Feb 12th Calgary Canada

My first impressions of Calgary in the middle of February were far different than what I expected.  Since it was the middle of winter and Calgary was where they had the winter Olympics, I expected everything to be completely white. In actual fact it looked like an Australian barren droughted landscape, with dry brown grass and leafless trees. Usually of course it would be white, but as one Canadian said to me they are in the middle of a winter heat wave at 2 Deg C. Though you don’t have to go far to see fields of snow, Calgary is a bit of a warm (If you could call it that) microclimate. The next thing that immediately struck me was the colour, or should I say lack of colour in the houses. I’m not sure if it is an optical illusion because of the lack of green leafy trees and grass, but they nearly all seem to be shades of beige and the rooves are all charcoal or black slate type tiles. The only trees with any leaves on are conifers and these are all a dull burnt green.

A Typical suburban Calgary Street