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Published: September 28th 2006
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Devonian Gardens
Not what you expect at the mall We arrived in Calgary with a bit of a problem. We didn’t actually know where our B&B was. Our map was just too big a scale to show the road so we go into a shopping mall to find a book shop. Apparently people in Calgary don’t read because there are no book stores. We find a pay phone and call the B&B - thankfully they are in and it appears we are just around the corner.
The B&B is nice but the owners are having their dinner so we slip out and take advantage of still having the car by driving downtown. Downtown Calgary is pretty dead at night. Our hosts later explained that the town is so spread out and the shopping malls so big there really isn’t any need to go downtown. Calgary is actually the fastest growing city in Canada. With the oil price so high Calgary is riding the wave but with all the expansion it is struggling to keep up with housing. According to our hosts 3500 new people move to Calgary every month and there just isn’t the housing for them so people are having to live on the streets - no mean
Fort Calgary
The home of the Mountie feat as the winter comes in. Our cold snap had given us a taste but it gets worse. The problem is not jobs - every shop in the mall had a sign looking for help and there are skills shortages everywhere - there are just no houses. Rents have increased 130% in one year! And you thought London was bad.
The next day we had to say goodbye to our behemoth. A sign in the car had informed me that the company sold these cars and this was my test drive - No sale! The wind outside was evil though so we decided to head to the +15 covered walkway system to get around town. It has to be the most confusing system of walkways in the world and we gave up pretty quickly heading back out to the street. It didn’t help that many of the walkways are closed at the weekend so some paths were closed to us.
But it was still cold (did I mention that?) so we headed for the Devonian Gardens on the top floor of one of the shopping centres. It was a bit weird but they have a full park style
garden in the middle of the shopping centre and people were getting married there - loads of people were. I guess it was the only warm park in the city. We then went to the Glenbow Museum to continue our inside theme. Having been to quite a few Canadian museums now I was a little disappointed in this one. It had a habit of repeating itself as if it assumed you were either stupid or unable to remember what you read two minutes ago. But the Blackfoot display of native American culture was excellent and said a lot about the relationship of Native Americans to the Canadian and indeed US governments. They certainly played a canny game trading each off against the other but essentially they never had a chance against the European immigrants. Even when they changed their ways, settled down and began to farm like the European their success just brought jealousy and changes to the law to make it harder for them to succeed. The Inuit display is also very good though a number of references mentioned Eskimos despite this being considered offensive (a bit like referring to a French man as a frog). There was even
Old and New
From fort to oil town a comment left in the guest book by an Inuit visitor to that effect. You kind of expect a museum to know better.
That evening we decided that we would search out an Alberta steak for dinner as everyone has told us that they are the best. We selected a likely sounding restaurant “Caesar’s” from our guide book and headed over there. We thought it was going to be a chain as that was certainly how the guide book had painted it. By the time we were at the table with the menu in our hand trying not to faint at the prices it was all a bit too late. Our hosts later told us that it was probably the most expensive steakhouse in town. Well it was our three month wedding anniversary and we didn’t have pudding but all the same it was cheap broth from now on.
On our last full day in Calgary we visited the start of it all. Fort Calgary - the Royal Mounted Police fort that was the nucleus to the town. We thought there wouldn’t be much there but it turns out they have built a great attraction to see how the Mounties won the west. We were even able to speak to a couple of great ex- Mounties who told us about their life in the force. One of them had retired in 1967! When he joined you had to buy your way out if you left in the first 7 years and you couldn’t marry for the first 5. Even then your proposed wife had to be vetted by the force to make sure she would be a suitable wife! The whole attraction was really well done. Bit of a tip - don’t ask the Mounties if they are like the FBI - they don’t like it.
So our journey through Western Canada was over it was time to catch our flight over the plains to the East. Our next stop is the largest city in Canada - Toronto.
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