Jill Browne, from home and away

Monday, April 4, 2011

Home: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Up at the airport yesterday to drop my friend off, I saw the newly-closed Barlow Trail.

The feds are expanding YYC, Calgary International Airport. This means building a runway where we now have a road, Barlow Trail. In fact it’s the main road for reaching the airport from anywhere east of Deerfoot Trail and north of Memorial Drive.

Barlow is a strange road because although there is a Barlow north of the river, and a Barlow south of the river (the Bow River, that is), and these two Barlows do line up with each other, they aren’t connected. Very confusing if you don’t know what you’re doing and you get on Barlow south of the river expecting to take it to the airport.

No worries now, though. Barlow is closed at its north end so you can’t use it to get to the airport at all.

Find another way and don’t trust your GPS. Revert to that good old-fashioned map thing.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Home: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

No kids at school today. Family Day, an Alberta holiday originally, because we needed something to relieve us in February. I see that Ontario has got it now too.

But Peggy the mail lady still had to do her rounds, because federal workers do not have Family Day. They have to enjoy their nearest and dearest on their own time, in this particular instance.

Here are some more pictures of Calgary from my 2011 collection.

Cecil Hotel (the green building). Photo by Jill Browne, Calgary, January 3, 2011.

Plus 15 near Centre Street. Photo by Jill Browne, Calgary, January 1, 2011.

Calgary Chamber of Commerce building. Photo by Jill Browne, January 3, 2011.

Calgary Tower, with new Bow Building on the left. Photo by Jill Browne, Calgary, January 3, 2011.

Workers on Bow Building site, No. 1 of 3. Photo by Jill Browne, Calgary, January 3, 2011.

Workers on Bow Building site, No. 2 of 3. Photo by Jill Browne, Calgary, January 3, 2011.

Bow Building site, No. 3 of 3. Photo by Jill Browne, Calgary, January 3, 2011.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Home: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

In addition to deciding to stop adding fluoride to Calgary’s drinking water, the City Council approved (by one vote, I understand) the building of a tunnel underneath the airport.

Without such a tunnel, the expansion of the airport will create a kind of barrier for those who want to get in and out of north-east Calgary.

The Mayor said it will cost more not to build the tunnel than it will to build it. I suppose the more comes from dealing with the stress on the rest of the infrastructure.

Now the city engineers and outside contractors have got a big job ahead, though in radio interviews the city’s engineer seems calm about it. Building a tunnel in and of itself is not an extremely difficult feat of engineering, and the city staff have already got a lot of the preliminary work done. The kicker is that the airport, which is federal property leased to the airport authority, is going to build the new runway starting soon. Barlow Trail closes in April 2011. It’s now February.

Expect lots of digging.

Section of LRT just east of Crowchild. Photo by Jill Browne. Calgary, February 1, 2011.

Calgary's new LRT under construction. Photo by Jill Browne. Calgary, February 1, 2011.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Home: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Beautiful sunny day! Started out at -25 C and reached -6 by evening.

Last week I was surprised to see how far along the building of the west leg of the LRT (our above-ground light rail transit) is. The chunk they are working on now is massive. I hope the pictures give at least some idea of the size.

The new Bow Building dwarfs Calgary's downtown landmarks (Photo: Jill Browne)

January 3, 2011

Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Home

The new Bow Building isn’t finished yet but it already dominates Calgary’s downtown skyline.

Designed by the firm of Sir Norman Foster, the building was commissioned by energy company EnCana.  It’s 58 stories high and larger in scale than Calgary’s other office buildings.

On the plus side, the building is said to have some environmentally-friendly design features.

The big negative, as far as I’m concerned, is that the opportunity to take hundreds of  jobs out of the downtown core has been lost.  Calgary is a flat, sprawling city.  Most people depend on their cars to get almost anywhere.  Now even more people are going to be going downtown, further taxing our public transit and limited downtown parking and roads infrastructure.

I don’t see how this can possibly be considered environmentally friendly.

In spite of my vinegary attitude, I do love the surprising picture, linked to below.  If you know who the photographer is, please tell me so I can credit them properly.

Link to picture:

Workers at the Bow Building, Calgary