Earlier this month, CalgaryRingRoad.com was awarded a 2021 Heritage Calgary Award in the category of ‘Cultural Landscapes’. I’m grateful to Heritage Calgary and the award jury, and honoured to have been selected. Congratulations to all of this year’s winners.
Read the article here and see all of the winners here.
UPDATE: This presentation is now fully-booked. Thank you to all who want to come, and I will see if there are other opportunities to present on this topic in the future.
Next month I will be presenting at the new Central Library. The discussion will focus on one particular facet of the history of the broader ring road story; the long history of actions to acquire or assert control over Tsuut’ina Nation reserve lands, from the 1880s to today. Please join me for the talk and a Q &A session after.
Thursday, Sept. 26. 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Calgary Central Library, 800 3 St SE
Space is limited. Details and registration can be found here: The Ring Road and Tsuut’ina Nation reserve lands
Why was the SW ring road planned through a First Nation’s reserve? How did the Weaselhead come to be owned by the City of Calgary? Why are Unexploded Ordnance being found in the Elbow river valley?
Join me again on this year’s Jane’s Walk through a beautiful and historic part of Calgary.
This is the fifth year that I will be leading the walk, and it will be a chance to talk about many of the issues I have covred on this blog; to look at the history of the SW Ring Road and to explore the past, present, and future of the Weaselhead area, one of the most historically rich parts of Calgary.
We’ll travel along the first Provincial highway that was built through the Tsuut’ina Nation reserve over 115 years ago (with origins dating back even before the signing of Treaty 7) and through land that was purchased in the 1930s for the Glenmore Reservoir. We’ll see where the Canadian Military operated the largest WWI training camp in Western Canada, and explore the legacy of disputed land ownership and unexploded ordnance that years of military use has left behind. We’ll experience one of the quietest corners of the city, now adjacent to where the SW Ring Road is being built, and see where previous plans would have located the road through the valley. We’ll look at the role that the Tsuut’ina Nation’s economic development plans have played in getting the road approved, and how Calgary and the Nation can come together as development progresses.
Details
Date: Sunday May 5, 2019
Time: 1:00 pm
Duration: about 2.5 hours
Meeting Place: North Weaselhead Parking Lot (at the corner of 37th street SW and 66th avenue SW in Lakeview)
Don’t forget to download the handout to your smartphone for the walk! Download here
Jane’s Walk in Calgary
Click here to visit the Jane’s Walk description for the SW Ring Road and Weaselhead walk
Thank you to Stephanie Hawes for providing the photos of the 2017 walk!
Update September 15 2016: A $1.42 billion contract (adjusted to 2016 dollars) has been signed between the Province of Alberta and Mountain View Partners for the construction of the Southwest Calgary Ring Road project. Click here for details.
Mountain View Partners have been selected to begin initial work on the Southwest Calgary Ring Road project under an interim agreement. While the full contract will not be entered into until September 13, this interim agreement will allow work to begin along the road corridor, including the relocation of utilities. The Alberta Government expects to see crews and equipment on the project site by mid-July.
Mountain View Partners is a consortium consisting of:
Click Here for maps of the full Southwest Calgary Ring Road Project.
Source: “Southwest Calgary Ring Road construction begins” July 8 2016. Government of Alberta.
Today, the City of Calgary’s Transportation Department will present to the Transportation and Transit Committee on issues related to the yet-to-be-constructed West and Southwest Ring Road projects. As it happens, today also marks an important date in the history of the ring road. It was exactly 60 years ago that the Province of Alberta first announced plans for what would eventually become the Southwest Calgary Ring Road.
On Friday, November 18, 1955, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce held a meeting at the Palliser Hotel in downtown Calgary. Speaking at the event was Social Credit MLA and Minister of Highways Gordon Taylor, who provided a summary of the Province’s 12-month plan for highway projects in the Calgary area.
