What could keep me here?

I grew up in Edmonton. And for the first time in almost five years, I'm here with no definite plans. I know at some point, I'll have to return to my home, to Halifax, at very least to clean my room out.
But I went for a walk this evening. Edmonton is a big, busy, ugly city during the day. But, if you follow the right path, up the right street, it's hard to imagine the city as anything but beautiful. Walking across the Dawson Bridge, built (like everything else in Edmonton) by developers in the 1920s who wanted to convert cheap farmland to expensive home lots, the silence of the river valley washed over me. The streetlights dimmed, and I looked out over the river, still covered with ice, and breathed in. I couldn't smell the refineries. I couldn't see the condo developments. I couldn't hear any traffic. It was calm, and quiet. It was the lazy city I remembered as a kid.
Walking up the hill into the Forest Heights area, the familiarity of everything was relaxing, and endearing. A few people sat lazily inside the incredibly dated Hilltop Pub, which I'd never been to, but always wondered about. And further down, the little grocery store, where I used to deliver icecream, and watch the icecream truck driver argue with the East Indian store owners, sat quietly, waiting for the next friendly sucker to pend $3.00 for a bag of Doritos. Still further, on the street where one of my best friends used to live, his mother's old house sat empty, long since sold and exchanged for a condo.
And on the walk went. The bridge over what was once the Capilano Freeway still called for me to throw snow and gravel down onto the passing cars, and on the other side, our aptly named Suicide Hill cried out for the old red aluminum toboggan that once aided our attempts at self-destruction far too well (though it was never me who ended up in a cast).
And so on. Hardisty Swimming Pool. Hardisty High School. Mean-Kids Junior High, which was just down the block from St. Kevin's Junior High, which was also my elementary school between kindergarten and grade 2.
Now, Halifax has a lot of good memories for me, too, but not these types of memories. The memories that flooded back to me on this walk were much deeper, much more involuntary. Each step brought back different images, different snippets of my own personal history that invariably made me who I am today, whoever that is. Little fragments of myself, scattered around these southeastern suburbs, crying out to be remembered, and perhaps, at some point, through someone else, much younger, much less tainted, relived.
Could I live for good in Edmonton? Even after that walk, I'm not sure I could. It is a bigger city. And it's a much uglier city than I remember. But if these little fragments of memory remain, and if they're any incentive to stay in a family-filled, prosperous city, maybe I could stay a while longer. Maybe getting reattached to the city that made me much of what I am would do me a world of good.