An Early morning start.
Sleeping in a hotel and in an unfamiliar bed generally means the body responds to the day’s early wake up calls. On my second day in Calgary, my mind and body decided without me that it was time to get up and start the day. My hotel booking came without breakfast so it was time to head out and look for food and coffee. I was lucky that my old friend Tim Horton had set up shop over the road from my hotel so a quick breakfast was on hand.
Morning hadn’t quite broken over Calgary so I decided I would continue to resist the train and walk back down 7th Avenue and check out what lay further back from the main street. I should have checked out the Devonian gardens which had been set up on the fourth floor of a building just one street back from the train line. However, I had noticed on the city maps that a section of the inner city had been highlighted…It was called the Stephen Avenue Walk and appeared to be promoted as the shopping, dining and entertainment area of Calgary’s inner city. This was my first target for the morning.
The map above shows the first stage of my morning inspection of the centre of Calgary. I walked three city blocks before I arrived at 3 Street SW and turned right. This took me down to Stephen Ave and immediately the buildings and the sidewalk started to look more decorated than what I had seen on my walk yesterday. To the right is a photo of a huge, colourful frame-work that covers a large section of Stephen Ave.
I had noticed the previous day on my bus ride into town that the driver had turned right at a street endowed with the bland name of Centre Street. It had become Centre Street South in this area of town and when I looked one way I recognised the skyscrapers lining the street that I had walked past yesterday. When I looked right, I saw the famous Calgary Tower looking down on Calgary Central. I took one last look behind me down Stephen ave (Photo below) and headed down to have a closer look at the City’s tower.
No doubt the Calgary Tower offers the best view of the city and you can see from the viewing platform the Rocky mountains in the distance and the plains stretching towards the east. It was originally called the ‘Husky’ tower after one of the oil companies who were part of the original joint venture when the build started in 1967. Four years later the name was changed to Calgary tower as a tribute to the citizens of the city. In 1987 the Winter Olympics came to Calgary and so a gas fired cauldron was installed on top of the tower to serve as the Official Olympic Flame. One of the things I shouldn’t have been surprised at was the regular views of the tower that I noticed from all sorts of angles around the city. The photo on the left below was taken out past the Calgary Stampede grounds and still the tower signaled its presence beside old local houses and skyscrapers.
After checking out the Calgary Tower and the buildings around it, I had arrived at First Street SE where I found I had discovered another very interesting section at the heart of Calgary. I had arrived at a large recreational area of the city with a lot going on. It is called the Arts Common and a brief sign was displayed just before I wandered into the area that summed up the purposes behind the precinct. For example, situated in the Arts Commons was Theatre Calgary, Calgary Philharmonic Concert Hall, Mahika (Engineered Air Theatre!) etc
However the first thing that attracted my attention in the Arts Common was a significant collection of Bronze statues of Ladies that clearly held a significant place in Calgary’s history. Here is an extract from an explanatory poster nearby the collection of ladies having afternoon tea below…
“In 1916 when Emily Murphy became the first police magistrate in the British Empire, her authority was challenged because the word ‘persons’ in the BNA Act 1867, always meant men and sometimes women. Then Emily Murphy wanted to become Canada’s first female Senator. Three consecutive Prime Ministers refused to appoint her because she was not a person…” The finish of this story is worth looking up!
I must admit I was impressed with the large horse sculpture that was on the other side of the road from the Arts Common. The curious thing about the horse was that it was made from mechanical equipment and junk metal parts. It was a wonderful piece of art to slowly examine.
The city block that sat side by side with the Arts Common was designed for a different purpose to its neighbouring block. This large piece of parkland was called the Olympic Plaza and the largest area of it was devoted to a skating rink. While I was strolling past, the skating rink was being prepared by the white truck in the photo below for late-afternoon skating. In the background of the skating rink can be seen Calgary’s Town Hall.
By this stage of my walk I had made it back to Calgary’s 7th Avenue, the inner city’s transit corridor. I had noticed over the other side of this road a large church and given I hadn’t seen any significant religious buildings so far, I wandered over the road to have a look at the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer, the Anglican Church of Canada. It was an attractive brown stone church and the trees planted along its street side provided the Black squirrels with plenty of play space.
