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October 9, 1996Calgary, Alberta is a modern city of almost-new skyscrapers, but beneath the gleaming surface a rough-and-tumble, frontier spirit lives on.
Every July, Calgary dresses up -- or perhaps down -- to look like the "cowtown" it still prides itself on being. Cowboy hats, boots and jeans replace business suits; bales of hay adorn entrances to skyscrapers; pancake breakfasts, rope-twirling and guitar-strumming abound in the streets; and hundreds of thousands of tourists descend on the city. It's all part of the Calgary Stampede, a tribute to the city's roots as a cattle-raising, meat-packing center.
The highlights of the Stampede are a rodeo, called the largest and roughest in North America, and the Chuckwagon Races, inspired by the original Calgary cowboys, who used to race home after a roundup. But the Calgary Stampede is much more than horsemanship and cattle roping. For 10 days each July, it virtually takes over the city, with an agricultural fair, casinos, parades, country music, native dance performances, and mock gunfights in the streets.
Calgary's history is on display year-round at the Glenbow Museum, which has one of the best collections of Plains Indians artifacts, including giant teepees, headdresses, woodcarving and beadwork. It also has a huge collection of memorabilia from pioneer days, and chronicles the development of the fur trade, agriculture and oil industries in the area.
Heritage Park presents life as it was before the first oil boom began in Calgary in 1914. Its reconstructed frontier village contains more than 100 structures, including a working grain mill and bakery, a blacksmith shop, an opera house and a two-story outhouse. The park also has Alberta's first oil well.
It was a second oil boom -- beginning in the late 1960s, when new reserves were found, and continuing throughout the 1970s, when oil prices skyrocketed -- that transformed Calgary into a thoroughly modern city. That city can be glimpsed from what is now its symbol: the Calgary Tower. From its 621-foot (191-meter) height you can see much of downtown, the ski-jump towers at Canada Olympic Park to the west and the Olympic Saddledome to the south.
From the Tower you can also see what may be the city's greatest attraction -- its natural setting in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, where the Bow and Elbow Rivers meet.
Calgary also built tourism attractions around the Winter Olympics it hosted in 1988. Canada Olympic Park, a 15-minute drive from the city, was where ski jumping, luge, bobsled, freestyle skiing and events for the disabled were held. The park offers tours of the venues, luge rides, sport-training camps, and summer ski-jumping.
"We are the most used Olympic facility in the world today," says Bryon Dickie of the Calgary Olympic Development Association. Larry Stone, a coach at one of the camps, gives one reason why: "It's really critical that you ski in the summer on plastic because the level of competition is too much now to make it just a winter sport."
The park also has an Olympic Hall of Fame, which documents the history of the Winter Olympics, using 1,500 exhibits. It also lets you experience the thrill of a bobsled ride or ski jump without risk, through mechanical simulators.
Calgary is blessed with a pleasant climate almost year-round. Even the cold northern winter is tempered by the Chinook winds that blow off the mountains.
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