The City of Calgary

Calgary, about a million strong when the suburbs are factored in, is much more corporate than the northern city of Edmonton, which has a bit of an arts culture. Calgary's corporatism is partly due to the fact that it is on the number one highway, the Trans Canada Highway, and it is situated between Toronto and Vancouver. Consequently, Calgary has a lot more thru-traffic than Edmonton as one might stop there, in Calgary, while going cross country. No one uses Edmonton as a stopover point, unless one has business in the remote, rare, and small communites in the north, or better yet, unless you have something to tend to in Alaska.

While the highway between Edmonton and Calgary runs semi-parallel to the lines of longitude, Calgary is much closer to the Rocky Mountains than Edmonton, in fact they are visible from Calgary on a clear day. One pleasant effect of being so close to the Rockies is the treasured Chinook wind: a warm wind that develops in the mountain heights that is forced east, still warm, and into the cold prairie lands. The entire breadbasket might be somewhere between negative twenty centigrades and negative thirty-five, while the people of Calgary bask in a winter Chinook, icicles dripping.

Calgary itself is situated in gentle rolling foothills though it is surrounded by agrarian culture, with farms and grain mills outside the city. A memento of the pioneers, my kin, that replaced the redman, my kin, Calgary's major historical symbol is a cowboy and the city is known by the world class Calgary Stampede, the largest outdoor rodeo in the world. Here the best cowboys (and fewer cowgirls) come annually for ten days each summer from across the great plains: from Nebraska, Texas, Saskatchewan, and from all other places where men wear spurs. They come to Calgary against a backdrop of fair grounds that sport rides, casinos, and western styled bars, to show those people of the world that actually pay attention to such things, that they can rope cattle fastest, cross a chuckwagon across a finish line first, or stay on a violently bucking horse for at least eight seconds.

Traditionally Calgary was and still is Edmonton's 'rival' in sports, but again the rivalry was and is a bit of a concoction because the combatants have not been of equal calibre. Edmonton has won five National Hockey League Stanley Cups to Calgary's one and our beloved football team, the Edmonton Eskimos, have won thirteen Grey Cups to Calgary's six. In playoff action, the Edmonton Oilers have never known defeat at the hands of a Calgary Flame team and have bounced the Flames from the playoffs in every attempt made, except for one time in 1986 when an Edmonton Oiler put a deciding goal into his own net by accident to give the Calgary Flames victory.

www.calgary.ca