Mayor Don Iveson has extended an invitation for a personal tour of Edmonton to “whoever wrote the Lonely Planet thing.”
The international travel guide publisher Lonely Planet waded into the battle of Alberta with its 2017 review of Canadian cities.
“I get it, whoever wrote the Lonely Planet thing hasn’t actually been here for a few years,” Iveson told reporters Tuesday.
“I’d be happy, if we ever figured out who it is, to invite them here and show them around myself because they clearly got it wrong.”
According to the 2017 guide, Edmonton is a modern albeit “frigidly cold” stopover city that “you’re more likely to read about in the business pages than the travel supplements.”
The top sites are outside the city, the guide notes — the Ukrainian Cultural Village and Elk Island National Park.
“Downtown is for the moneyed and the down-and-out.”
By contrast, Calgary is painted as surprisingly beautiful, overrun by modest yet self-loving citizens who boast a “can-do attitude.”
That attitude “saw them helping residents of wildfire-stricken Fort McMurray with unquestioning generosity,” the guide states.
Lonely Planet is an international publisher of travel guide books, based in the United States. (Lonely Planet Canada)
“I can abide all of the other mistakes, but that one is a bit of an insult to the generosity of Edmontonians and northern Albertans,” Iveson said.
“Calgary and all of the province stood up in a big way during the Fort Mac fires.
“But somebody should ask (Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo Mayor) Melissa Blake who really stood up. Because it was northern Alberta communities from Boyle to Lac La Biche and, yes, Edmonton that took the largest numbers of people.”
A disclaimer in the final pages of the 2017 Lonely Planet Canada states there is “no warranty about the accuracy or completeness of its content.”