Farewell Calgary (part 1)

Losing my father earlier this year has brought grief into my life. I discussed the complexity of this in an earlier post. There is also a grief that has been welling up in me since we decided to move across the continent. As I say goodbye to my dear home and city, this is a grief that feels more accessible.

We moved into our townhouse in Citadel the day we took possession, August 23, 2008 after 3 years living in Guatemala. A college friend who would be my colleague friend and carpool driver, Tim, organized some high school student help to unload the moving truck. On June 28, movers loaded our eastbound truck. The span of precious seconds and hours and years between those two moving dates has significantly moulded me. So, this is an ode to Mohkinstis – the land and Calgary – the city, the place where I breathed and worked and prayed and played.

FILM

I premiered my second documentary feature in an upper room at my church in 2010.

At the time, I was subscribed to zip.ca, a Canadian clone to the original Netflix, with DVDs in the mail. Amber and I were housebound with tiny ones, so movies at home were a standard. Prioritizing the difficult to access Cannes and Sundance winners of yore online and then forcing myself to watch them in quick succession as to maximize my subscription let me to find some of my favourite filmmakers and genres and opened me up to a world wider than what the global box offices would deem worthy. I also spent hours combing through the used DVDs at Rogers Video on Country Hills Blvd rebuilding a collection that was stolen in Guatemala. I had already been maintaining a blog, Zaak Watches Movies by himself where I eventually logged 800 films by 2014 and then I switched over to Letterboxd to track my habit.

My introduction to the Calgary International Film Festival was winning a couple tickets on CBC radio. I attended a couple films at the Globe back in 2010 or 2011. I remember seeing foreign language films La Crème and Jar City and I also remember nothing being open on Stephen Avenue on a Sunday afternoon – so I was very hungry. I moved downtown in the fall of 2016 and began attending the 11-day CIFF casually in 2017 as I could walk to Eau Claire and Globe cinemas. CIFF became my favourite week of the year, despite making it quite challenging to work full time and watch 20+ films. The worst part, was that Meet the Teacher Night always landed during CIFF, so I could only possibly catch a late show those nights.

2016 – 2 films
2017 – 4 films
2018 – 0 films
2019 – 13 films
2020 – 16 films (online)
2021 – 15 films (online / socially distanced in theatre)
2022 – 20 films
2023 – 23 films
2024 – 26 films

Amber, pitying me, found a similar festival in Halifax, the Atlantic International Film Festival. I happily attended a full week in September – with no Meet the Teacher Nights interrupting my cinematic possibilities.

Calgary’s best offering related to film is the movie buddies made. More than connections on Letterboxd, these folks discussed movies over beer at National or Last Best, invited me out or responded to my mass emails, and guided my education. Jae became my most consistent movie pal, with Jasen, Greg, Jordan, Anne, Amber, Ken, James, Kent, Gavan, Marilyn, and Joline sharing significant films and movie counts with me.

For a while, I led a monthly film series in our common unit. One month was Inuit films, another Palestinian films, and another favourite month was Jim Jarmusch films. Having movie fans in such close proximity allowed me to stretch and share.

BEER

When I moved to Calgary, I had not been exposed to craft beer and had only been drinking for 4 years. I began enjoying a local traditional ale made by Big Rock, but sold under the Co-op label (cheap!). Chris and later Jasen got me into IPAs and Belgians and other fancy (often quite malty) ales which had me visiting the Co-op liquor store shelves checking out new brews every week.

Jae and I organized the first of dozens of beer tastings. This began a decade-long tradition of hosting friends, visitors, coworkers, and church members where hearts were very merry and recycling bins filled quickly.

In 2013 a visitor from Yellowknife, Dwayne, showed me how to brew simple beer kits and that began years of brewing evolution. I went from kits to malted grains (thanks to Alex), bottles to kegs, modified cooler to a Brewzilla (co-purchased with Steve). I only benefitted from brief association with the local Yeast Wranglers a couple times, but the home brewing culture and supply options are impressive in this town. The great 24 beer exchanges were well-worth trading away some of my best brews. I ended up brewing and designing over 50 different ales (and a couple lagers).

