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| Home - City Guide - Calgary - City Overview | ||
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City Overview The city of Calgary stands at the point where the vast Canadian prairie meets the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains stands the city of Calgary. Its young, glittering skyscrapers and leafy neighbourhoods seem oddly superimposed on this breathtakingly diverse western landscape, as though dropped from the sky onto the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers. Accordingly, the land is never far from the minds of the people of Calgary. The oil that lies beneath it drives the city's vibrant economy; the mountains in the western distance attract legions of skiers and snowboarders during the chilly winters; and during balmy summers, cattle roam the flat expanse of western grassland, marking this out as cowboy country. Before Calgary was settled by white Europeans, it was the domain of the Blackfoot natives, whose presence has been traced back 11,000 years. The first recorded European presence in the region around Calgary took place in 1787 and by 1860 settlers began arriving to hunt buffalo and sell illegal whisky. In response, Canada's first Prime Minister sent a troop of Canadian Mounties to impose the law and make the prairie suitable for immigration. As a result of this, Fort Calgary was born, named by Colonel James Macleod after Calgary Bay on the Isle of Mull, Scotland, a sleepy little trading post. The settlement did not experience much in the way of population growth until the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1883, and it was not until 1894 that it became a city. However, 1914 was the year that Calgary experienced its most significant development: the discovery of oil in the Turner Valley, 35km (22 miles) southwest of the city. Overnight, Calgary became a 'boomtown', attracting settlers, investors and generating massive amounts of money. Additional oil discoveries throughout the century saw continued growth in the city as it became the administrative centre for the Canadian oil industry. Calgary also grew into a tourist destination in its own right, as well as the gateway to the Rocky Mountains. Visitors flocked to take in the city's burgeoning cowboy culture, expressed every year in the Calgary Stampede, first formally held in 1912. The Rocky Mountains and, in particular, Banff Provincial Park attracted thousands more, drawn by the park's stunning alpine beauty and its famous hotel. As the popularity of winter leisure sports, such as downhill skiing and bobsleighing, increased, so did Calgary's own popularity, all culminating in the city's hosting of the XV Olympic Winter Games in 1988. Many have likened the Calgary of today to a Canadian Dallas, a comparison that is not without merit. Like Dallas, Calgary is a confident, often brash cowboy town that grew wealthy on oil, where they play country and western music in noisy taverns and eat thick and juicy steaks in its restaurants. As an image, however, this captures only a small amount of what the city and its people are actually like. Calgary is also a city of diverse and vibrant neighbourhoods, where its citizens relax in cafÉs, stroll its scenic streets, see plays or take in the opera. Its technology industries have grown immensely, diversifying the economy and making it less a one-horse cowboy town and more a twenty-first-century city. |
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