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Living & Working in Calgary, AB
Whacktose
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Do you or have you lived and/or worked in Calgary? What did you love? What did you hate? What are things you absolutely need to know? I'm googling around, but I'd like some first-hand commentary if anyone's got any. Thanks in advance.
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Love: Low taxes, little traffic compared to Montreal, higher salary's, ease of finding work. Close to the mountains. Younger demographic.
Hate: A little culturally dead compared to back east but things are getting better! High home prices. Public transit is a joke in some areas. Very business oriented city.
I work in the high-end custom home theater, home automation industry and LOVE what I do. I love clients we have, I love the nice homes that I see, and I love the technology. I play on numerous sports teams and there's always something to do around the city that takes advantage to all the resources available to us. I moved here in 2001 to come to school, met a girl, got a job, got married, bought a house, had a kid. I'm living the dream, and I don't plan on leaving.
What I hate though, is the traffic. I live in the far South East end of the city, and on a good day I can drive to my office in around 30 mins. On a bad day (and they're more common than the good days) it takes as much as an hour. My wife takes drives to the train station and takes the train downtown and she has to leave our house by 6:45 to get to work by 8am. The SE is incredibly prone to traffic slowdowns because there are few major routes in/out of the area. If there's an accident on the main freeway, or if the weather is bad, I can bank on being a half hour late for work. With my job, I'm all over the city nearly every day, and I have to deal with traffic all the time.
The other tough thing about this city is that house prices are incredibly high. We paid $300,000 for our house, and it's a tiny bi-level split that's only like 900 sq ft. That's mostly why we live so far away from downtown, is because the closer you get, houses only get more expensive and that's the best we could afford at the time.
If you end up moving here, I strongly recommend that you find a place close to where you work. Other than that, you'll love this city.
Xbox Gamertag: GAMB1NO325Xi
The traffic is really no where near as bad as most big metro cities. What people forget is how large Calgary is. Driving down from My house in the N.E to the newer neighborhoods in the south is like taking a trip to the moon.
Cycling is very possible, and keeps getting better as more bike paths/routes are put in -- in winter, it's _cold_ to cycle, though. You don't necessarily have to live super close to your job, but you do want to make sure that there's a decent transit connection between you and work. I can drive to work in about 15 minutes if traffic is good, or I can walk for a couple of minutes, sit on a bus for half an hour, walk for another couple of minutes, and be at work -- and if traffic is bad, I don't care, I just sit on the bus for a bit longer. (cycling is just over half an hour as well, but more hilly).
There's lots of outdoors things to do in/around Calgary (especially if you want mountain-based things like mountain biking/hiking/skiing -- water-based sports do happen, but on lakes/the reservoir rather than an ocean).
There's not as big an arts scene as in bigger towns, but there is art/theatre/poetry/dance/etc if you want it.
Parking in downtown is expensive as fuck. Check with your employer to see if they include parking or not; if they don't, be ready to Park 'N Ride it to work unless you want to spend hundreds of dollars each paycheck on parking. The C-Train is pretty decent light rail for a city of Calgary's population (though some of it has been taken out by the flooding since I last lived there.
One you get into downtown, most of the infrastructure is accessible via heated, elevated pedestrian walkways - so you don't have to worry about freezing your ass off once you get off the train and start heading to the office.
Oh yeah, it's cold there. If you live in California, you will be in for a (probably unpleasant) weather shock. It is warm outside for maybe 2-3 months of the year (June, July, August). Anything beyond that is gravy (you can usually count most of May and half of September on a good year). Make sure you get a snow shovel, a windshield scraper and winter tires, because you'll be needing them come October.
On weekends, people usually hit up the Red Mile for a good time - it's basically just a stretch of nightclubs that makes for a decent pub crawl. There's a really good Zoo, a serviceable public library, an annual Calgary Stampede event (a big country fair. Yes, you will see a lot of cowboy hats and cowboy boots. Yes, you will probably get drunk and go buy one or the other to fit in with the crowd. Whether or not you leave the grounds with a plate-sized belt buckle is how you can tell whether you did it right or not).
The rental market is insane right now after the flood we had back in June so finding a place will be a bit of a challenge. Lot's of social clubs in town that are chock full of new arrivals. What do you like to do in your free time?
What are you comparing Calgary to? This sounds like a post on the comment section of the Calgary Sun.
I love Calgary and go back as often as I can manage. Traffic can be bad, but it's pretty manageable and the only other big city I can compare it to is Vancouver, which had worse traffic.
But Calgary's mass transit is utter shit, just a head's up. If you work downtown, parking is among the most expensive in the world, so taking the train is probably best, but, yeah. Bad mass transit.
I've never really worked downtown, so I never had to deal with it on a regular basis.
Calgary Transit isnt very good, buses etc, Ctrain isnt too bad as long as you are close to a line.
Traffic sucks but likely not as bad as you get in Cali.
I work and have lived in the downtown area for years, lots of stuff to do, 17th ave SW is a good hub of shops, pubs, restauraunts, groceries, bakeries etc. I lived just off of 17th for years and it was great, didnt need to drive and just walked everywhere, took transit when I had to.
Inglewood also has some good shops, pubs and ecelectic stores, Kensington is also really great.
The downtown is getting better for nightlife but still a ghost town compared to most other cities, Stephen Avenue (8th ave SW) is where most of the action happens.
