🇨🇦 Canada · West and the Canadian Rockies
Calgary is the great city of the western Canadian prairies: a young, modern and prosperous metropolis in southern Alberta, where the immense plain meets the first foothills of the Rocky Mountains, which show on the horizon. It is the heart of Canada's energy industry, which gives it a skyline of gleaming towers, but it proudly keeps its cowboy soul, inherited from its ranching past, which erupts every July in the legendary Calgary Stampede, 'the greatest outdoor show on earth'.
For most travelers, Calgary is above all the gateway to the Rockies: its big airport is the starting or finishing point of almost every trip to Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper, which are a little over an hour west. But the city deserves a look of its own: it has a lively historic pedestrian street (Stephen Avenue), good museums such as the Glenbow and Studio Bell for music, parks along the Bow River, a living museum of the Old West (Heritage Park) and a food scene on the rise, all with the mountains as a backdrop.
This guide covers the essentials of Calgary with a practical, warm eye: how to enjoy downtown and its museums, soak up the cowboy atmosphere (and the Stampede if the dates line up), stroll along the river, get to know its history and use it as the perfect base for heading into the Rockies. It is a friendly, safe city with character, combining the energy of a modern metropolis with the charm of the West and the mountains close at hand.
The Calgary region was the territory of Indigenous peoples for thousands of years, in particular the nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut'ina and the Stoney Nakoda, who lived off bison hunting on the prairies. The area of present-day Calgary, at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers, was a camping and meeting place. Modern history began in 1875, when the North-West Mounted Police (forerunner of today's RCMP) established a fort at the confluence of the rivers to impose order and curb the illegal whisky trade with Indigenous peoples. The fort was named Fort Calgary (a name of Scottish/Gaelic origin, linked to a bay on the Isle of Mull, Scotland). A settlement grew up around the fort, and it took off with the arrival of the Canadian Pacific railway in 1883. Calgary became a center of the cattle trade: the great surrounding prairies filled with cattle ranches, and the city grew as the capital of the western ranching industry, forging its cowboy identity (the Calgary Stampede was born in 1912). The great leap came in the 20th century with oil: the discovery of fields in Alberta (especially from 1947, with Leduc, near Edmonton) made the province Canada's energy center, and Calgary, as the headquarters of the oil companies, saw explosive growth and filled with skyscrapers. In 1988 it hosted the Winter Olympics, Canada's first, which left facilities and international standing behind. Today Calgary is a prosperous, modern metropolis, the country's energy heart, proud of its cowboy heritage and the gateway to the Rockies. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The province of the prairies and the Rockies: Blackfoot and Cree land, land of cattle ranching and oil, home of Banff —Canada's first national park—, of Lake Louise and of the dinosaurs of Drumheller.
Read the history of Alberta →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The city of oil and skyscrapers is named, oddly enough, after a Scottish beach: Calgary takes its name from a bay on the Isle of Mull, in Scotland. But long before a mounted policeman chose that name, and for thousands of years, the region where the city now stands was the territory of the Indigenous peoples of the prairies. The area, at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers, in the south of what is now Alberta, was frequented by nations such as those of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai/Blood and Piikani/Peigan), the Tsuut'ina (Sarcee) and the Stoney Nakoda (Îyârhe Nakoda). Later, the Métis were also present in the region.
The life of these peoples revolved above all around the bison (buffalo), which filled the prairies in enormous herds and was the basis of their food, clothing, shelter and culture. They were nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples who followed the herds, and they developed collective hunting techniques (such as the buffalo jumps, cliffs over which bison were driven). The confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers was a place for camping, meeting and passing through, with water, shelter and resources.
The arrival of Europeans radically transformed this world, above all from the 19th century onward. Massive commercial hunting drove the bison almost to extinction within a few decades, destroying the basis of life for the prairie peoples, who were pushed into treaties and reserves. Today the presence and culture of these peoples —recognized in Treaty 7, which covers the region— are a fundamental part of the history of Calgary and of Alberta, and are honored more and more explicitly, including during events such as the Stampede, which features a First Nations village (Elbow River Camp).
Calgary's modern history began in 1875, and its origin was neither commercial nor agricultural, but police work. In those years, western Canada was a lawless frontier, and one serious problem was the illegal whisky trade with Indigenous peoples, run out of posts like the notorious Fort Whoop-Up, with devastating consequences for Indigenous communities. To impose order, enforce Canadian law and protect Indigenous peoples from these abuses, the government had created the North-West Mounted Police (the forerunner of today's Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the RCMP, the famous 'mounties').
In 1875, a detachment of the Mounted Police established a fort at the strategic confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers. That fort was the seed of the city. The following year it was named Fort Calgary. The name 'Calgary' has a curious and distant origin: it comes from a place in Scotland (a bay and an area on the Isle of Mull), and it was proposed by an officer connected to that region; it is usually associated with a Gaelic meaning relating to a meadow or bay by the water.
