Fort McMurray, in north-eastern Alberta, is best known as the home of the Athabasca oil sands. Company names like Syncrude, Shell and Suncor are found throughout the city. But when you are in the streets of the city proper, there is little indication of the massive extraction that is happening all around. The city reads like a bit of suburbia dropped into the boreal forest; here a Walmart, there an Earl's, here a bunch of houses, there a scattering of low rise apartments. Unlike the territorial capitals, there isn't much here to suggest that the city is a frontier, so while it can be a good place to live in, there is achingly little for a quick visitor. But my visit there in February 2016 was lovely, warm and sunny weather made it easy to explore the city with my sister, and we enjoyed ourselves as she demonstrated the Walmart's unpredictable absence of products (like eggs), as she made me a formidable meal (surf and turf) and as we tried to locate obscure things (the woman at the McMurray Experience was perplexed by my desire for a cemetery).
I returned in July and saw some of the damage from the huge fire that caused the entire city to be evacuated in May.
Photo List (Total 161 Photos)
Fort McMurray in February 2016
Click bolded headers below to view, or click "just the best" for quick tour
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Central Fort McMurray (53 photos) - This gallery focusses on "downtown" or central Fort McMurray, mostly along Franklin Avenue. It starts at the Jubilee Centre, has quite a few shots of commercial Fort McMurray, a few religious buidings, residential buildings, and parks, includes a visit to the Walmart, and ends with the Fort McMurray Cemetery, which was a bit of a struggle to locate for Mary and I.
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Recreation and Culture (42 photos) - This gallery has various visits to cultural or recreational facilities about town. It starts with the "McMurray Experience", in the city hall at Jubilee Centre, which is a kind of visitor's centre but also incorporates a kinetic art gallery. Many of the photos are from our visit to MacDonald Island, which it's two huge recreational facilities, the Suncor Community Leisure Centre (which has a small art gallery), and the Shell Place stadium. There are a few photos, as we could get, of the closed for the season Marine Park Museum and the closed due to flooding Heritage Park. Finally, there are a few photos of the Oil Sands Discovery Centre, which is pretty much as it sounds, though the "equipment garden" was also closed for the season.
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Thickwood (23 photos) - The north end of Fort McMurray, across the Athabasca River, is where most of the city's current growth is. This gallery includes a few photos at Mary's place. There are three photos of one of the most ostentatious and ugly houses I have ever seen in my life, but most of the gallery is a walk in the boreal forest that Mary and I took, in the sparkling snow, with intermittent views of the Athabasca through the leafless trees.
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Airport and Aerial (7 photos) - Four shots of the interior of the airport, and a few as the plane took off.
Fort McMurray in July 2016
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After the Fire (36 photos) - I returned for a brief visit to Fort McMurray in July, after my sister had settled back into her house (which was not damaged). We drove around the city a bit to see some of the damage, though the worst-affected neighbourhoods were sealed off. We saw burned out houses and vehicles in a number of locations, and also took a walk through the same forest we had been in back in February. I was surprised by how much the forest floor had regenerated, with the now-dead trees hovering above, looking for all the world like they will grow leaves once the winter is over.
