Quote:
Originally Posted by McPaul
The mountains are nowhere near here. This city is flat, not mountainous. You have to drive two hours to even get to the mountains. If you want mountains, go live in Golden, or Squamish, or Denver, or Park City. The mountains have nothing - nothing at all to do with Calgary. The people in this city have to wake up and realize this.
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Err.. I have to assume you either are a) very young and not well travelled, b) have never lived in another large Canadian city before, or c) hate outdoor recreation.
Here's how it works: every decent sized city, and I mean EVERY city, has a nearby "recreational playground". This area is never in the city itself. It's what those who do it call "going to the cottage", "getting out of the city for the weekend", "going camping", or something similar. It's basically where the majority of the city goes on weekends in the summer (and maybe winter). Every single city in Canada has something comparable. Key points: it's nowhere near the city, usually an hour or two's drive, and it's often in a very different geographical area than the city itself (part of the point of "getting away" is to see something different).
In Winnipeg it's the Whiteshell/Lake of the Woods area. In Montreal it's the mountains/resorts to the NW of the city. In Toronto it's the huge cottage and lake country centred on Barrie and such. In Vancouver it's more spread out, but Whistler is a good analogue. In Edmonton it's the largish lakes south of the city, and Jasper.
And in Calgary, it's what everyone here calls "the mountains". It's Banff. It's Kananaskis. It's Waterton. It's all the areas, all in the Rocky Mountains, that are an hour or three's drive away.
Go to Winnipeg, and ask someone over 30 who owns a car what the best thing about Winnipeg is. Half the people will tell you "cottage country" - which is an hour (minimum) outside the city. Go to Toronto, and people there talk constantly about their cottages. Go to Vancouver, and the surrounding mountains (that are not in the city) are the big thing.
You might want to take some time away from "trying to get out of this city ever since you came here" and look at what we've got here. We have exactly what every other city has, a great vacation destination within a short drive from home - except ours is visited by several million tourists from all over the world each year.
Again, if you hate the outdoors, I can see a big sigh when people talk about the mountains. But Calgary, for those that love the outdoors, is like living in Paris if you're an art fanatic. It's freaking heaven.
PS: I can be in "the mountains" in under 40 minutes' drive from my house. It's actually just about the same time to drive to the closest mountain as it is to drive to the south end of Calgary. So unless you're going to claim that people in Copperfield aren't in the city... the mountains might as well be in the city for me.