(The Hon. Gordon Taylor, Minister of Highways (Centre) shown here opening the Mewata Bridge, Calgary, 1954. Glenbow Archives NA-5600-7844a)
Continue reading “The Southwest Ring Road: 60 Years in the Making”
Update September 15 2016: A $1.42 billion contract (adjusted to 2016 dollars) has been signed between the Province of Alberta and Mountain View Partners for the construction of the Southwest Calgary Ring Road project. Click here for details.
Update July 8 2016: The Alberta Government have entered into an interim agreement with Mountain View Partners to begin initial work on the Southwest Calgary Ring Road project. Click here for more.
The Government of Alberta has shortlisted three consortia to bid on the Southwest Calgary Ring Road project, following the completion of the Request for Qualification (RFQ) process in August. Five groups in total responded to the request, with Mountain View Partners, Southwest Connect and Valley Link Partners having been selected.1
The Province is proceeding with the Southwest Calgary Ring Road as a 30-year Design-Build-Finance-Operate P3 (Public/Private Partnership) project, and is anticipating to contribute partial funding of between 50%-70% of the capital cost of the project.2 The selected groups will now submit proposals for the project in a Request for Proposal (RFP) process that should last about nine months.3
Representatives of Alberta Transportation have indicated that the contract for the Southwest Calgary Ring Road project is to be awarded in the first week of September 2016.
The RFP process includes:
Continue reading “Three Groups Shortlisted to Bid on the Southwest Calgary Ring Road”
Tomorrow, Wednesday September 10 2014, I will be co-presenting at the Mount Royal University’s Under Western Skies conference with Professor of History Liam Haggarty on the history of the Southwest Calgary Ring Road and its relationship with the Tsuu T’ina Nation and reserve.
The presentation, entitled “Crossroads: Economic Development, Tribal Sovereignty, and Environmental Sustainability in Tsuu T’ina Nation”, will be part of the Indigeneity, Land Use, and Seed Sovereignty panel, Room EC1050, which starts at 4:30pm at the Mount Royal University Campus in Calgary.
For more information please visit the University’s Under Western Skies page or view the program here.
Have a very happy holiday season! It has been a busy year in the history of Calgary’s southwest ring road, and I would like to say thank you to all of the people who have read the blog, to anyone who got in touch to ask questions, and everyone who has helped in the research and the telling of this story.
On the day of a vote by the Tsuu T’ina Nation on a potential deal to sell and trade land for the Southwest Calgary Ring Road, it’s worth looking at the history of the negotiations for this road.
Many commentators have made statements to the effect that the City of Calgary or the Province of Alberta have been negotiating with the Nation over land for the ring road for upwards of 60 years. While it’s true that designs for the road, even from the very beginning, have shown the road on reserve land, it cannot be said that true negotiations have been underway since that time. Though conversations have certainly taken place for decades, the current negotiations can be traced back to about 2004, with modern negotiations starting in 1998, and prior to 1984 the Nation were largely opposed to the entire notion of running a major freeway through their land.
1956
The earliest ring road plans are revealed to the public. Mayor Don Mackay states that a small portion of the road, particularly the interchange with what would become 90th avenue, would cross the Tsuu T’ina reserve. Mayor Mackay said “Think of the possibilities for a great tourist attraction this would provide for the Indians… They could line the road, as it crosses their territory, with teepees and provide a wonderful sight.”
Soon the proposed road would be altered from these early plans, and the officially approved route in 1959 was not noted to require land from the reserve. No formal discussions are known to have taken place with the Nation regarding the purchase of land at this time.
(For more on the early road, click here) Continue reading “The History of Ring Road Negotiations”
On June 6 2013 the Canadian government ratified a settlement agreement with the Tsuu T’ina Nation that was reached this past April regarding three specific land claims. These claims, known collectively as the Glenmore Reservoir land claims, were the result of actions taken in the 1930s regarding land in the Weaselhead area.
The $20.8 million settlement has now concluded claim negotiations that had been ongoing since 1996. With the potential for the largest ever sale of Tsuu T’ina land for the still under negotiations for the ring road, it is important to understand the context of historic land deals, and the problems and sensitivities that arose from them. Continue reading “The Glenmore Land Claims”
Calgary Ring Road 