Sad times in Vancouver

The controversial public sculpture "Device to Root Out Evil," has picked up and left its home in cosmopolitan Vancouver for the Glenbow Museum in ho-hum Calgary ("And people keep trying to call Vancouver a world-class city," a snarky blogger says). It's hard to say whether the massive piece of art was more controversial with the religious right or the yuppies of Coal Harbour, many of whom decried the sculpture for blocking their views (incredibly difficult to believe). Either way, it's sad to see it go.

Posted by Sebastian / Vancouver / Oct. 6, 2008 /
 

Where the hell is Calgary?

Great news! Lufthansa is starting to fly to Calgary from Frankfurt. But unfortunately they seem to think Calgary is in British Columbia. This error is slightly more egregious than the Alaska Airlines Columbia/Colombia debacle I blogged about last year.

Posted by Sebastian / Aviation / November 17, 2007 /
 

Calgary hits a million

It's official: Calgary, the city that has gone from dusty cow town to one of the world's wealthiest energy capitals, just passed the 1 million population mark according to the latest census.

Posted by Sebastian / July 27, 2007 /

Calgary bans spitting

I totally missed this story. It seems Calgary has decided to ban spitting in public. They've also made it against the law to pee in public or kick your feet up on a park bench!

Posted by Sebastian / February 11, 2007 /
 

Calgary's housing boom misses many

Calgary may be experiencing the strongest economic growth in all of North America right now, but the rapidly rising housing costs are locking out many people.

CBC reports, "A community activist in Calgary has started a large-scale e-mail campaign warning workers coming to the city that they might not be able to find a place to live. Rev. Susan Brandt has sent e-mails to about a thousand people across the country, telling recipients: 'Do not come to Calgary. There is nowhere to live.'"

Posted by Sebastian / October 12, 2006 /
 

Only I could have a nightmare like this

Many people know about my affection for the city of Calgary. So it was very unusual that last night I had a really disturbing nightmare about the place (perhaps prompted by my visit to western Canada later this week). The gist of the dream was that I was wondering around downtown, circa 1960, when the city looked a lot like the shot below, still a sparsely populated dusty frontier town. (OK, so maybe the dream was silly, because that's where the nightmare part came in.) I was scared about my surroundings, plain and simple, because I tend to be a snob about these things. Thank god Calgary today looks like the second photo below, with more high rises than Boston and enough money to make it one of the wealthiest areas on earth.

• Alberta's oil boom drains Calgary of porta-potties [Globe and Mail]

Posted by Sebastian / June 11, 2006 /
 

Swingin' Calgary

Everyone, it seems, is talking about swingin' Calgary and its free-flowing oil money that is rapidly changing the place into one of the wealthiest cities on the continent.

Maclean's ran a front-page spread last week that was a very interesting read. But they do keep things real by reminding us that despite its impressive skyline, the growing city is truly "a mass of bland modernity."

Here are a few other choice quotes, in no particular order:

"Get over it, Toronto. Oil-rich Calgary is the new centre of the universe -- and the party's just getting started," the magazine says.

"'Calgary is a city on steroids,' Vince Wong, the owner of a popular nightclub says. 'I don't want to be anywhere else. It's non-stop.'"

"A vital marker of Calgary money is having at least one other house, with Phoenix or Hawaii being favoured hot-weather destinations. 'The only way to enjoy Calgary is to leave Calgary,' Peter Linder, an oil and gas analyst at DeltaOne Capital in Calgary, says, half in jest."

"The artist Jenny Holzer once created a bold installation piece that read 'money creates taste.' The maxim plays out in Calgary."

Posted by Sebastian / April 11, 2006 /
 

Calgary
 
I was once an urban studies major, so I am obsessive about cities. Calgary is one of the more fascinating ones (which, if you read my blog with any regularity, you may realize by now). Christopher DeWolf at Urban Photo has posted some new photos of Calgary that are great! And his musings of city life, including a new one about the changes being seen in Calgary, are always interesting.

