I was talking with someone today who turned down a job near Toronto because the town was named 'Swastika'. I'd heard of a place in that state (Ontario) called Precious Corners, so I looked up other weird Canadian placenames:
Ochiichagwebabigoining
Saint-Louis-du-Ha-Ha!
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
Other names can be found here.
Sunday, 30 September 2007
Saturday, 29 September 2007
Exploring the city
Calgary isn't as fussy as Toronto. It is pragmatic, it is commercial, and it is whisper-quiet. There is a sense that wintery, dim days are the natural order, and though we are glimpsing a moderate climate free of precipitation, scrubbing the city walls clean would be a waste of time. They would only be smudged again by the inevitable winter.
There are parks, I found some. I retract my earlier statement.
I first thought that these vent treadplate-footprints were the work of a whimsical local government body, but then saw a woman with high heels stepping on them carefully; the grilles are like cattlestops for them.
The city is not entirely without caprice. This horse is made from rusty bands of steel, just around the corner from one of the cinemas which shows independent films.
...but this is a town built on the charred and blasted wastelands of oil sands. It is reluctant to change, conservative. Muldoon would feel at home here.
I am now the proud owner of the crappiest bike in the world. It cost $5 (NZ$7). I dare not clean it; the dirt is the only thing holding the rust together, and without rust, my bike would be nothing. I bought it from a European of indeterminate age and origin. The bike is likewise.
There are parks, I found some. I retract my earlier statement.
I first thought that these vent treadplate-footprints were the work of a whimsical local government body, but then saw a woman with high heels stepping on them carefully; the grilles are like cattlestops for them.
The city is not entirely without caprice. This horse is made from rusty bands of steel, just around the corner from one of the cinemas which shows independent films.
...but this is a town built on the charred and blasted wastelands of oil sands. It is reluctant to change, conservative. Muldoon would feel at home here.
I am now the proud owner of the crappiest bike in the world. It cost $5 (NZ$7). I dare not clean it; the dirt is the only thing holding the rust together, and without rust, my bike would be nothing. I bought it from a European of indeterminate age and origin. The bike is likewise.
Thursday, 27 September 2007
Two Days, 17 Resumés
I've papered this city. Twelve resumés to recruitment agencies, five to the biggest design agencies. Checked out government listings, online classifieds, newspaper ads, talked with locals, pounded the pavement. If there is a job for an intermediate graphic designer with no web skills in the greater Calgary area, it will not evade me.
"From eventime to morning light
the copse was never more than grey;
Darkness did not come that night,
but day passed into day."
Summer doesn't ever really come to Calgary; spring passes unblinkingly into autumn. I went from 25-degree days in Toronto to the 10-degree climate of the Calgary 'summer'. The leaves are changing here, swirling in gentle twisting eddies under the shadow of skyscrapers. Girls who never quite put the finishing touches on their summer figures march determinedly in light dresses, one hand always guarding against the fickle breeze.
The light winds carry Calgary's warmth. The legendary 'chinook', a warm, dry wind blowing north, can raise the temperate from why-am-I-outside to oh-this-is-quite-nice. There is little of Toronto's humidity or blasting winds, which makes the lower temperatures more tolerable.
The PATH network lay under Toronto's streets; the +15 network is above Calgary by--you guessed it--fifteen feet. In the same bold colonial spirit that led man to discover the end of the Pahoia estuary well past the point where the smell of porcine effluvia made progress mildly unpleasant, I set out, sans compass, to explore these dizzying heights.
"...they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it's just there it's a little different."
-- Pulp Fiction
Of course, the stores were the same. There were just more of them, and at a slightly higher altitude. Four stories of stores are connected between 7th and 8th Avenues, running for one kilometre. What makes it confusing is that on the third level it joins with a southern extension, whereas on the second level it joins northward. I missed my compass. I wanted a GPS device.
Calgary is actually easy to navigate when you figure out the basic system: The Calgary Tower (an unassuming air-traffic-control-looking structure) is at Center Street. Roads north to south are called streets, thus 1st St West, 1st St East, and so on. Avenues run east to west, and are similarly numbered.
