I was recently in Calgary and know ppl that live there. I would like to stress it is absolutely a conservative town but it's not without a large queer community and out and about queer folks having a good time.

The voting record is as Canada's conservative heartland but it has long history of radically progressive and humanist ideas as a bulwark to the business and theologically motivated conservative base.

The food scene is really good too.

I don't know much about Edmonton other than Calgarians think they're better and there's a mall in Edmonton.

But ya know, it's a clown show like anywhere else. The provincial government is actively attacking queer awareness/visibility/speech with book banning measures that the Unionized librarians and plenty of other Albertans are fighting back against hard.

It's still quite a small pair of prairie towns and are the biggest towns for a very long distance from anything as close to as big as them. As a result some fresh produce can be hard to find because there is not much grown locally.

Would be remiss to not mention nature. It's got some of the biggest parks of any city I've ever been too and you can see those damn pretty mountains and go to them if you own/rent the basically required car.

TLDR

I kinda liked it 🤷