"I grew up there and moved away nearly four years ago, sick of its banal architecture, lack of streetlife and provincial shelteredness. There's no hard feelings, though, especially since Calgary has changed so much in the short time since I left. As it grows, it is becoming a more dynamic place, something reflected in its streets."

"What impresses me most is that Calgary has gained a sense of self-awareness. Five years ago, the lack of introspection was infuriating. Few seemed interested in their city, its history, culture and built environment. That's changed." Still, "Calgary still has a dusty, quiet quality to it. Too many of it streets are cold and sterile."



A couple interesting points: DeWolf says that after Boston, Calgary has North America's busiest light rail system. He also says that city planners are aiming to increase the downtown population, already growing, as much as twelve-fold. Who knew?

Posted by Sebastian / January 17, 2006 /
 

Waterton Lakes  
 
I've gotten a few emails about my latest header photo, so I thought I'd share another similar one. These are from last summer in Waterton Lakes National Park in southern Alberta. The park is essentially the Canadian side of Montana's Glacier National Park. If you've seen Brokeback Mountain, you may recognize the scenery since the film was shot nearby. In the header image, you'll notice the Prince of Wales Hotel in the extreme right, one of Canada's famed railway hotels.



Posted by Sebastian / January 16, 2006 /
 

Time magazine gets its geography wrong 
 
I have a bit of a fetish about geography, so I was particularly appalled to see this reference to a "province of Calgary" in a Time magazine article about the Canadian election:



True, there are multiple definitions of "province," but in this case I just know they're wrong!

Posted by Sebastian / Election 2006 / January 8, 2006 /
 

Retail the hot new thing in Calgary
 
I love to shop, so I thought it interesting that after New York City, the highest-grossing first day sales at a Williams-Sonoma store were in Calgary last summer. Retail is booming in Alberta's biggest city, helped by the fact that there are more head offices per capita and a higher rate of home ownership than anywhere else in the country. Not to mention a highly paid work force and a constant flow of oil money.

A few new developments in the works include the 1.4 million square foot Deerfoot Meadows, a shopping centre boasting an IKEA as well as Lexus, Mercedes, and BMW dealers, and the adjacent Village at Deerfoot Meadows, a dining and retail "lifestyle centre" designed to look like an old-fashioned village. 

Posted by Sebastian / Real Estate / January 5, 2006 /
 

Calgary, awash in cash, sees homeless numbers rise
 
The well-off city of Calgary faces an incongruous challenge this holiday: an increasing number of homeless people in the city.

"We’re advertising what a great city it is to come to . . . but everything grows along with it -- including poverty and hardship," says Dermot Baldwin, executive director of the Calgary Drop-In Centre, the city’s largest homeless facility.

Posted by Sebastian / December 24, 2005 /
 

Headline of the day

Whoever said newspapers are going stale in their reporting certainly missed this gem of a headline on the front page of today's Globe and Mail.

"It cost just $128.20 to kill five-year-old Ali Al-Mayahi and his four-year-old sister, Saja. Five dollars was spent on gasoline. Another $3.20 was spent on a tin of lighter fluid. And after the single Molotov cocktail was thrown through the living-room window of the siblings' Calgary townhouse, their bodies burned beyond recognition, two men with a craving for crack cocaine were paid $120 for completing the job -- cash that they used to get a fix."

Posted by Sebastian / November 1, 2005 /

Brad in trouble

Brad Pitt, filming a movie in Alberta, has been reprimanded by forest rangers after breaking wilderness rules about keeping doors and windows locked at all times. He returned home one day to find brown bears in his rented cabin. Apparently, bears had been attracted to the smell of food coming from the place. 

Posted by Sebastian / October 28, 2005 /

The road to Calgary is paved with gold

Times they are a changin' in Calgary, flush with oil cash. Holt Renfrew now has three personal shoppers instead of just one. "You can hear the money sloshing around," one luxury car salesman told the Globe. At one gourmet store, "customers don't balk at paying $6,000 a kilogram for white truffles."

