We shot past the US-Canadian border so quickly that we had to turn back afterwards to take a photo. We were anticipating the same kind of grilling we received when we entered the US, but Canadians are simply a much more laid-back bunch. We drove north through the wide-open Alberta prairies to Calgary, the biggest city in the province (pop: 1.2 million).
Until about 1950, the area was mostly about agriculture. But that all changed when large oil reserves were found further north near Edmonton. Calgary was then caught up in a major and lengthy oil boom, followed by a bust, followed by a boom, etc. Today, the city is the corporate heart of Canada’s oil industry, hosting nearly 90% of Canada’s oil companies. Big Oil features prominently in the city’s impressive skyline – the Bow building (Encana, Cenovus), Suncor Energy Centre, TransCanada Tower, Nexen Building, and others.
In the pictures above, you can see the Bow River and the Prince’s Island Park in front of the city’s core downtown area. Calgary scores pretty high on a number of quality-of-life and livability measures. To investigate, we spent a few nights in a fantastic airbnb apartment right in the middle of the action. This has become our preferred way of exploring a new city – you get an authentic home experience, mostly in a good location; you may meet some interesting folks (if its a shared home); it’s usually cheaper; and you can do some laundry (crucial after a few days of camping). We landed a great spot in Calgary and set about exploring. A few findings:
We spotted these crosswalks all over the place. These turn out to be part of a widespread network of linked buildings in the downtown area, meaning that, if you can master the network, you can get from one side of downtown to the other without ever going outside. This is crucial because winters here are brutal – average lows of minus 15 degrees with deep spikes lower from time to time.
Here’s a map of the linked buildings.
Calgary also experiences the odd respite from the cold winter weather in the form of “Chinooks winds”. These warm dry winds can raise the temperature by 20 degrees in a few hours and can last a few days. Sounds a bit like a berg wind in South Africa.
The city has quite a bit of quirkiness to it, and 17th Avenue is hipster central:
We were introduced to the small growing trend of pinball bars on “17th Ave”.
Ella was instantly hooked. She aced the Game of Thrones machine, I found my form on the Star Wars one, while we both were owned on the Hulk machine.
I found a classic arcade game. Our daily budget took a hit.
Wandering around the city, we found a large sports complex dedicated to curling – maybe the most Canadian thing we saw on our trip. It was closed for the season, unfortunately.
We found a couple huge malls.
One had a whole level of indoor gardens.
There was some interesting architecture here and there.
We also found out that Diet Coke Twisted Mango is a bit siff.
A final benefit of using airbnb is that when you feel like a home cooked meal, you can pop into a grocery store, buy a few items, and whip up a meal of comfort food at your apartment. Ella smashed this one out the park.
We left Calgary, heading west for a four-day camping trip to Banff National Park.