Bridgeland during the World Cup

Welcome to Calgary's Bridgeland, where even the street boxes are set up to cheer for Italy!

From The Rooftops Of Calgary

A couple of days ago, I woke up grumpy. I overslept and it threw my rhythm off. I missed that quiet part of the morning where I enjoy a cup of coffee and do some writing, or read a chapter of a book (something I haven't managed to do in almost a week, by the way). But I went for a walk. My daughter came along, riding her bike, as we went down to City Bakery for some fresh bread. The women who work there gave us some treats, I bought some coffee. We sat in the park and then came back home. We all came back very happy.

A lot of time people try to decide where to live based on the size of house they can afford, or the kind of schools that are nearby. Sometimes they choose it based on commute times. When was the last time you heard about someone buying a house based on the neighbourhood's ability to make them happy? How do you monetize that? How much is it worth to live near a nice view of they city, or tree lined streets?

Bridgeland's Spooky Forest

Urban development is a strange thing. Something of a mixed blessing, since one person's charming locale could be another's vision of blight. When I moved into Bridgeland ten years ago, it had already begun being redeveloped, albeit the pace of gentrification and in-fill development would quicken was the housing boom really took off.

When I moved in, small scales were the normal; single family, one and a half story homes, hovering aroudn the one thousand sq.ft. threshold. Closer to the hill, north of Fourth Avenue, two-story homes predominated, and the large million dollar in-fills had already started appearing on Drury. My wife and I used to walk home from City Bakery on First Avenue to the tiny little house we were renting on Colgrove Avenue at the top of the hill. We would often come up by way of Drury, dreaming perhaps of living in a house with a view of downtown from the ridge (the house we were renting had a gorgeous view and only Drury offered better ones).

Once my daughter was born, we would continue to walk home the same way, but my daughter always fussed along that particular route. Eventually she told us that she didn't like walking through the "spooky forest". The blocks of 8th Street south of Fourth Avenue are heavily canopied, to such an extent that the street is mostly shadowed throughout the day. The picture above, for example, was taken at noon today, when the street gets it's most sunlight. I must admit, to a three year old it must have looked quite spooky, particularly in the Fall.

In general, I love my neighbourhood, but the I am often surprised to find myself saddened by the development of a fourplex at the corner of 8th and Fourth. It's the bright spot on the distant corner.

Prior to the fourplex, that particular corner was perhaps the spookiest part of Bridgeland's Spook Forest, comprising of not only more trees, but nestled in and amongst the trees were three or four small working man's cottages, the likes of which I had never seen anywhere else. I've include a link that gives something of an impression of what the cottages looked like, except they were smaller. One cottage was barely wide enough for a large man to extend his arms. The shae from the trees had killed most of the grass and plants, so none of them had much of a garden or lawn. Sometimes my wife and I would cross to the otherside of the street, half-expecting Boo Radley to emerge from one of them. Between ourselves we referred to the cottages as Shack Row.

Then, one summer, the cottages and the trees were gone and I've missed them ever since.