Vista Heights

At first I thought we might live in Vista Heights, because it's the only residential neighborhood within walking distance to D's job, which is in the adjacent industrial area.  Vista Heights is an odd little neighborhood.  It's alongside Deerfoot Trail, but that's in a big valley, and the freeway is at the bottom of it.  There is actually a great view of the city and even the mountains from Vista Heights.  I was impressed.  That was before I heard that the "NE" was a bit suspect.   I haven't entirely figured out why.  It seems normal enough when we drive around.

We spent a weekend looking at condos in Vista Heights, and walking around.  Places weren't expensive.  It was a very pleasant 60's vintage district, all surrounded by green space of a sort really.  There were berms dividing it from the industrial areas, and if you just went over the hill, there were commercial yards and trucks and things.  I liked that.  We looked at a house that was for sale there, and talked to several people on the street who had lived there for decades.

But at that point we weren't sure if we were going to buy or rent, or indeed even move to Calgary at all.  But I kind of did like Vista Heights.

Quadrants and Universities

Getting into this, I really knew nothing about Calgary, and the different neighborhoods.  If you look online, you tend to get vague information to the effect that "SW" is best, probably followed by "NW", "SE" (so long as it's S enough), and then "NE."   It's funny what the quadrant system does.  I mean, in Edmonton, there are definitely better and worse neighborhoods, and even entire sections of the city that seem to have more poverty and crime than average, but there is none of this tarring of the whole quadrant with one brush business.

Anyway, D is working in the NE, so the NW seemed like the natural place to begin investigating, just across the Deerfoot from there.   Also I thought that living near the university might be good.  In Edmonton you can't go wrong living somewhere in the general vicinity of the university.   Even if the neighborhood is a little frayed around the edges, it's generally frayed in a good way.  And I thought it might be walkable and historical and things like that.

But the university area in Calgary is quite different to that in Edmonton.  In Edmonton, it's centrally located in what is essentially an old neighborhood, adjacent to Old Strathcona, on the riverbank, and directly across the river from downtown.   So it's a city-centre university in character.  But in Calgary, the university is newer and less centrally located.  It's more in a car-island, and less integrated with the surrounding neighborhoods, which are more 1960's vintage and newer.

So it was clear that the basic approach of "living near the university" would not produce the same end result in Calgary.

Moving to Calgary

There is a bit of catching up to do here, but basically the thing is, we're moving to Calgary, and it will be interesting to see how it goes.  I grew up in Edmonton, and we've spent the last eighteen years here.  It's not really a move I really want to make all that much, but I think it's the best option for our family, for reasons I may get into at some point.

Oddly enough, despite having lived in Edmonton for most of my life, I knew precious little about Calgary before starting in on the process of exploration a year ago.  I'd driven through it many times, but you don't often have reason to stay overnight in a place only three hours from home.

We have a place to live in Calgary.  It's a rented house in Parkhill.  How we settled on Parkhill is a long story, and I need to get into that too.

It's not like I don't know anyone there.  There are people I know from BC Swing Camp, for example.  That's good, because one of the things that saddens me most about leaving Edmonton is losing a lifetime of connections, and also the musical network I've built up over the past few years since I started learning jazz piano.  

And I'll be working from home mostly in Calgary, because for now I'm keeping my Edmonton job.  How will that work?  I'm thinking I will take the Red Arrow once a week or so.   Is that realistic?   In the best case, I'll get six hours of work done on the bus.

Yeah... there are a lot of things that I feel deeply ambivalent about.