We continue our journey in the City of Calgary.
Calgary is the largest city in Alberta and largest in the prairie provinces.
Calgary and the greater metropolitan area has a population of 1,500,000 people and was named after Calgary on the Isle of Mull in Scotland.
The name Calgary meaning “clear running water” or “bay farm”.
The Indigenous people referred to Calgary as “elbow” because of the sharp bend in the Bow and Elbow River.
The history of Calgary has been traced back about 11,000 years and was inhabited by many First Nations people’s.
The area of Calgary is where the mountains end and the prairie starts and has always been a good source of hunting and fishing to the early people.
The first recorded visit by a European was in 1787 by a young 17 year fur trapper who worked with the Hudson’s Bay Company and he spent a winter along the Bow River.
The first settler was in 1873 and by 1875 the site became a North-West Mounted Police post, known as Fort Calgary.
By 1881 the federal government began offering land leases for cattle ranching for an huge amount of 1 cent per acre, this spurred on a huge immigration to the area.
The Canadian Pacific Railway came to the area in 1883 and started to sell lots in the area for around $400 per lot.
In the same year the “Calgary Herald”, which is still in production today, brought out its first edition and sold yearly subscriptions for a price of $1 per year.
In the early days of Calgary there was lots of turmoil when a city councillor was arrested for selling liquor in his business even though there was it was banned during prohibition. There was an uproar on how lenient the sentence was and that the editor of time at the Calgary Herald wrote articles of his displeasure of the sentence. Eventually the editor himself was sent to jail for his undertakings under the prohibition act.
By the late 1800’s Smallpox was discovered and as a result had killed a few residents. The locals found out that a Chinese resident was the cause of the disease and it sparked a large riot in 1892. The local police did not try to stop the riots and it was the NWMP who came in a few weeks later to control the situation.
Calgary has always had a large tourism based industry and it was in year 1912 that the first Calgary Stampede took place.
The Calgary Stampede was a result of the Dominion Exhibition and the “Real Wild West Show” that was partially funded by the federal government to promote the city. An American trick roper named Guy Weadick, who was an original exhibition participate, came to Calgary in 1912 to host the first Stampede and in hopes of establishing an event that would represent the “Wild West”
In the first couple of years he would fail to convince the civic leaders that this was a good thing, but with the help of the local livestock people the event took off and has become the largest rodeo in the world.
Stay tuned for next week as we continue our visit in Calgary..
September 12, 2024
Continuing our trip to Medicine Hat we turn left on Alberta highway 41 south. An interesting fact that right on . . .