Saturday morning I had the pleasure of joining a group of Calgarians in Douglasbank Park who had gathered as part of Passages, the City's celebration of 100 years of Water Management. Saturday's event, led by Alberta artist Peter von Tiesenhausen, saw us drop 100 small handcrafted wooden boats into the Bow River from the Higgins Bridge.
Each boat was filled with one of 100 soil samples taken by Tiesenhausen while on a journey to Calgary from the Bow River headwaters in Banff. Each sample yielded a different colour, and mine was a nice light brown, reminiscent of espresso crema. Since each boat is loaded with a GPS-tracker, it is theoretically possible to follow each boat along the Bow and into the South Saskatchewan River, on to Manitoba, and ultimately (possibly) out to the Hudson's Bay, making it all a kind of elaborate game of Poohsticks. For those of you keeping score at home, my boat is #50, while one of my colleagues was #26. We're going to check in on our boats in September to see who owes who a cup of coffee.
The City of Calgary has quite a few events scheduled over the summer as part of their Celebration of the Bow series, and I'm looking forward to the floating of lanterns from Edworthy Park to Pearce Estate Park during the evening of August 21 since it will take place within walking distance of my house.