More impressive were the Calgary breweries that sprang up once the province struck down laws preventing small breweries from brewing. With Jasen and Jae, I bought into Tool Shed Brewing’s capital scheme called the Golden Growler which allowed us 200 L of beer annually. We enjoyed it until they turned off the taps on us a couple years ago after some desperate financial restructuring. We got more than our money’s worth though from 2014-2022. Dozens of breweries popped up and I visited most of them more than once. Meeting friends, staff gatherings, annual birthday brewery crawls, trivia nights, stopping in for a pint/flight and a card game with my family. Standouts for me are Dandy, Annex, Establishment, HighLine, Cabin, EightyEight, Ol’ Beautiful. No shade on most of the others, but these guys had the atmosphere and beers I liked.

After school on most Friday’s, rambunctious staff at Calgary Christian School would attend “choir practice” at Westhills National pub – lots of memories with Trash Panda or a flight with my CCS colleagues.

Best beers I tasted in Calgary, both funky dark ales: Profane Communion Foeder Aged Black Saison (Annex) and Mud & Funk (Brouwerij de Molen – on tap at Beer Revolution (RIP)).

COHOUSING

Lamenting to my colleague, Dallas, in the fall of 2009 about the loneliness and isolation of living in the suburbs, I was directed to check out a start-up (something Calgary is full of). This was a co-housing start-up: Community focused people banding together to organize, design, build and then move-into a housing complex where community is not just facilitated, but intentional and celebrated. Our family attended our first social in November, 2009 and then became leaders in the charge to get this project completed – Amber on the Social Team and I on the Membership/Marketing Team. We spent countless hours at evening team meetings, socials, workshops and the 3-6 hour long general meetings twice a month. Dragonfly Cohousing was full of energy and promise.

By the spring of 2013, our fledgling group had swelled to 33 equity members – households who had put a down payment on their unit, raised over 3 million dollars, purchased an acre of land downtown, secured financing for construction as well as the development permit and construction permit for our $14.8M project with only 3 more units to sell. We had a groundbreaking ceremony. Then in June, 2023 the weekend before the Calgary flood, our construction manager delivered the construction bids which were 70% over budget. The project was in jeopardy because the professionals we had paid for due diligence had failed us. The project flailed for another year, then it finally died.

We had put our heart, soul, and savings into a project that was to inject life into our family, community, and city and lost it all. All of us had. The difference was that we had done this thing together and had made friends. Some of our best and closest friends in Calgary were due to this project as it had drawn like minded people together. For more than four years, in anticipation of the building’s success, we moved into a house with another family to help reduce costs and experience co-living (explained in this post). Many of us continued to meet for children’s birthday parties, beer tastings, and potlucks.

After the demise, ten households from Dragonfly banded together to see if a plan B existed. We intentionally purchased condos in an existing new build (Einstein – which later was renamed Victory & Venture after the developer received a cease and desist letter from Albert Einstein’s estate) in the same neighbourhood where Dragonfly was built. Additionally, we pooled money and purchased an extra unit which we called the common unit to be used for potlucks, parties, games, movies, guest room, crafts, and meetings. We cohousing refugees moved into Dragonstein (Dragonfly + Einstein) in November 2016 and began a small but flourishing community life which spilled over into the building leadership and use (gardening, condo board members, little free library).

COVID-19 changed everything for a couple years and we never managed in that time to recover our routines. Some people moved away. Our community grandmother member passed away. One couple separated. We simply didn’t have the critical mass to keep a community going. Now that we have moved away, the common unit was put on the market and sold this fall, but we are grateful for the friends made and life shared for 9 years.

BOARD GAMES

We brought The Settlers of Catan to Guatemala with us and we brought it back to Calgary. Our new Regina friends introduced us to Stone Age and that became a regular play in our Citadel home. Through cohousing promotion, fate brought Jasen into my life. At the time, he was the chair of FallCon, an annual gathering of hundreds of boardgamers in NE Calgary. He introduced us to terrific children games we could play with our pre-schoolers beyond the memory game and strategy games beyond chess and party games beyond Pictionary and Taboo. The euro-game library he had frightened me as learning new games required such commitment, but he eventually won me over.

