Greater Edmonton, mid-1990s
Industry histories — ALHI’s 2022/2023 note, chapter pages, the Webex Events recap — point to MPI’s Greater Edmonton chapter as the room where a Meeting Planners Day first took a public shape. The mid-1990s date is the range those notes use. A single inaugural minute is not sitting on this desk.
The motive was plain: planners wanted employers and city officials to treat the work as a profession with a budget line, not as a hospitality hobby. One chapter breakfast does not move a legislature. A repeated date, copied by other Canadian chapters, can.
Edmonton itself is not the secretariat of today’s GMID. The chapter still belongs in the origin paragraph. Later national and continental steps were taken by councils and coalitions, not by one Alberta room acting alone.