Saturday at the Glenbow, or: Wherein our heroes find the Devonian Gardens by seeking shelter from the rain.

In case I didn't mention it, Calgary goes a wee bit cowboy crazy during July, thanks to the Stampede.  Have I mentioned the hats?  Millions of gallons worth of hats...anyway, even the most starched and staid institutions turn a bit denim during this time, and the Glenbow is no different.  So for our Saturday Cultural Outing, Collin and I hopped on a train and headed downtown to see the last weekend of their western exhibits.

The Glenbow Museum was one of Calgary's first museums, and has an eclectic collection of objects, based largely on the whims of its first patron.  Modern art (which bizarrely gave me a pang of homesickness - Canadian artists don't have much call to use warm colors in their work - impressionistic landscapes were all shades of muddy brown, green, gray, and blue.), Asian and African antiques, and a massive collection of weaponry, both ancient and not.  There is also a sizable portion of the museum dedicated to the First Nations people of Canada, and a section called "Mavericks".  Fortunately, there wasn't a trace of John McCain or Sarah Palin.  Many of these historic figures were genuine lunatics - climbing down oil wells?! and marvelously colorful.  One of my favorites was Bob Edwards, editor of the Calgary Eye-Opener, a pointedly sarcastic paper of weekly events.  He'd go on week-long benders every once in a while, which made the regularity of a weekly paper sometimes...not.

 The main attraction was the featured exhibit, an assortment of paintings by Charlie Russell, the Cowboy Painter.  I was pretty excited to see it, in the way I always am when I recognize the name of an artist.  That, and I actually do enjoy his work.  What I discovered though was that I enjoy his work most when in contrast to others artists.  Going into an entire exhibit of his work was a little overwhelming, where I left with the impression of, "Yep, those sure were horses!"

We spent several hours in the Museum, and then emerged in the pedestrian area of 8th Street for lunch.  Unfortunately, this part of town is surrounded by expensive hotels and the Calgary Convention Center, so our food options were limited to pub, pub, pub, pub or pub.  Collin and his Hitchhiker's Guide thought we might find a non-pub a few streets over...but no luck.  We wandered aimlessly until it began to rain, and then we wandered aimlessly and damply.

But then...there!  From under a dingy pedestrian walkway, the fluorescent lights of commerce shone brightly.  Teenagers dressed like Jersey Shore extras passed through automatic doors.  "A mall!"

"What?" Collin may have said.  I'm not sure because I was busy being pulled towards the entrance like a moth to a bug zapper.

I'm used to the sprawling monoliths of America where a mall is an island isolated from the rest of a town by approximately 50 square miles of parking lot.  This looked like the planners just had some J Crew store they needed to squeeze in somewhere.

But it was SO CLEAN!  All glass and chrome and tile - it was nearly blinding.  I wanted to take pictures.  It was gorgeous.  Even more gorgeous was the food court, with it's terrible Chinese food, which Collin and I gobbled down and instantly regretted.

About the time I started shoving the last half of my noodles around on my plate, I realized that my rapture at discovering such a place was almost certainly fueled by starvation.  Now that I realized I wasn't going to die, I also realized I was voluntarily sitting in a mall on a Saturday afternoon.  We decided to flee the food court, and ended up suddenly in a Provincial Park.

What?

It was the Devonian Gardens!  I'd seen signs for it all over town, but had never been able to find it.  Mainly because it had never occurred to me to look for it in the top floor of a mall, next to the food court.  But sure enough, there it was - thousands of ferns and succulents, arranged symmetrically around reflecting pools and koi ponds.  With the backdrop of the towering, cathedral-like glass ceiling, it really was quite gorgeous.  I don't know whose idea it was to install the park in a mall, but it was a clever move.  I instantly wanted to trip rude teenagers 25% less than I had moments before.

So I guess the lesson is that in Calgary, beauty can be found in some very surprising places.  Also, don't eat the Chinese food in the CORE food court.

Bow River Walk

Yesterday I put on my new shoes.  This ultimately proved to be a mistake, but an unavoidable one because I've worn holes through the soles of both pairs of shoes I initially brought with me.  The shoes broke my feet in, for sure.  How?  Let me tell you what I did yesterday afternoon.