I stay at 520 7th St West, an area largely populated by hobos. The view out of my dorm window looks like a scene from Waiting For Godot. A few metres from the front door of the hostel is a needle receptacle, and we are advised not to walk alone after dark. I haven't had any problems; they seem to run the narrow range of emotions from mild disgruntlement to low-level civic outrage.
"From eventime to morning light
the copse was never more than grey;
Darkness did not come that night,
but day passed into day."
Summer doesn't ever really come to Calgary; spring passes unblinkingly into autumn. I went from 25-degree days in Toronto to the 10-degree climate of the Calgary 'summer'. The leaves are changing here, swirling in gentle twisting eddies under the shadow of skyscrapers. Girls who never quite put the finishing touches on their summer figures march determinedly in light dresses, one hand always guarding against the fickle breeze.
The light winds carry Calgary's warmth. The legendary 'chinook', a warm, dry wind blowing north, can raise the temperate from why-am-I-outside to oh-this-is-quite-nice. There is little of Toronto's humidity or blasting winds, which makes the lower temperatures more tolerable.
The PATH network lay under Toronto's streets; the +15 network is above Calgary by--you guessed it--fifteen feet. In the same bold colonial spirit that led man to discover the end of the Pahoia estuary well past the point where the smell of porcine effluvia made progress mildly unpleasant, I set out, sans compass, to explore these dizzying heights.
"...they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it's just there it's a little different."
-- Pulp Fiction
Of course, the stores were the same. There were just more of them, and at a slightly higher altitude. Four stories of stores are connected between 7th and 8th Avenues, running for one kilometre. What makes it confusing is that on the third level it joins with a southern extension, whereas on the second level it joins northward. I missed my compass. I wanted a GPS device.
Calgary is actually easy to navigate when you figure out the basic system: The Calgary Tower (an unassuming air-traffic-control-looking structure) is at Center Street. Roads north to south are called streets, thus 1st St West, 1st St East, and so on. Avenues run east to west, and are similarly numbered.
I stay at 520 7th St West, an area largely populated by hobos. The view out of my dorm window looks like a scene from Waiting For Godot. A few metres from the front door of the hostel is a needle receptacle, and we are advised not to walk alone after dark. I haven't had any problems; they seem to run the narrow range of emotions from mild disgruntlement to low-level civic outrage.
Sunday, 23 September 2007
Time Zones, or, Why I Got Up At 4 A.M.
When it is midday in Calgary, it is 2pm in Toronto, 7pm in the U.K., 8pm in France, and 5am (the next day) in New Zealand.
To watch two Rugby World Cup matches (Australia in Montpellier at 2:30pm and New Zealand in Edinburgh at 5pm), I had to get to the only pub in Calgary which plays these pay-per-view games. The entry fee is $20.
When it is 2:30pm in France, it is 6:30am in Calgary. To catch the first train of the day at 6:35am, I set my alarm for 6am.
My alarm was still on Toronto time from yesterday, so buzzed at 6am Eastern Standard Time. After I had arisen, dressed, and staggered downstairs I looked at my watch, which was set to the local Mountain Standard Time, to find that it was.... 4am.
To watch two Rugby World Cup matches (Australia in Montpellier at 2:30pm and New Zealand in Edinburgh at 5pm), I had to get to the only pub in Calgary which plays these pay-per-view games. The entry fee is $20.
When it is 2:30pm in France, it is 6:30am in Calgary. To catch the first train of the day at 6:35am, I set my alarm for 6am.
My alarm was still on Toronto time from yesterday, so buzzed at 6am Eastern Standard Time. After I had arisen, dressed, and staggered downstairs I looked at my watch, which was set to the local Mountain Standard Time, to find that it was.... 4am.
Onward, To Calgary
I flew to Calgary today. Like most travel, it was a series of minor ordeals punctuated with moments of wonder and bepuzzlement.
The four-hour flight tracked over all of the Great Lakes and the states of Ontario, Minnesota, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and finally Alberta. Nowhere in this span did I see a single forest; in fact 90% of the landscape was corn and other crops, for hundreds of miles. To gaze out and see nothing but a flat patchwork quilt of harvester patterns, again and again and again, makes me realise how vast these countries are.
