Tag Archives: Macleod Trail

Industry- The Business Park

January 15, 2018UncategorizedAutomotive, Calgary, Fish Creek, Macleod Trail, Midnapore, Millrise, Roads, Shawnessy, Sundance, Woollen MillMark Schmidt

The first part of this article can be read here

Land-Use Bylaw Map, taken from http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/pd/Pages/Calgary-Land-Use-bylaw-1P2007/Land-Use-bylaw-1P2007-maps.aspx . Meant to be used to look up the zoning in each lot of the city, the map also functions as section map of Calgary.

The thing you always need to remember about Calgary is that it is one city. Though it is divided up into wards, and police precincts and communities, there are no equal, competing political offices like with most big cities. This was not by chance or circumstance- for many years The City of Calgary was intent on maintaining a non-metropolitan, unicity model to control development from a single central government. After World War II, the unicity model was combined with a suburban sprawl philosophy, leading the city to annex more land for both growth and control. This was evident in the treatment of Midnapore. Had Calgary not annexed the area, the city would have inevitably been hemmed in to the south by Fish Creek- besides the growth in lot sales and development in the hamlet after World War II, the Burns family had plans to develop their land holdings south of Fish Creek, where the community of Midnapore lies today. These plans were blocked in 1956 by the Calgary District Planning Commission, whose members decided such satellite communities were not in the area’s best interest. In 1961 Calgary annexed Midnapore, as well as Forest Lawn, as part of the largest land grab in the city’s history, adding on more than 70 square miles. With Montgomery and Bowness added in 1963 and 1964, respectively, Calgary’s total area was brought to 154 square miles before the end of the 1960s.

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Industry- Agriculture, The Woollen Mill and The Roadside Town

September 9, 2017UncategorizedCalgary, Elevator, Glenn, Macleod Trail, Midnapore, Roads, Shaw, Trees, Woollen MillMark Schmidt

Map of Land Uses in Midnapore Townsite, from The Midnapore I Design Brief 1975 by The City of Calgary Planning Department

What makes a place?

I realize it’s such a broad question, but it’s something I find myself wondering all the time. Out of countless places on earth, why does someone pick here to live? What motivates us to move from one place to another? And why do some areas become thriving to the point of becoming monsters, while others struggle or even wither away? There is no simple answer to these questions, but a good way to approach this is to look at industry- we live in areas that provide us with a means of survival. This explains much of the history surrounding Fish Creek and the Deep South communities. The industry has changed a great deal over time, through primary-resource based industry, to a service-based one, to a world where work and home lives are again becoming integrated. But it all comes back to finding a way to live. And it starts with the land.

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Landmarks- Bridges, Form and Function

October 27, 2016UncategorizedArt, Calgary, Fish Creek, Landmarks, Macleod Trail, Midnapore, Stoney Trail, TrainMark Schmidt

Marquis de Lorne Bridge, Crossing The Bow River along Stoney Trail, looking North. Photo by Trevor Brown, trevorgbphotography88@gmail.com

It’s not a stretch to think of The Deep South as an island. Hacked off from the rest of the city by the Bow River to the east and Fish Creek Park to the north, provincially-regulated land, there will always be a sense of isolation to the area. I think area residents have always relished this to some extent, though for various reasons we’ve also needed to connect to the rest of the city and province. Naturally, the most basic way to do this is with a bridge. After reading enough about pioneer families in the area who had to “ford” the rivers, being at the whim of the seasons and the water levels, you realize how lucky we are to have a bridge. And unlike a real island like PEI, where the Confederation Bridge linking it to the mainland was controversial for over a century, over time there have been a large number and variety of bridges built in Deep South Calgary: assorted passenger bridges across the Fish Creek as well as the Bow River, and of course, the Marquis de Lorne Bridge connecting the Deep South and South East along Stoney Trail, and the 37th Street Bridge crossing Fish Creek in the West, infamously one-lane into the late 1990s. But I think the most interesting are the various crossings of Fish Creek near Macleod Trail.

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