"Calgary is enjoying its moment in the sun, although the memories of the gloom of previous crashes is always lurking in the background. That worry is no hindrance to the era of excess -- if anything, it is just one more reason to load up on luxury." One man said, "People are just saying, 'Well, just screw it. While I can buy this thing, I'll buy it. And if I have to sell it, I'll sell it'."

Posted by Sebastian / October 25, 2005 /

Pastor accused of anti-gay hatred

Alberta pastor Stephen Boisson will face a human rights tribunal in Calgary over accusations that he exposed the gay community to hatred. Three years ago he argued in a local newspaper that gay rights activists and the "homosexual machine" are as immoral as pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps.

"This case will be precedent setting for Albertans, and if forced to go before the Supreme Court of Canada, for Canadians at large," says a web site operated by Concerned Christians Canada. "This is not just a battle against free speech by the militant and well-funded homosexual radicals, but this is even more importantly an attack on clergy and religious organizations."

Boisson operates a youth outreach program and has accused the public school system of subjecting kids to psychologically damaging pro-gay materials to foster equal rights. "My banner has now been raised and war has been declared so as to defend the precious sanctity of our innocent children and youth, that you so eagerly toil, day and night, to consume."

Posted by Sebastian / October 17, 2005 /

The banality of Calgary

I happen to think Calgary's skyline is pretty darn impressive. But not everyone agrees with the way the city has grown over the past decades from dusty frontier town to gleaming metropolis (thank you petroleum!). In a new book by urban affairs writer James Howard Kunstler, Calgary is described as "the North American tragedy in microcosm." He says it's "sort of what Rochester, N.Y., would be like if it had an economy."



Never one to mince words, the writer/blogger/critic says, "I thought it represented pretty much all the banality of bad choices that we continue to make in this part of the world." The city, he writes, is "an archetypal city of immense glass boxes in a sterilized centre surrounded by an asteroid belt of beige residential subdivisions. The vast suburbs ooze out on to the prairie to the east, along with their complements of strip malls, power centres, car dealerships and fry pits."

Calgarians, of course, disagree. And so does the Economist, which recently placed Calgary third on a list of world cities for quality of life, tied with Toronto, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and Zurich. Vancouver, of course, was number one.

To preempt the inevitable, please do not email me to tell me how silly these lists are!

Posted by Sebastian / October 7, 2005 /

Metrosexuals hit Calgary

Apparently, metrosexuals are now running rampant in Calgary.

Posted by Sebastian / October 4, 2005 /

The rich get richer as conflict looms over Alberta oil money

As oil prices soared in recent months, Alberta was estimating they'd take in up to $7 billion more than they had budgeted thanks to the province's immense oil wealth. The windfall was believed to be so great that provincial finance officials nearly began a road trip earlier this year to ask constituents how they should spend all that money.

Premier Ralph Klein has finally come up with a solution for the billions: give it away. Every Albertan will receive a tax-free $400 "prosperity cheque" by the end of the year. The issue has already begun to divide Canadians, many of whom say Alberta's oil wealth belongs to Ottawa -- not to Edmonton.



The premier takes a "keep your hands off it" attitude about the oil riches while the federal government has been mum on the issue, probably with good reason. The Globe reported that any political party "would face a national-unity powder keg should it wade into the issue, particularly during the coming election campaign."

Alberta is one of only two "have" provinces -- ones that pay more into the federal coffers than they get back. The oil bounty will only be increasing the divide between Alberta -- which is increasingly vocal about having to support the fiscal imbalance between it and the poorer provinces -- and the rest of Canada. Already the province has no debt, no sales tax and is a corporate tax haven; Calgary boasts more company head offices than all other cities in Canada except for Toronto.

This is all fine and dandy for Alberta right now, but what happens in a few decades when prices hit $200 a barrel and the province is tapped out of oil? A piece in the Star hypothesizes: "In Canada, it meant the decline of Alberta. With oil at anywhere from $40 to $70 a barrel, Alberta had prospered. But when its petroleum and coal reserves ran out, Alberta had little else. By the time the price of the world's dwindling supplies of oil finally hit $200 a barrel, Alberta was a have-not province. Calgary, population 1 million, became a ghost town."

