The Basics of Calgary's Grid System

To get around in Calgary, it helps to understand a few basics of how the city is laid out.

Calgary's Grid System and Numbered Streets

Calgary is divided into four quadrants: NE, NW, SE and SW. These are pronounced as full words ("North-east, North-west, South-east, South-west") but written as abbreviations.

For most of the city, the dividing line between North and South is the Bow River. However, the Bow River makes a turn and goes south beside Deerfoot Trail. After that, Memorial Drive is roughly the dividing line. Between Deerfoot Trail and 30th Street East, there are some SE addresses in Mayland Heights and the Meridian Industrial Park, that are actually north of Memorial Drive.

The dividing line between East and West is Centre Street. In the far North, Centre Street turns into Harvest Hills Boulevard for a while, and then back into Centre Street. In the South, Centre Street is not a very conspicuous street, but Macleod Trail is, and in some places it's the actual dividing line. (Downtown, Centre Street is a major street and it's very easy to find – the Calgary Tower is at one end of it, and the Centre Street Bridge is at the other.)

In the SE and SW, for addresses close to the East-West dividing line, it's worth finding out exactly which side of Macleod Trail the place is.

Streets vs. Avenues in Calgary

Streets run north-south. Avenues run east-west.

Generally, for the grid system, house numbers are odd on the west side of a street and on the south side of an avenue. Even numbers are on the east and north sides of numbered streets and avenues.

Downtown and in the older suburbs with numbered streets and avenues, this is really easy. In the "named" areas, there is a hierarchy of street names, which I'll talk about later.

Enjoying the Calgary Stampede Parade (Short Version)

The Calgary Stampede Parade is on the first Friday of the Stampede, in the morning.

Here are some tips to make your Parade experience as much fun as possible.

Update: After writing this, I got more ambitious and wrote a little more detailed list, with a few extra tips I thought of later.

• Don't drive downtown. There are street closures for the Parade all morning. Take the C-Train, a bus, whatever works.

• Go late. Just because some people want to be at the Parade at the crack of dawn, doesn't mean you have to. The Parade starts at 8:55 a.m. and is about two hours long. The route is 4.5 km (about 3 miles). It takes until about noon for the end of the Parade to reach the end of the route. If you catch a 9 a.m. C-Train, there will be next to no one on it. You can walk to a viewing place on 9th Avenue SW (the end part of the Parade route) and still see an hour or two of Parade goodness.

• Don't carry a lot of stuff. Dress for the weather, but leave the lawnchair at home. If you get tired of standing to watch the Parade, walk around a bit.

• After the Parade, don't be in a big hurry to leave downtown. The C-Trains will be full. It's a nice time to stroll over to Prince's Island, get an ice cream cone, watch ducks, and just relax. The downtown restaurants and food courts will be open for lunch.

• Be friendly. You can meet people from all over the world at the Parade. It's fun to chat and compare notes about your travels.

The Parade is worth seeing. Wear a cowboy hat and jeans if you brought them, you'll blend right in.

The Westin Calgary

Good things about the Westin:

Right downtown, great for business, connected to just about everything via the Plus 15 system.

Tip: Look for weekend and off-season specials at all of the downtown business hotels, as sometimes there are surprising deals, particularly if you can arrange your trip at the last minute. I see that on the Westin's website now they're offering a promo where you pay your birth year as the room rate for part of your stay. Hmmmm, that's one way to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The Westin Calgary is one of the city's best business hotels. It hosts a lot of conferences and major events. I haven't eaten there in a while but the food was always good when I was a regular.

There are some famous parties there during the Stampede (often charity fundraisers, not cheap but the tickets are very much sought-after).

The Caesar (vodka and Clamato juice, a twist on the Bloody Mary) was invented here.

My story about the Vancouver Canucks (well, one of them) in the lobby in 1990 might surprise you a bit. It was sort of surreal.

The Westin Calgary
320 - 4th Avenue SW
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
T2P 2S6

Phone: (403) 266-1611

One of the Starwood brand of hotels and resorts.

Vancouver Canucks at the Westin Hotel, Calgary (1990 or so)

It's not that all my Calgary hotel memories are this old (like my story of seeing the Queen at the Palliser), it's just that I think of them when certain hotels come to mind.

So here's a story that happened at the Westin, one of Calgary's top-end downtown business hotels.

