This photo shows what a typical street in a residential area (108 Street just around the corner of my flat) looks like: In the middle you've got the street and usually on both sides, mostly sperated from the street by a small strip of lawn like on this picture. (I wonder, whether legally they are part of the house owners' properties and whether they have to mow that lawn - although they can't really use it and also clear the sidewalk during wintertime.) Sometimes there's a paved sidewalk only on one side, but little trails indicate that people frequently use the other side as well. (No photo available, it might follow.)

The following sidewalks (110 Street very close to university) I have noticed already in my first week (but only today did I finally manage to take the illustrating pictures.) : Wood. That looked very strange to me. A couple of weeks ago when we visited Fort Edmonton Park Kalman, one of Lilla's Hungarian friends, explained that actually right up to the 1950s sidewalks in Edmonton used to be of wooden planks. Only afterwards they were gradually substituted by concrete - and, as Kalman said, people actually complained because the concrete was so hard in comparison to the wood and hurt their legs. (They only moved here in the 60s or 70s so please note that this is third hand knowledge and might not be accurate.)

So I assume that these are the remains of such old sidewalks. On the first one you can clearly see that the sidewalk consists of lengthwise planks of wood. As to the second one I assume that short wooden planks might have been attached across the blocks or alternatively that the space in between might have been filled with gravel..

Actually I’d really love to attend a class about Edmonton’s history and development involving field trips all around the city. Unfortunately I haven’t found any in the online course listings of the history department but I think I’ll go there this week to enquire this matter..