Posted by Sebastian / September 21, 2005 /

Alberta flush with cash, offers iPods for donut shop workers

This week an Alberta newspaper headline said the provincial government has "money to burn." Indeed, Alberta is so flush with cash from its oil boom (second only to Saudi Arabia in volume), with an unemployment rate almost nonexistent, that the province is desperate to find workers in many areas. Tim Hortons donut shops are even offering iPods as an enticement to get new workers in the door.

To understand just how much cash this already-rich province stands to gain from recent spikes in the price of oil, consider this: for every dollar increase in the price of oil, Alberta takes in an extra $100 million. The province based their budget for next year — which boosts spending in arenas like education by as much as 30% — on oil being forecast at $42 a barrel. Now with oil at $66, Alberta stands to make an additional $2 billion. Next month, in a sign of growing recognition of Alberta's importance to the U.S., vice president Dick Cheney jets to Alberta to tour the oil sands projects in Fort McMurray with premier Ralph Klein.

Being an architecture fanatic, the most interesting thing about Calgary to me is the unprecedented growth the city's skyline has experienced since 1970, often heralded as the fastest and most concentrated skyline growth of any city (Shanghai aside). Consider the two photos below, taken 35 years apart. Pre oil-boom and present-day.



Today Calgary boasts some 253 high rise buildings, and in Canada, only Toronto has taller buildings. Since 1970, along with the impressive skyline boom, Calgary has grown by 700,000 people to today's population of 1.1 million. It's a neat and cultured city that's no longer the wild west cattle town it once was.



Posted by Sebastian / August 16, 2005 /



American jets out of Calgary

I was shocked to read today that American Airlines will pull out of the Chicago to Calgary route beginning in October, just as the winter tourist season to Banff kicks off.

As a airline timetable-obsessive, this news is a crushing blow and a complete surprise. It's an unusual move since Calgary routes are typically viewed as cash cows (no Alberta beef pun intended) by airline analysts. The airline will continue its Petroleum Shuttle between Dallas and Calgary.

In related news, Delta Airlines has bumped up its Vancouver schedule by switching its flights from Atlanta to 767s. Apparently, the flights have been packed to the gills as more people discover the charms of the city. Also this weekend, Air Canada pulled the plug on a $6 billion order with Boeing for news 777s.

Posted by Sebastian / June 19, 2005 /



Buy in Edmonton NOW

The conventional wisdom that Calgary is the best place in Canada to buy real estate is being turned on its head by Don Campbell, a consultant who wrote the book, "Real Estate Investing in Canada," and who is urging people to buy in booming Edmonton instead.

Edmonton also happens to be the fastest growing big city in Canada, with over 1 million residents. He calls Vancouver, where prices exceed incomes by a substantial proportion, "the biggest real estate bubble in North America."  (A little possibility that leads me to think, S*&%!)

 • Alberta is about to get wildly rich and powerful. How will that change Canada?

 • Also today, news that Canada's housing boom may be ending because "rising cost pressures, fuelled by building materials prices, increasing development fees and rising land values." Prices continue to soar in Vancouver in anticipation of the 2010 Olympics, and increase at a substantial pace in Montreal and Ottawa.    

Posted by Sebastian / June 8, 2005 /



Calgary's Now in British Columbia

I love finding mistakes in the news, especially on geography (I won the geography bee in 7th and 8th grades, thank you very much). One of the more glaring errors came in today's Union-Tribune in San Diego. "WestJet Airlines began seasonal, nonstop service to Calgary, British Columbia, Canada, last week."

Posted by Sebastian / June 8, 2005 /



Calgary Bishop Calls Gay Acts "Evil"

The Catholic Bishop of Calgary said today in a letter to parishes that, "the state must use its coercive power to proscribe or curtail" homosexual activity "in the interests of the common good." He said, "An evil act remains an evil act whether it is performed in public or in private."

Posted by Sebastian / Jan. 16, 2005

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