By the time we moved in with Jasen and Heather, I was already playing a wide array of games with Jasen and meeting his friends – Jordan, Matt, Gord, Jim, Tim, Greg, Jeff – and then making them my friends. I attended FallCon with my family for a few years and then private game retreats – Nerdvana, ARG, Rocky Mountain Retreats. The highlights were meeting new people, playing new games, and being able to drink beer all day long. Among the people I got to mix with and later call dear friends were world class board game designers Gord, Gavan, Matt, Adam and Orin. I even got to play test some of the games I would later add to my collection.

With new games in our arsenal, our family became a board game playing family – lighter games as a group, card games when we went for walks to breweries, party games with visitors, heavier games with Blaise, regular Azul/Wingspan dates on Saturday mornings with Amber.

Biweekly dates with my bros became a highlight of my teaching year. I was subbed into (and then never left) a quartet for an epic Gloomhaven campaign for a couple years – and then onto other games with Jasen, Jordan and Greg. As worklife interfered, our group became more fractured and Andrew merged in. We laughed more than we played some nights as we divided tallboys into 3 or 4 small glasses.

I ended up not being able to significantly cull my game collection before moving (not that I tried hard). I think 4 large boxes followed us to New Brunswick – ready to play with family and visitors and new friends.

LIVE MUSIC

A couple church friends, Brandon and Gary, were the first to invite me to see some smaller shows in the city. Attending concerts alone wasn’t appealing and finding who to see after 3 years out of the country and not knowing the venues or local bands veiled the live music scene for me.

But I was soon introduced to MacHall, the grimy venues on Stephen Avenue and 17th Ave, Knox United, Festival Hall and the King Eddy. Plants and Animals, Yukon Blonde, New Pornographers, Mountain Goats, K-os. I began finding my own niche bands like Kue Varo, Astral Swans, Amy Nelson, Chad Vangaalen. And even smaller venues like the Congress Coffee Company and Ill-Fated Kustoms.

Amber and I were away from the city most summers, but we managed to attend the Calgary Folk Festival twice and the Canmore Folk Fest a couple times too. These were highlights that made us question why were were ever leaving the city in the summer. Calgary Folk Fest saved us though by putting on Block Heater in February where we got to attend shows at the National Music Center and The Palace.

We also got to see some internationally reknown acts at the Jubilee, Corral, Bella Concert Hall, Jack Singer and Saddledome – Leonard Cohen, The National, Wilco, Arcade Fire, Feist, Mumford and Sons among many others. I owe a debt of gratitude to the promoters (Tooth Blackener in particular) and local music scene organizers who maintain great opportunities to see live music.

CHURCH

Our faith was pretty beaten up when we landed in Calgary from serving in missions in Guatemala the 3 years previous. It took us a solid 5 months before we could even visit a church. Amber found New Hope Church online using the keyword “Emergent.” Pastor John preached on The Dark Knight, Keith had some Bob Marley playing in the pre-service time, Jeff extolled my shared views on missions by pointing to Walking with the Poor (Myers) as one of the guiding principles of Ubuntu – a group that was sending a team to Malawi. We were in.

Our kids attended KidZone with Cherilyn and we sang with Gary and volunteered with Keith. I joined Ubuntu and visited the beautiful people of Malawi in 2013 with Heather, Ken and Wendy. We brought friends from Malawi to Calgary as an act of reciprocity. Amber and I debriefed John’s book with him and other church friends in his home where we felt heard and challenged.

Our church merged with Hillside Church to become The Road Church. As staffing shifted and the location changed, our numbers dropped. COVID, service time and the church’s decision to become an affirming congregation made a significant impact on our size, but our family never wavered in our love for the intimate, questioning atmosphere provided by our pastors Rich, Jacqui, Heather, and Jess. Saying goodbye to our brothers and sisters on our final Sunday evening turned out to be the most tearful for our family. The lasting friendships kindled are eternally blessed.

{Coming in Part 2: Bow River, Schools, Cycling, Record Stores, Home Town for our Children, Streets, Public Figures, Brothers & Sisters}