Canada Day at Fort Calgary

Canada celebrated it's 147th birthday on Tuesday, and the family and I went down to Fort Calgary to celebrate. I didn't grow up in Calgary, but I am celebrating my 20th year here, so it's a little embarrassing to admit that there are tons of places I haven't visited or things that I haven't done yet. It's easy to take a lot of things for granted when you live in a place. Canada Day activities are a little tricky as Calgary is now a city of over 1 million people! That means it seems like half of Calgary is everywhere in one place, and Fort Calgary was no exception.

Along with a show and shine featuring over 100 classic cars, there were food trucks, Lord Strathcona's Horse Mounted Troop, a free pancake breakfast and half price admission to the museum. I will have to go to the museum again. It's small, but there's still so much to read. It's better than Heritage Park in some ways, as it is far more informative and historical, instead of just being a great place to stroll around with an ice cream cone :-) It's hard to believe that the Fort Calgary site used to have warehouses on it, until a new roadway threatened the site and steps were taken to save the site and recreate the barracks. Archeological digs took place too! Calgary loves to reinvent itself, and it's fortunately that forty, fifty years ago, someone could see the need to save it for the future.

Sadly, the only photos I took of the celebrations were with my cell phone. I had packed up my camera kit, remembering an SD card, but completely forgetting the battery on the charger. Ah well! Pam of Always Artistic gave me a great simple tip - buy a second battery :-D Here are a few snaps - the yellow shaggin' wagon was my favourite - it reminded me so much of our family van from the 80s :-)

Suddenly September

I go back to ACAD on Tuesday...we've spent August trying to cram as much summer as possible into one month. June and July were such downers, but I did a lot, and the proof is in Instagram :-)

We went for a lot of country drives! This graffiti barn is out near Linden, Alberta. It never looks the same. Linden has a great little restaurant called Country Cousins, although it's not quite the same as what it used to be. It used to have a buffet loaded up with Mennonite home cooking, now it's just OK. The farmer's sausage is still wonder as are the homemade pies.

 I volunteered for the Calgary Folk Music Festival again! They really treat their volunteers wonderfully and it is such a good time. It takes 1500 volunteers to make the festival tick, and is a lot of hard work! But there's a free t-shirt, snacks, gelato, two meals a day, program and free music to sweeten the deal :-) The hot band this year seemed to be The Mexican Institute of Sound.

The festival takes place on Prince's Island Park, which was overcome by the flood back in June. 250 volunteers made it possible for the festival to happen. The whole island was underwater, the River Cafe was temporarily closed and it's amazing they were able to get it done in time. Some of the stage areas were closed, and Stage 2 was moved to nearby Eau Claire market. There was a fine sand everywhere due to the silt...but the river ran blue again by this time at the end of July.

 

We tried to go to the Royal Tyrell Museum on the August long weekend, but had to bail! This was the line up of cars just to make the turn off into the road to the parking lot. We had arrived there around 3pm, and thought that would be a good time to miss the crowds. Apparently not! Ah well...it was still a nice drive. We'll have to go again when all the kids are in school. One of the problems with Calgary is that you have so many people fleeing the city for long weekends - can't be helped, really. We were looking forward to it as the last time we were there was 2007.

Saw these groovy clouds around Red Deer! They were originally grey, but I love how Instagram turned them into waves. I really like Instagram as a creative medium...it's like this random result that I can use for drawings and paintings. In the 30 years or so that we have been travelling Highway 2 between Calgary and Edmonton I have never seen clouds like this.

Here's a view from the 10th Street Bridge last week. The water is still high. There's an island near the bridge where geese nested, but it's still underwater. It's hard to imagine just how devastating the flood was. It will be a long time before everything is "normal". The rusty looking structure is called Poppy Plaza and was intentionally made to look that way. It's next to Memorial Drive.

 Lastly, a new farmer's market opened up near us. Most of the farmer's markets in Calgary are far south, so it's always a chore to get to. This one is located at Symon's Valley Ranch, which used to be a restaurant and dance hall. It's been fixed up some with outdoor seating and lots of shops inside and out. It has only been open for a couple of months, so it will be cool to see how it grows as more people and vendors know about it :-) There were live geese and ducks there to see, and lots of seating, so it should be good. It's also literally out in the country too!