Calgary really does have strange weather. This April after a week of sunshine it snowed sporadically and even rained a bit. Today I woke up with a sense of purpose, I was going to go downtown and apply for a job, but then I looked outside.
Two feet of snow came down overnight in May.
Calgary rarely gets rain so the city is very dry but aside from these two
weather trends this city is great.
We have a new mayor, Dave Bronconnier, after maybe five terms of our incumbent Al Duerr. The election wasn't really a vote of confidence from Dave, only 35% actually voted (I didn't) with the privatization of Enmax (the city electrical company) being the only major issue.<\p>
We have the C-Train which already has a few good write-ups. The C-Trains are the backbone for our public transit system and reach into the three corners of Calgary.<\p>
We have major shopping centres. In the south Chinook Centre which is an absolute behemoth, it isn't as big as West Edmonton Mall but they finished major renovations last year that added a movie theatre with a huge atrium and IMAX theatre along with three major stores (can't remember their names).<\p>
Downtown we have TD Square, this place is huge as well because of a huge architectural innovation, the Plus 15!
See, some architect had the idea of making sheltered bridges several meters above ground to connect buildings downtown with the result that you can almost go from one end of downtown to the other through 57 bridges. It's great for wasting an afternoon looking for friends but shopping is expensive since the stuff there is upscale. <\p>
In the northeast we have Sunridge Mall which is just like 10 other malls in the city except I live close to this one so I like it more.
We have the University of Calgary, I go there and I love it, even though Maclean's doesn't love us. We consistently rank 15th in its list of top universities.
We have skiing, hiking, and backpacking but Torque already talked about this.
Even though it should rain more, it's a great place. I love it here.<\p>