Hi all,
We woke today to a 6am email from the walking tour company we had a tour
with telling us it was cancelled due to not meeting the minimum
numbers, despite us having paid two months in advance. Unimpressed,
Toonie Tours! Thankfully we pivoted and found another company to book
with. So if you're ever in Calgary, book with Calgary Walks instead.
We walked to the meeting start point and it was us and a German couple
being taken around by our guide, Jodi. We were glad we did the tour as
in the off season here there isn’t too much else to do, and we saw and
learned lots that we wouldn’t have otherwise.
We started off in the municipal plaza area, seeing a memorial to the
First Nations children killed at residential schools (we saw a memorial
for this in Vancouver too). Then we went inside the municipal building
and public library, and saw City Hall. Calgary was originally called Fort
Calgary which was started in 1884 as a mounted police outpost. British Columbia
agreed to join Canada under the proviso that the Canadian National
railway was built to the pacific coast. This meant that the railway
passed through Calgary and put it on the map. The name ‘Calgary’ was
given to the town because it was an area in the Isle of Mull in Scotland
where one of the founders of Calgary, James Macleod, was from. Once the railway came through, the town boomed and quickly became a city and continued to grow.
Originally the area was all dry grassland, but as the city expanded more
and more trees were planted here. From here and to the east of here
it’s very different to all the other places we’ve just come from. No
trees unless they were planted by humans, dry and big plains. They
receive winds here called Chinook Winds that warm Calgary up as they dump all their moisture on the Rockies first, hence why
it is a little warmer than where we have just come from. The reason they
don’t have an underground metro system here is because the area can be
flooded as it is on a water table, the most recent bad floods were in 2013. However, the C train (light rail that
we caught yesterday) was built in 1981 above ground.
Next we walked past the theatre district and Olympic plaza, which hosted
the medal ceremonies for the 1988 Winter Olympics. There were some
interesting sculptures here of women that used to hold tea parties as a
cover up for women’s rights meetings and eventually won a legal case about women being counted as persons here in Canada.
We noticed lots of sandstone buildings around the city, and Jodi
explained that they chose to build many of these after a fire in 1886
that destroyed many wooden buildings. We also noticed the street
addresses had NE, NW, SE or SW at the end of them, and apparently the
city is split into four quadrants by the river and by Centre Street.
There are four 1st streets, four 2nd streets etc so you need to have
which quadrant your address is in at the end.
New buildings here need to put 1% of their budget towards a mural or
sculpture on the outside of the building, so we saw lots of interesting
artwork and sculptures around. We then went to the Bow River where Jodi
showed us a new flood wall system installed along the riverside bike and
walking path that has steel gates that close if required. Afterwards we
walked through Chinatown and learned that many Chinese people that
moved here for the gold rush then helped to build the railway and stayed on.
Our tour finished up by walking part of the sky walk network of plus
fifteens. These are bridges that are 15 feet above street level and connect many of
the buildings. These quickly helped Rob and I to understand why there
are hardly any people in the streets here and hardly any street side
shops - they’re all up a level inside buildings! We had commented yesterday that it was strangely quiet outside. It was approaching
lunchtime as we passed through so we saw all the office workers getting
their lunch. The system of bridges helps keep everyone warm in winter while still ensuring the office workers get to see lots of natural light and gardens, some of which we saw today as well as some rooftop beehives. The bees living in the hives pollinate the flowers in the gardens.
We wrapped up by passing the Calgary Tower that was built in 1967 and
ending in Stephen Avenue, a pedestrian street full of shops and
restaurants that reminded us of Rundle Mall in Adelaide. We had lunch at
a pub here in the sun before walking to our hotel to get some e bikes.
We rode these along the riverside path to Fort Calgary.
The fort was built when the town of Calgary first began as a police
outpost at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers, but during the
40s and 50s after it was sold to the railway company and Calgary became
the oil capital of Canada, the fort disappeared under train tracks, a
scrap metal yard, a farm equipment dealership and warehouses. Thankfully
the area was later bought back by the government and restored, and the
original building was recreated in 2000. We walked around here in the sun for a bit
and saw a giant hare in the gardens. Then we walked back to our hotel.
Tomorrow we fly to Toronto. I now only have one place left for the rest of
the trip that I haven’t been before - Quebec City. Rob has three. I went
to Toronto solo in January 2017 after I had just met Rob, so I’m
looking forward to going there with him. Calgary has been restful and
interesting, and we think we may want to come to the stampede one day! It's strange being on such a long holiday, as we feel sad that five weeks have nearly passed and we have just three to go. But then we remind ourselves that usually a trip in the school holidays is less than three weeks anyway, so three weeks is still a while!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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