They have fiber internet now. I grew up offline, had to fight for every improvement from 56k modem to ISDN to DSL. Now their internet is faster than mine.

We got a stop light and the gas station changed families. The stop light took me by surprise and I nearly ran it the first time.

Lots and lots and lots of empty places.

At least half of the retail space is basically dead.

My old shopping mall filled the half-empy food court with a climbing gym for kids and a massive video arcade, which is cool. It’s more like a flea market than a mall now because the storefronts that are occupied are all local retailers.

Oddly enough, the old cookie shop in the mall is still going strong and making the same great stuff. Apparently that place is timeless.

Less trees. A lot less.

It’s tripled in population. We’re up to about 3,000 people now.

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A massive outlet mall opened, in a small city who’s biggest attraction previously was WalMart. Now when people ask where I’m from, the response I get to telling them is “oh the place with the mall?”

Also, I’ve heard the school district is pretty good these days. Unlike when I was there and my high school had one of the lowest graduation rates west of the Rockies.

Some previously wooded area is now suburb. A craft store was replaced by a thrift store. There are a few restaurants downtown that weren’t there before.

There are probably others but those are the ones I noticed.

The only change I think anyone would notice is the town got big on graffiti art. It’s everywhere now.

My hometown was in Canada’s top-ten communities in decline for years. These days, it’s got two-thirds the population it used to, the streets are full of deer, and quite a few farmers’ fields have turned into forests. Almost everyone my age that I knew moved away long ago. Going back is always shocking.

*The population is 50 times what it was when I was a kid.

*All the cool places we used to hang out at school as kids are fenced off.

*The big tree that shaded half the yard of the house I grew up in was cut down. The property has been split into 3 separate “apartments” for rent. Everything was repainted and the yard looks nothing like it used to.

*Everything around town has been built up. Most of the empty fields have businesses or houses on them.

*The lake my grandfather and I used to fish at is no longer publically accessible. The lake was choked to death by algae caused by farm run off pollution.

*The main road is paved, has gutters, street lights etc. and isn’t a dirt road anymore like it was when I was little.

*Trains don’t go through the railroad going through town. They haven’t for years so no train watching.

The population has tripled, downtown is no longer dead on weekends, housing cost has increased by a factor of 25. Crime has dropped precipitously, we went from one of the toughest areas in the country to average. No improvement in public transportation so traffic is much worse. My kids did not know the boredom that leads to hanging out drinking in empty lots, there aren’t many empty lots anymore.

Everyone I know got older.

I think the most notable change is that the main hospital in my hometown was moved to the outskirts of the city. It used to be closer to the center but they moved it, possibly because it’s bigger now and they needed more space to work with.

They also tore down the old courthouse and replaced it with one that, at least from the outside, looks smaller. Some of the supermarkets have also move locations and there are some new stores that have taken the old locations.

I grew up in Fort McMurray, home of the Canadian oilsands.

I remember this being a small place and the local newspaper running the story that the place moved from “town” to “City” status.

In the early 2000s this place boomed. Went from about 35000 population to 90000 (there was talk of about 140000 in the region, many people flying in and working out of campus).

During this time, we were getting lots of bad press… The media running stories of rampant drugs in the area and that sort of thing. They used footage from outside the seediest bar in town at 3 a.m. of you go to any town or city and hang out at the lowlife bar at 3 a.m. you can claim how horrible the place is. In reality, this place is filled with young working families. Sure, we have some problems but then any place in earth.

The 2008 financial crisis was kind of a break. By this, I mean that this place was so busy that this slightly impact to the region meant that, for the first time in about 5 years, I had an opportunity to hire some semi-qualified people. In the past 5 years, some of the interviews I had with people (this is for IT jobs) were just ridiculously bad.

2014 saw the price of oil crash. That definitely slowed things down here, moving it from a boom town to a normal place.

2016 brought the wildfires. You may have seen it on the news. 88000 people evacuated from the city.

In 2020, a flood struck our downtown area. Folks from that area were evacuated to other areas.

Currently, we have another wildfire in the region. About 6000 people are currently evacuated but as I understand it, the fire still a ways away and it has been raining a bit over the last couple of days, so I am not overly concerned for the homes of evacuees.

So, my home town has gone through lots of chance and challenges over the years. It was built on a real pioneering spirit and I’m proud of the that the people have demonstrated through the hard times.