated our roads.
At the same time, take a second to peek your head out the window and ponder all of the cigarette butts, beer cans and other societal detritus that accumulates along the gutters. St. Albert might be a city of beautiful flowers but it's also a congestion of litterbugs, people too lazy to tend to their own garbage.
I have an idea. How about we set up those bylaw enforcement photographers to snap a few pics of the scofflaws who throw their butts on the ground, deign to ignore the garbage cans along our sidewalks and park paths, and leave their dogs’ leavings in the grass?
They’re an offence to our collective health, welfare and civility, and they contravene municipal bylaws – warranting a $250 ticket or more. Botanical Arts would pay for itself in no time. Pretty soon, we’d all have a cleaner city so that we could all appreciate the flowers and trees around us.
