I was born, raised and educated in Calgary and now I'm happily employed and soon to married here too. The long term plan is to have kids, retire and die here as well.
Calgary is the only place that will ever be home for me. If I ever find myself living anywhere else, it will only be a temporary state of affairs. There's no way I could survive away from here.
I mostly grew up in the 1990s. It was kind of a static time for the city. There was the Petro Canada Centre loomed unchallenged over everything. I didn't really pay much attention to downtown then. It was just sorta there. A few things happened over time that eventually forced me to take notice. The first was when the Catholic school board took over the old steel hulk at the west end of Downetown to build their new office building. It was the first time I can vividly remember a new building. The second was when Bankers Hall was twinned. That was the first really big building project I could remember. The final thing was a standup comic on TV one time, who must have done his show in Calgary. He was saying what a beautiful skyline Calgary had, but that something was off about it. He was making fun of how the Calgary Tower isn't quite the right height. I had a good laugh, but it struck me that it was the first time I'd really heard of anyone from out of town remark on our city. From then on I became more appreciative of our downtown and when the 2000s building boom hit it was easy to make the move from fan to fanatic.
If you look on a world map, Calgary is usually way up in the top left hand corner. If you didn't know any better, and many don't, you'd think it was some backwater. Eastern jibes aside, it really isn't, it a dynamic and urbanizing city. I've really loved the pace of change. We've almost double in population since I was born and the city now lies at the heart of a metropolitan area connecting hundreds of thousands more people. Airdrie has something like sextupled or more in my life time. Buildings, highways, trains new towns and cities. It's been so cool to watch the city grow. As I've gotten older and had more opportunity to travel. I've really gotten to see how our city is great, but how much greater it can still be. So every new building or over pass or whatever feels like a goal for the home team. The progress is addicting. Telus Sky, Part Point and the Green Line are the things I am anticipating most right now. And I'll probably actually explode if Calgary hosts the Olympics again.
Until I found this site, it was usually hard to stay up to date on what was coming down the pipe. I like how SRC has pretty much everything in one place. You here at the forum give great pictures and updates and now the new Calgary page has news and updates all in one spot. I'm here pretty much every day now.
So nice meeting you all!