The Alleys of Edmonton: Chianti Café & Restaurant (105th St and 82 Ave)

Everyone has heard of an elephants’ graveyard, but what of pigeons? They too have their own ancestral places of death, which each successive generation is instinctively drawn towards as mortality nears. I’m quite certain that there are many of these spots, each unique to the pigeon culture of a particular neighbourhood. But near Whyte Avenue, the pigeons’ graveyard is unquestionably located in the alley behind a pasta restaurant.

I first realized this sobering fact many summers ago when I was a street cleaner working on the avenue. If my experiences are to be trusted, finding more than one dead pigeon in an alley during the course of a single summer is exceptional. Typically, wherever I found a dead pigeon seemed to radiate some aura that prevented other birds from dying there. It was as if the other birds could smell the taint of violent death in that spot and avoided it.

Strangely, the alley behind Chianti Café & Restaurant seemed to be immune to this rule. During the span of one summer, I regularly spotted dead pigeons in that grease-stained tomb of an alley. The birds seemed drawn there by something immutable, some irresistible urge that compelled them to the place where their forefathers had died, where their children would die, where they themselves would die. This was when I realized I had discovered that hallowed, mythical place: the pigeons' graveyard.

The alley has an aura of spiritual mystery to it. The grease from the dumpsters is so compacted that it seems the whole alley is sheathed in the substance. On hot days, you feel your cholesterol rising as you walk through it, breathing the fatty air. Having been sustained by the greasy leavings of the dumpsters of Whyte Avenue, it is only reasonable that the pigeons should come to such a place to die—rather poetically, the thing they love kills them.

There are no violent deaths in this alley, as there are in the other alleys—no car accidents, no animal attacks. The pigeons come here to die peacefully, supping on grease one last time, gorging themselves until their little hearts, looking like they have been dipped in wax, flutter briefly one last time in joy and sorrow and then slowly, quietly stop.

When touring the alleys of Whyte, be sure to stop by this sacred ground and take in the meditative pleasures of its serenity. There are no maps for places such as this, where death and life merge much like the dumpster grease and asphalt. Like the elephants' graveyard, the pigeons' graveyard exists more in the realm of legend than reality, making this a particularly rare and special opportunity. I urge you not to miss it.

Afterwards, stop at Chianti for some fine dining. I hear it’s excellent.