As mentioned earlier the rental market is absolute shit right now, we had a massive once in a 100 year flood which hopefully wont happen again any time some. Lots of house, rental properties, businesses got right fucked from it. If you move here make sure you arent on the flood plain.
Our Mayor is effin amazing, we seem to be going through a craft beer trend for restaurants, our music scene is alright but we get shafted for most big acts or even smaller niche acts.
Our sports teams suck except for the Stampeders (CFL football) and for one week of the year we all get retarded, put on cowboy hats and if you work downtown in an office get absolutely no work done.
What is a "social club" in Calgary? Generally in my free time I like to either a) dick around the house and play games or b) go out and do stuff, including but not limited to: Eating Out, Bars, Movies, Museums, Outdoor activities (I am an avid skiier & hiker, and enjoy rock climbing), and on and on. I'll do just about anything, honestly.
This info has all been super helpful! Again, housing & immigration would be taken care of by my company, I don't really need info on those items other than the great suggestions I've been getting on which neighborhoods are best to live in. The company office is smack in the middle of downtown.
Calgary is right on where the Plains become the Rocky Mountain foothills and has beautiful scenery.
If you are, you will love Calgary and the surrounding area (you still probably will not like the weather).
A pub/bar. It's hard to give specific recommendations (The Roadhouse and Ranchman's are obvious enough. And yes, they're as cowboy as they sound), because Calgary is so spread out.
Banff is about half an hour's driving time away from Calgary, and will cater to your every outdoorsman whim. There's also plenty of ski hills within driving distance (Lake Louise is overrated and overpriced, but most other ski hills are good fun on the cheap).
???
I don't know about taxes, and I could agree that Macleod Trail has not withstood the demands of a growing city, and I could even say that I would never move back to Alberta given the choice. But give me a break, dude: the municipal leadership in Calgary is pretty decent, the people are not 'horrible and rude' everywhere (there are some rude people, just like everywhere else. Most people are very nice and honestly just trying to go about their business).
In case it matters to the OP / is not obvious: Calgary is in the heart of a very conservative province. Expect that kind of talk / politics. It'd oddly progressive in some ways (the mayor of Calgary is a practicing Muslim, and also a very cool guy), and ass backwards in others (there is a lot of homophobia in Calgary, and in Alberta in general). If you ever head out to a rural community like Caroline or Brooks, expect a lot of casual racism (on about the same level you might hear in Little Rock) and a ton of homophobia. If you go to Red Deer (a city that in the summer time actually has a population comparable to Calgary during it's slow months), expect everyone you see to be incredibly white (I know this was one of the biggest culture shocks for some friends from out of town when they visited Red Deer, and it made them very uncomfortable, and rightly so).
Of course, none of that is probably worth worrying about if you're just living in Calgary for a while to do some work.
Meetup has a bunch of different groups that meet that catered to new arrivals. I met most of my friends by joining a d&d meetup group that met at the sentry box 2x a month.
Our mayor is awesome and has a big following. I read something that he has the highest approval rating of any Canadian politician. YOu really are close to a nature lovers dream. Great hiking, fishing and skiing.
Red Deer (census population, ~90 000) has a comparable population to Calgary (census population, ~1 100 000) during busy/slow months, respectively? Surely I'm misunderstanding you.
Canmore's half an hour away, maybe, but if you can get to Banff in half an hour you're doing very well. Skiing depends on the conditions; Louise and Sunshine are roughly equivalent in terms of size / distance -- less car time to Sunshine, but then you have to sit in a gondola to get from the parking to the hill so it comes out pretty even.
Nakiska is a fair bit closer, though smaller, and if you want a park/pipe, COP is reasonable. (and also has okay shuttle-style mountain biking if you ride the chairlifts up -- though it's not real singletrack; Canmore Nordic Center is good, as are lots of trails in Kananaskis, or even Nose Hill, for that matter). Fortress is a few hours away, but can have a _lot_ of powder on a good day.
Lots of rock climbing in Kananaskis, too, some of which is at the end of a nice hike.
From a Canadian perspective, sure. Our mainstream right is to the left of the Democrats, though, so from a US perspective, Calgary is a socialist utopia/wasteland. :P
That's not really true in my opinion, but this isn't a D&D thread.
Red Deer's transient population fluctuates by almost a million people in the summer months - it serves as a major artery & pit stop for anyone traveling from Calgary to Edmonton (or the other way 'round), as a major hub for oil & gas traffic and as a shopping hub for anyone visiting Sylvan Lake.
The Calgary census you're talking about is also misleading - that's for the entire Calgary region, including all of Calgary's suburbs. The city region of Calgary is not as densely populated as that.
So we're talking about how many people are travelling through Red Deer? I really don't understand what you are saying here.
What are you considering Calgary's suburbs? It is kind of one big sprawl. It isn't like Toronto and the GTA.
I know it is Wiki, but from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary
In you plan to live in a suburb, make sure you have a personal vehicle or make sure you're okay with awkward public transit schedules. DO NOT LIVE IN AIRDRIE UNLESS YOU HAVE A PERSONAL VEHICLE! Yes, housing is cheap there. Busing in from Airdrie is a Goddamn nightmare the likes of which Lovecraft wouldn't even dare to pen down, and the pains in the ass you will have are not worth the money saved with cheaper housing.
If you do have a personal vehicle, again, check to see if parking downtown is covered by your employer, and be prepared for some frustrating traffic at peak traffic hours (nothing that should be new to you if you're from a city, I guess).