I crossed back over 7th avenue to where I could see some formal structures informing visitors of some of the back history of Olympic Plaza. This area was set up as the site for medal presentations for the Winter Olympic Games in 1988. A sign explained that the plaza was ‘dedicated to the aims of the Olympic Movement for creating international goodwill and a peaceful world’.
By this time the grader had finished clearing the surface of the skating rink and I was able to get a clear photo of the Calgary Tower looking down across the Olympic Plaza.
My next destination just required a short walk across a pedestrian crossing to a National Historic Site of Canada, the 1911 Calgary City Hall. It wasn’t the city’s first Town Hall which was built in 1885 and as the demands of governing a growing city expanded, the old city hall was demolished and a new building was constructed with a steel structural frame that supported the Paskapoo Sandstone exterior wall. It was completed in 1911. The needs of the growing city of Calgary continued to demand more support from the Council and the Calgary Municipal Building was completed in 1985 (To the right below).
It was an interesting walk along the footpath at the front of the Calgary Municipal Building where up to 2,000 civic administrators work. The area where the steps of the building were located seemed to be cut off by a low fence where a series of horse statues were placed. They were donated to the council by a local philanthropist.
However horses weren’t the only objects on display outside the town hall. Scattered all amongst the horses were stuffed animals, hundreds of childrens’ shoes and a bicycle. It was apparently a temporary memorial for the victims of Canada’s residential schools. The City and Calgary’s indigenous and Metis communities have decided to work towards building a permanent memorial to remember the children who died in those schools. As is probably entirely predictable, this site had been a target for vandalism.
Just around the corner from the town hall there is the last station on the city’s transit line where no ticket is required to get on or off the train. The photo on the left was taken looking back from the pedestrian crossing in front of the station. I was quite taken with the concept of the vehicle trap sign that presumably was meant to warn any driver that turning left off Third Street SE was a recipe for disaster. Their car would get stuck in a ‘trap’ and possibly be run over by a train that failed to see the car on its way round under the City’s new, amazing library building!
On this my first full day in Calgary, I hadn’t done a lot of research on the buildings of Calgary so while I was quite amazed by the huge white and blue building that sat around the corner from the Town Hall Railway station, I had no idea what its function was. I hadn’t investigated closely enough to realise it was the city’s new library and it had only been functioning as such for the last three years. If I had looked closely at my city map that I carried around with me, I would have noticed the small advert (to the right) that encouraged visitors to check out the library for its “architecture and innovation.” Despite my lack of knowledge about the gorgeous building, I walked along in front of it and made my way through a large group of teenagers who were gathered on the steps. One young lady with the group spotted me and decided I could be a quick source of cash for coffee so she approached me and asked me if I had any spare coins for a cup of coffee. Unfortunately I didn’t have any Australian or Canadian coins on me given that coins were of little use anymore in the modern economy! She wasn’t disappointed too much because she complimented me on my ski jacket that was keeping out the Calgary cold at the time!
I walked back along this building to the railway line and stopped to wonder how much work could get done in a building when there appeared to be regular trains running through the bottom floor of their workspace. (See earlier photo.)
My original target for my day’s walk had been the Calgary Fort. It was situated on a large green space that was about three blocks away from the Town Hall. These blocks were residential and I was quite surprised to be passing one of these tall buildings when I noticed an upside down country church, gallantly not falling over on the tables and chairs that were gathered around it.
There was a sign nearby that explained the art piece. It read as follows… “Device to Root Out Evil” is a 6.70 metre high sculpture mounted on a concrete platform, of an upside down country church with its steeple thrust into the ground and base raised up high as if to invite scrutiny from the heavens. The sculpture was first exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1997. It is one of the most recognized sculptures in the world.” To my shame, I didn’t ‘recognize’ it!
It was still a long way from the Calgary Fort but I finally arrived at its front door, only to be told by the sign that the Fort was only open two days a week and today wasn’t one of them! I was feeling a little weary and let down as I walked back past the “Device to root out all evil” when I noticed a sign on the back window of a parked car. It didn’t cheer me up either.
FOGTRAVEL 