After lollygagging around the house, bemoaning sore muscles unaccustomed to the weight training I'd done the day before (and, okay, all the L-Phys shenanigans the previous night), I decided around noon to get my keister out the door.  I recently read an article (where, I cannot recall, but if I do I'll insert a link) about a study done by a British university.  In it, they tried to determine which environmental factors encouraged stress reduction.  Ultimately they found that for all socioeconomic strata, living near the sea was anathema to stress.  They mentioned the fresh, bracing air (how British), and the soothing sounds of the waves on the shore.

Stress-free?  Awesome!  There's no sea in Calgary, of course, but it was built at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers, and Nose Creek, so there is a lot of water. And presumable soothing waves, the call of gulls, and a bracing fishy smell.

"Wait, wait.  What?" you ask.  "Bow, Elbow, and Nose?  Do Canadians suffer from uncontrollable twee?"

Well, I'm glad you asked, because it drove me a little crazy, too.  This is what I've learned: The Bow River is so named because a particular type of tree that is very good for bow-making grows along it.  Nose Creek is so named because it is the main drainage from Nose Hill (named, legend has it, because the bison wintering grounds of Nose Hill strongly resembled the nose of the Blackfoot chief).  The Elbow is named...well, still no good info on that.  It is quite serpentine in parts, and perhaps that's why...?

Collin and I have often walked along the riverfront, either to cross over Prince's Island to get to Eau Clair, or just for a good wander.  It's very well-tended, paved, and the trees and shrubs are (for the most part) trimmed to make it a lovely place to walking, jogging, or cycling.  But the last extended ramble we went on ended at a bridge  that had "1916" emblazoned on it, and the pedestrian walkway flooded by high waters after a day of thunderstorms.  I was curious what lay on the other side of that bridge, and decided to set off on a ramble of discovery.


View Larger Map

This is the path I took.  It was a nice walk, particularly earlier in the day (it always seems to get hottest around 3pm here).  They are constructing another pedestrian bridge to cross the Bow at St. George's Island (although it won't be done until 2013, so sadly I'll have to walk the long way around) which closed off a short segment of the river walk, but that was it.  Sweet-smelling purple clover was in bloom everywhere along the trail, as well as the lovely amaranth-tinted Fireflowers and Giant Goldenrod that often towered above my head!  But for the most part, it's clear wildflower season is just about over - there were a few of my favorites around still - shady spots sheltered a few delicate Harebells and some Wild Bergamot.  I also spotted a delicious-looking red berry that I didn't recognize, but I think it may have been a Silver Buffaloberry bush.

This find was, funnily enough, just south of zoo's bison enclosure. Part of the trail buts up against the southern boundary of the zoo, so you can actually look at the exhibits from your place along the river.  Of course, in the nature of zoo animals everywhere, they made sure to be lying out of sight of paying customers and lookie-lous alike.  The bison and (as indicated by it's very distinctive "cat-in-heat" call) a peacock are the only animals I know for certain are in the zoo.

The line to Edmonton is still in use.  There's still
glass insulators on those disused power lines next
to the tracks!

Further on, at the confluence of the Bow and Nose Creek I came to a rusty railway trestle bridge.  The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was crucial to the creation of Calgary as a city.  CPR was tied in very closely with the Dominion land policy of the late 19th century, which was pretty similar to the Westward expansion/Homestead Act concepts occurring at the same time in the United States.  In exchange for their services, the CPR received millions of acres of land, which it then sold to individual homesteaders.  Railway is still pretty big business in Calgary, but back then it was part of the "boom town" spirit.  The CPR line north across the Bow and along the western side of Nose Creek used to delineate between the "respectable" part of town, and the red light district.  Due to Calgary's penchant for catching fire and burning down (and perhaps due to a reasonable desire to clean up the city when it began to expand) there's no evidence of this disreputable past still around.

This part of town is now known as "The East Village", and has been trying to move beyond it's past as Calgary's "slums".  There is a startling amount of building/renovation going on (no housing slump here!), and this part of the city is experiencing a lot of urban renewal.  My favorites are always when old buildings are repurposed instead of being destroyed.  There is certainly a very vocal group supporting the former (as I realized when I went to a Historical Society-sponsored event recently), and the repurposing of this mattress factory is a nice example:

Looking south, across the Bow.  Calgary Tower in
the background.

