The New Ass of the West

For those of you who don’t know much about Canada, I’m going to have to clue you in about a few thing so that you can correctly judge my frustration with the city of Calgary aka The New Heart of the West.

Canada owns pretty much most of North America’s worst real estate (having a terrible climate and what not) and it is inhabited by roughly 32 million souls who apparently have no time to breed as the only population growth of the past 5 years has come from a generous immigration program accommodating 1.5 million souls (mostly Chinese and Indians. Yours truly was a shoe-in through his parents). Betwixt the Fishermen of the Atlantic (who have actually fished ALL the fish) and the hippies and potheads of the Pacific there be: the Cowboys, the Prairies folks (who still trying to figure out why they made it all the way over there), the Proletarians and the Capitalists of Ontario, and of course the French.

Now the French set out to build a New France, complete with an acceptable copy of Paris which they called Montreal. Life was good till the English came and took over New France through the help of the Natives (whom got richly rewarded for their loyalty with the gift of the small pox), and took over Montreal and found it to be rather cosy. The city  was build to house the colonial aristocracy, or as they call it here: THE FAMILY COMPACT! And then the Scots arrive who, having been deemed by the English to have wool less worthy than the Shetland sheep , were unceremoniously expropriated of their land to make room for said sheep.

Heretofore, they set out further west to make for some ‘lebensraum’ and found Toronto. Now, about 40 years ago the French decide they were a ‘distinct society’ and filed for divorce. The Family Compact and all of its cash moved to Toronto (though the Desmarais held the fort in Montreal) and made it look like a hybrid of a Soviet planned industrial city and New York. Still, Toronto was good enough for Jane Jacobs to live there and campaign for A CITY LIFE THAT MAKES SENSE (mixed use neighborhoods do exist in Toronto, and she’s got some RABID fans among whom I count myself)

Now, further west you’ve got the Cowboys and their flagship colony of Calgary. 1.2 million people live in a city that has the footprint as big as New York City, and 4 out 5 living souls in this city poses cars (operated at an annual cost of CAD $ 7050 per annum, or CAD$ 5 billion p.a which could explain why 20% of them drive without a license). However, my desperation was relieved when I find out they’ve spent $6 million for a cause they call PlanIt and I thought “finally they’re going to build a city with complete neighborhoods, and not complete idiocy”

But alas, this million dollar plan faces COWBOY RESISTANCE…and who better to describe what that means than a local luminary who blogs today along these lines:

Most people in Calgary don’t want to have a world-class city and would rather have banal neighbourhoods lacking in any vibrancy or diversity if they can help it. Calgary is the most American city in Canada – by virtue of having the highest number of U.S. citizens per capita living here. And guess what that means? It translates into a city that values money at the expense of community solidarity and cultural growth or evolution of any kind, corporation growth at the expense of failing leadership in government, and overall just plain blind living in the face of imminent environmental and social fabric destruction. Most Calgarians think “who cares what happens with our land or people who can’t even afford a home, as long as we can have our 2500 sq. ft. home with 2.5 cars, 1.8 children and 1.7 pets?”. Such is the ridiculousness and myopia of vision of Calgary.

Now I ask you: my parents call Calgary home, the Albanians call it KalKari, what should I call it? And most importantly: why cant i find a poetry brothel north of Montana?