The patterns themselves were seldom the same. I would have thought that there would be a 'best' way to harvest a field, but there were symmetrical, asymmetrical, triangular, rectangular, diagonal and circular patterns in ever-reducing circles. There were harvesting patterns which resembled the fairway on a Masters' golf course. There were patterns which looked like crop circles. There were idiosyncratic jinking weaves which outlined small ponds and streams. This continued for hours.
I caught a bus, then a train from the airport. America and Canada allow you to continue travelling without paying more by getting a transfer from the first thing you get on. You can keep going in the same direction but you can't backtrack because the transfers are a different colour.
Downtown here has been affected by white flight; most of the people you see on the street are actually *on the street*. When I checked in to the hostel, there were four old homeless guys lounging in the grassy area beside the building.
I walked around downtown for several hours. The trains are free within the 1km central strip, so I hopped on and off a few times. I bought some Chuck Taylor-style shoes ($7.50) and went to the only supermarket in the area, Safeway.
Calgary had a strange feeling about it, which I couldn't quite place. I realised after a few hours what it was: there are no public spaces. I bought a Coke and some cookies (I love cookies) from a store and looked for a foodcourt, a park, an eating area of any kind. After half an hour I gave up and perched on the plinth of a statue near a street corner. I looked at people; people looked at me. It was weird. A rambling bunch of teenage boys in yellow livery came along. "Hey man, can we shine your shoes for a donation to cystic fibrosis?" I said yes. They looked surprised and, honest to god, cheered. People in Canada are so happy, it's like living in a Smurf village. Today I saw a rough-as-guts biker hold open a gate for a little old man with a cane.
'Help Wanted' and 'Now Hiring' signs are everywhere, often followed by, 'For All Positions'. The last few minutes of the flight today revealed significant development going on outside Calgary. It's a city which is in a boom phase, and now I'm here to grab my slice of the pie.
And maybe see a moose.
The four-hour flight tracked over all of the Great Lakes and the states of Ontario, Minnesota, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and finally Alberta. Nowhere in this span did I see a single forest; in fact 90% of the landscape was corn and other crops, for hundreds of miles. To gaze out and see nothing but a flat patchwork quilt of harvester patterns, again and again and again, makes me realise how vast these countries are.
The patterns themselves were seldom the same. I would have thought that there would be a 'best' way to harvest a field, but there were symmetrical, asymmetrical, triangular, rectangular, diagonal and circular patterns in ever-reducing circles. There were harvesting patterns which resembled the fairway on a Masters' golf course. There were patterns which looked like crop circles. There were idiosyncratic jinking weaves which outlined small ponds and streams. This continued for hours.
I caught a bus, then a train from the airport. America and Canada allow you to continue travelling without paying more by getting a transfer from the first thing you get on. You can keep going in the same direction but you can't backtrack because the transfers are a different colour.
Downtown here has been affected by white flight; most of the people you see on the street are actually *on the street*. When I checked in to the hostel, there were four old homeless guys lounging in the grassy area beside the building.
I walked around downtown for several hours. The trains are free within the 1km central strip, so I hopped on and off a few times. I bought some Chuck Taylor-style shoes ($7.50) and went to the only supermarket in the area, Safeway.
Calgary had a strange feeling about it, which I couldn't quite place. I realised after a few hours what it was: there are no public spaces. I bought a Coke and some cookies (I love cookies) from a store and looked for a foodcourt, a park, an eating area of any kind. After half an hour I gave up and perched on the plinth of a statue near a street corner. I looked at people; people looked at me. It was weird. A rambling bunch of teenage boys in yellow livery came along. "Hey man, can we shine your shoes for a donation to cystic fibrosis?" I said yes. They looked surprised and, honest to god, cheered. People in Canada are so happy, it's like living in a Smurf village. Today I saw a rough-as-guts biker hold open a gate for a little old man with a cane.
'Help Wanted' and 'Now Hiring' signs are everywhere, often followed by, 'For All Positions'. The last few minutes of the flight today revealed significant development going on outside Calgary. It's a city which is in a boom phase, and now I'm here to grab my slice of the pie.
And maybe see a moose.
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