Calgary: Is It Actually Cool?!

A guilty pleasure. For some, it’s ice cream. For others, it’s Netflix. Then, of course, there’s beer, something I can get behind. But my real guilty pleasure is writing about cities no one cares about, preferably in poetry format. Calgary—you’re up.

 

You lie north of Montana

No, not the one called Hannah

I’m talking about the US state that’s scary

The one with strange people of which I am wary

 

But you’re different up in the Great White North

I’ll go ahead and call you Calgary henceforth

You have more people than that entire state

From all over the world they come accumulate

 

You started as a dot on the Canadian plains

But the dot grew when the railroad brought trains

You dabbled in agriculture and things like that

But it’s something else that made you get fat

 

I’m talking, of course, about oil and gas

You’re like Saudi Arabia among the tall grass

That stuff has been your GDP’s buoy

And made your residents come across as showy

 

At this point your metro is about 1.5 million

Many millionaires per capita—along with their minions

All that money makes for a nice skyline

Where two rivers meet, your modern skyscrapers shine

 

You’ve been ranked among the most livable cities on Earth

Up there with Vienna and Zurich is your worth

You got all the crap that urbanites demand

Restaurants, museums, and probably some indie bands

 

In music, you’ve actually done okay

I mean, not everyone can boast Tate McRae

And from some nearby town came the ones who get flak

Who doesn’t love to hate on Nickelback?

 

You’ve nurtured other famous people too

Like Stephen Harper, Mark Rypien, and the loser Ted Cruz

The Hart family of wrestlers is from around there

As are a bunch of NHL players—apparently someone cares

 

You have the Calgary Tower and state-of-the-art libraries

Miles of skyways so your people don’t freeze

You host a massive rodeo called the Calgary Stampede

And you’re home to Canada’s most lucrative companies

 

Chinatown, Stephen Avenue, parks, and light rail

Arts and theater so things don’t get stale

The Peace Bridge and an arena that looks like a saddle

The fine line between liberal and conservative you straddle

 

I guess a bunch of movies have been filmed in your sprawl

Brokeback Mountain, Dances with Wolves, Legends of the Fall

Doctor Zhivago and the Eastwood classic Unforgiven

And according to Wikipedia, even The Revenant and Inception

 

But it’s your surroundings that set you apart

The Canadian Rockies to your west, they give you heart

They landed you the Winter Olympics in 1988

And Banff National Park—that’s striking real estate

 

You’re in effect a rather interesting place

Where the endless prairies meet the mountains with grace

Irreligious and welcoming to allophones

Though not as laissez-faire as the more coastal zones

 

Calgary, one day soon I plan to visit you

But not because I have a burning desire to

It’s because I can then start to brag about it

Isn’t that the point of this yuppie-ass sh*t?