Who are we competing against exactly?

Edmonton Alberta had publicly announced that it would throw its hat in the ring to vie to host the 2017 World Expo. Word got out yesterday that..... so is Calgary!

For those of you not familiar with the Alberta dynamic, Calgary and Edmonton are sworn enemies, at least in terms of the fact that they always compete against each other. That the province's capital is in Edmonton is a source of competition. As is the fact that Edmonton has more Stanley Cup wins than Calgary. I mean after all - Edmonton is the 'City of Champions'. So this vying for the Expo at the same time strikes me as just another childish competition to take some of the air out of Edmonton's tires. The provincial government is already wondering how they're going to solve supporting one city's bid over the other.

All that aside though, Expo 2017 could be good for Calgary. A lot of things got done as a result of Calgary hosting the Winter Olympics in 1988, such as the building of the C-Train system. Who knows what could come out of preparations for Expo 2017. By then we might have a completed ring road. We might have a C-Train network actually capable of serving all regions of the city - maybe even the airport! We might have the East Village sorted out. I was living in Montreal when it hosted Expo 1967 and it definitely put Montreal on the world map. Expo could do the same for Calgary. The biggest complaint so far is what this might do to property taxes. A side note - 2017 is Canada's 150th birthday.