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.