Not being a hockey groupie, I'm not sure whether all the NHL teams stay at the Westin when they come to Calgary, but I suspect a lot of them do.

Sometime long ago, around 1990, I was a speaker at a business conference at the Westin. There was a dinner and I must have ducked out early, because I remember being almost alone in the lobby except for two other people. One was the bellman. The other was carrying a stuffed armadillo.

We don't see many armadillos this far north. None, in fact.

So, while I was trying to see the armadillo without staring, I completely missed noticing the guy carrying it. It was Igor Larionov, a Russian superstar centre who came to Canada in 1989 and played for the Vancouver Canucks for three years. Like I said, I'm not a hockey groupie. The bellman filled me in later. The Canucks had just played an exhibition game in Texas and had obligingly stopped over in Calgary for a beating by the Flames on the way home.

That is probably the most interesting thing I've seen at the Westin. And that's no small claim. For several years, my office faced the hotel and I was regularly treated to Calgary's own version of Ugly Naked Guy on the Road.

The Fairmont Palliser Hotel in Calgary

The Palliser (now the Fairmont Palliser, but everyone just says the Palliser) is Calgary's old CP Rail Hotel. It's attached to the west side of the Calgary Tower.

The Canadian Pacific Hotels were the grand old ladies of Canada's railroad heyday. The Banff Springs, the Chateau Lake Louise, the Empress in Victoria, these have always been beautiful places to stay, chosen for their locations, and fitted out in top-notch elegance.

The Palliser is gorgeous, has great food, is located downtown within walking distance of everything, and is really Calgary's only fine old hotel.

I love it, and so does Queen Elizabeth. In fact, I saw the Queen at the Palliser Hotel in 1990 and she looked very well-rested.

Nuff said.


The Fairmont Palliser Hotel
133 - 9th Avenue SW
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
T2P 2M3

Phone: (403) 262-1234 or
Toll Free: 1 866-540-4477

Fax: (403) 260-1260

Email: palliserhotel@fairmont.com

I Saw the Queen at the Palliser Hotel in 1990

Queen Elizabeth looks so familiar. Well, no wonder. I've been licking the back of her head for years, until e-mail put a big damper on letter-writing. But still.

In 1990, Her Majesty visited Calgary. Not being on the guest list for any of the official functions, I waited for HM to call me up for a little girlfriend dog-walking time. Still waiting.

My friend Pat was in town for a conference, staying at the Palliser Hotel. So, that's where we had dinner, in the least hoity of the hoity-toity restaurants there. (And I say this with great envy of those who eat there often.) It was lovely.

Pat said the Queen was staying at the Palliser too. After dinner, we saw the Palliser's hand-picked crew of red carpet roller-outers rolling out the red carpet in the lobby. Hmmm.

Much waiting. Apparently Her Majesty was at a state dinner with our then-mayor, His Worship Al Duerr, and a host of other dignitaries. (Another invitation lost in the mail.)

In the beautiful Crystal Ballroom behind us, the Palliser's Crystal Ballroom specialists were just finishing polishing the silver for a big charity ball, unrelated to the Queen's visit, but with an inevitable overlap in the guest list. (Now that's one I could have had an invite to, were I not so cheap.)

We waited, Pat and I, thinking the Queen would only be able to handle so much local colour before rising to end the state dinner. Eventually, people in formal wear started coming in – walking on the Queen's red carpet, even. Turns out that another friend, let's call her Donna, was one of these lovely charity ball-goers.

Donna stopped to chat for a while, and to wait for the Queen with us.

More eminent Calgarians pranced by and then, at last, there was a bit of a buzz in the crowd by the door. The Queen? The Queen? No, it was Mayor Al Duerr in full mayoral regalia. A very nice man and a friend of Donna's.

His Worship stopped to say Hi to Donna. Donna, however, had to let him know the score, and said, "Get out of the way, Al. We're waiting for the Queen." And being such a nice man, Mayor Duerr smiled and got out of the way.

Wait, wait, wait. We were ladies in waiting, all right.

And then, every Canadian coin I've ever tossed came to life before my eyes, for it was she. A petite, in fact very short, woman passed us by on the red carpet. I could have touched her. (But wouldn't because that's bad manners.) Her diamond tiara sparkled, her queenly gown rustled, and she fairly glided with perfect posture. Regal, one could say.

The Queen looks exactly like she does on a stamp.