If I ever find my camera cord I'll share pictures of things I've photographed poorly (WHERE did I put it?!).  In the mean time, I need to figure out Canadian television stations so I can stream the Olympic Opening Ceremonies.

ETA: 8/5/12 - have added photographs.

L-PHYS Conference

This year's L-Phys conference is being held at the University, and Collin was enlisted to not only give a talk, but help set things up.  With his early departures and long days, I've almost forgotten what the man looks like in daylight.  So, I was delighted when he asked if I wanted to go to the banquet last night.

It was pretty interesting.  For one thing, being an educator, my experience with large assemblages of professionals is that they usually have a ratio of women to men somewhere in the neighborhood of 50:1.  And they're loud, boisterous, and disastrous for public speakers (unless, of course, the speaker is also a teacher and knows the "tricks"), because teachers make the most unruly audience of anyone.

Not so for the L-Phys conference.  I think I saw maybe 20 women there, out of probably 200 people in attendance.  So what that tells me is that woman may be slightly better represented in physics than men are in primary ed, but not a lot.  Unless they were spouses along for a free meal, like me.  Conversations were subdued, and there was an intriguing mix of grad students (recognizable by their jeans and t-shirts), post-docs (jeans and button-downs), and profs (suits).  Whispy white hair crowned the heads of many, and I observed that mustaches were evidently de rigueur.

Dinner was quite good, and there was a tremendous amount of free wine.  With only three of us at our table, I'll admit I helped myself to it more freely than I should have.  However, I cut myself off at two and a half glasses, because I wanted to get home without passing out on the train.  But as we left, one of Collin's colleagues (I think?) gave us another free drink ticket.  We looked at each other, decided, "What the hell?" and had one more for the road.

While queuing, I overheard three middle-aged, graying scientists ahead of me, already pretty toasted, ask what time the bar was closing.  "12:30, sir," was the reply.

"Yyyyessssss!" they cheered.  They didn't actually high-five, but probably would have if they hadn't had drinks in their hands.

According to Collin, that's par-for-the-course behavior for physicists abroad.  Those crazy, crazy party animals.

Coffee, 'Pages', and postcards

I don't get much mail - actually, since coming to Canada, I haven't received any at all.  They have a marvelous system here: if you post a sign saying, "No Junk Mail" on your mailbox...the mail carrier doesn't give you any.  At all.  I wonder how much postage and paper is saved because of this?  Although I think I'd actually be pretty excited to see a Safeway flyer with my name on it, just to drive home the point that I'm actually here.

But I like mail.  Also, I like sending mail to other people.  I like stamps, and fresh stationary, and cracking open the groovy address book I bought from a Newsagents' when I was twelve (it has a koala roller-blading on it).  I particularly like writing postcards. They're a nice way of showing people you care about them without being required to settle in for an entire day of letter writing.  They fit my attention span - and thanks to specialty card stores with snarky stock - often fulfill my need to spread terrible puns around the world (The "Eh" Team, anyone?).

What I'm terrible at is actually mailing the darn things off.  But with my littlest sis' birthday...holy crap, tomorrow?  Oh, no!...I had to go mail some things off anyway.  The closest post office to us, I discovered, is in a Drug Store down on Kensington.  This was a delightful discovery.  Next time I need prompting, I can entice myself with promises to go look at nail polish after I post things.

On my way home, I decided to investigate Pages on Kensington.  They're an independent bookstore that Collin had mentioned thinking I would enjoy.  I did.  It's a wonderful little shop with an interesting selection of books - no genre fiction ("Alas!" said my mystery-loving soul), but general fiction, biographies, children's lit, history, science, horticulture, cooking, poetry, religion, and art.  It is an eclectic collection that clearly is a labour of love.  I didn't find the book I was looking for, but I did discover several books that I may have to go back and purchase.

I had barely left the bookstore when I brief rain shower began and I was persuaded to take refuge in the coffee shop across the street.  Really, weather, bend my arm why don't you?  Higher Ground, not to wax too rhapsodic, is a glorious place.  Plenty of tables, and space, but still has the intimacy of a whole-in-the-wall joint.  There are lots of outlets for laptops, and they even have a liquor license.  I foresee many an afternoon spent huddled by their bay window, with Lappy and a nice glass of wine before me.