THE INTERVIEW: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE NATION'S NEWSMAKERS

Mayor Jyoti Gondek is creating the Calgary of the future—starting with its downtown core

- KATIE UNDERWOOD

FIRES ARE BURNING all around Jyoti Gondek. There are the actual fires, blazing wildly across Alberta, but also transit violence, empty office towers—the same sticky issues facing most big-city mayors in Canada. See also: the shock-jock politics that railroaded Alberta’s last election.

Gondek, a former policy analyst turned city councillor, has become a standout progressive in a province that’s mostly gone UCP blue. She’s allergic to lofty ideological pronouncements, but you can discern her stance from her strategy: pushing mobile crisis-response teams to fight homelessness; courting young workers, a move that has drawn record venture-capital dollars to Calgary; and exploring green energy sources, placing her in the crosshairs of Alberta’s oil industry.

Calgary recently threw $200 million into a visionary downtown turnaround, converting vacant offices into housing— a plan that’s attracted “how’d she do that” inquiries from American mayors and supercharged a city once speculated to become the next Detroit. Gondek isn’t trying to burn down Cowtown’s establishment—even if her name is Punjabi for “little flame.” She’s trying to do her job.

I have to ask: how are you faring with the fires? Have you ever seen anything like this?

It’s haunting. It reminds us of what happened in Fort McMurray in 2016. Last week, we had a fire in a Calgary city park called McHugh Bluff. We’ve been in smoky situations before. We just haven’t seen it at this level, this close.

I imagine your job now involves some measure of emergency management.