Derek’s Cross-country Skiing and Snowshoeing Antics
As far as low-impact, family friendly outdoor winter activities are concerned, there are few that are as accessible while potentially also exhilarating as cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. These two activities can be as benign or as extreme as you want them to be. Based on my previous blog post about outdoor winter activities you will quickly realize that I err on the side of caution. Benign suits me fine! I’ve not had much success with winter activities and have been
Must-See Calgary: “I have half a day to explore”
Where should I go and what should I see? If you find yourself with half a day at your disposal to discover Calgary, I can provide you with a travel pack full of destinations that you can check off your proverbial to-see list. While there is a lot to see and experience in the outlying neighbourhoods, my recommendation for a half-day gap is that you focus your efforts on exploring the downtown area. This will maximize the use of your precious
Putting the “Public” back into “Public Library”
A focus on the City of Calgary’s Public Library Rejuvenation Projects If you get the opportunity to visit Calgary’s new Central Library you’ll soon dispel any of those dated, stereotypical notions that libraries, themselves, should be archived! The Calgary Public Library is doing a phenomenal job to reinvent itself and attract the public interest. You need only to have visited some of their +/- 21 city-wide locations in recent years to see the efforts they’ve made to continue to engage with the
Derek’s go-to Calgary coffee hide-outs
Sometimes we all need that little place of retreat. Whether to work remotely, find comfort in a warm beverage and a freshly baked indulgence, or just to escape for a brief period from the busyness of our daily routine and demands. While our winter conditions here in Canada don’t provide opportunity to do this outdoors too much, we all tend to have our preferred go-to, cozy, indoor destinations. However, it's not just about the escaping. It's more often than not about
Are there boundaries to urban wildlife?
A perspective on Coyotes in Calgary Communities Christa, my wife, loves city wildlife. As a Grade 3 teacher she soaks up any opportunity to engage and share stories with her hungry bunch of learners about the natural inhabitants surrounding us. Where do they live? What is their lifecycle? What do they eat? What are their habits? What do they do to survive our harsh climate? How do they protect themselves from predators? As such, she loves to collect photos and evidence
Derek’s Dismal Winter Pastime Misfortunes
We’ve heard the adage “If you build it, they will come”. Might the same principle apply to other things, like “if you speak it, it will happen”? The winter of 2017/8 was a particularly cold one in Calgary, if my memory serves me right. We saw few – if any – Chinooks. These “warm” mountain winds traditionally blow across the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, creating our unseasonably warm micro-climate. These pockets of warm respite enable Calgarians to enjoy milder outdoor temperatures