A small settlement of colonists, traders and adventurers grew up around the fort. Calgary was thus born as an outpost on the western Canadian frontier, in the heart of the great prairies, at a moment when the government was seeking to assert sovereignty and order in these vast territories before the mass arrival of settlers. What was really going to transform that small fort, however, was the railway, which was on its way.
The great boost for Calgary came in 1883, with the arrival of the Canadian Pacific transcontinental railway (CPR). The line, linking eastern Canada with the Pacific coast across the prairies and the Rockies, passed through Calgary, connecting it with the rest of the country and the world, and setting off its growth. The settlement around the fort quickly became a town and then a city (incorporated as such in 1894). A great fire in 1886 led to the downtown being rebuilt in sandstone, which earned Calgary the nickname 'Sandstone City' and gave it the historic buildings still visible on Stephen Avenue.
With the railway, Calgary became the great center of the western Canadian ranching industry. The immense surrounding prairies, once bison territory, filled with cattle ranches, and Calgary set itself up as the heart of the trade, transport (by train) and processing of livestock for the whole region. Ranchers, cowboys and traders arrived, and the city forged the cowboy identity that defines it to this day.
That culture of the West and of ranching found its fullest expression in 1912, with the creation of the Calgary Stampede, a rodeo festival and celebration of the cowboy way of life that over the years would become one of Canada's most famous events. Calgary thus established itself, in the early 20th century, as a prosperous prairie city, a ranching capital and railway hub with a strong Western character. But the event that would catapult it into the top tier of Canadian cities was still to come, and it would come from underground.
The event that definitively transformed Calgary was the discovery of oil. Although there had already been oil and gas finds in the region in the early 20th century (as at Turner Valley, southwest of the city), the great turning point came in 1947 with the discovery of the enormous Leduc field, near Edmonton. That find confirmed that Alberta was an oil power, and set off an energy boom that would change the province forever.
Calgary, because of its position and its business tradition, became the corporate capital of Canada's oil and gas industry: the city where the head offices of the big energy companies settled, along with the associated financial and technical services, and the decision-making center of a sector that became key to the national economy. (Edmonton, the provincial capital, specialized more in production and refining.) That role drew enormous investment, jobs and population to Calgary.
The result was explosive growth through the second half of the 20th century, with ups and downs tied to the swings in the oil price (booms and busts). The city filled with gleaming office towers that make up its modern skyline, a symbol of its energy prosperity. Calgary went from a prairie ranching city to a prosperous corporate metropolis, one of the highest-income per capita in Canada. Its population multiplied, drawing workers from across the country and the world, which also made it more diverse and cosmopolitan, without entirely losing its cowboy soul.
A milestone that put Calgary on the world stage came in 1988, when the city hosted the Winter Olympics. They were the first Olympic Games held in Canada, and an event of enormous importance for the city and the country. Calgary, by then already a prosperous oil metropolis, showed the world its organizational capacity and its setting (with the nearby Rockies as a natural winter stage).
The 1988 Games left behind an important legacy of sports facilities still in use, such as Canada Olympic Park (today WinSport, where you can practice and watch winter sports, including ski jumping and bobsleigh, on the edge of the city) and the Olympic Oval (an indoor speed skating rink at the University of Calgary). They also left a mark on the city's pride and identity.
Those Games are also remembered for some endearing stories that went around the world, such as that of the British ski jumper 'Eddie the Eagle' Edwards or the Jamaican bobsleigh team (which inspired the film 'Cool Runnings'), examples of the Olympic spirit of taking part. Calgary 1988 consolidated the city's international image and strengthened its connection with winter sports and the mountains. The Olympic experience contributed to the confidence and profile of a city that, in a few decades, had gone from a frontier fort to a modern metropolis with international ambitions.
Today's Calgary is a prosperous, modern and dynamic metropolis, the largest in western Canada after Vancouver, and a fascinating case of a city combining seemingly opposite identities: the corporate heart of the country's energy industry, with its skyline of towers, and pride in its cowboy and Western heritage, which erupts every July in the Calgary Stampede. It is a young city, among the highest-income per capita in Canada, diverse (with growing immigration) and consistently well ranked in quality-of-life indexes.
Its economy, historically dependent on oil and gas, has lived through the sector's ups and downs and, in recent years, has sought to diversify into technology, finance, logistics and tourism. The city has a good cultural offering (museums, Studio Bell for music, theaters), parks along the Bow River, neighborhoods with personality (Kensington, Inglewood) and a rising food scene, famous for its Alberta beef.
But for most travelers from around the world, Calgary is above all the great gateway to the Rocky Mountains: its international airport is the starting point of almost every trip to Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper, which lie a little over an hour to the west. That strategic position, on the doorstep of one of the most spectacular landscapes on the planet, reinforces its role in tourism. For the traveler, Calgary offers a friendly, safe metropolis to land in and get ready for the Rockies, with the added draw of its unique cowboy character and, if the dates line up, its legendary Stampede. It is the city where the West, energy and the mountains come together.