Bend in the Bow Places

Inglewood

The Bend in the Bow park sites are at the east edge of Calgary’s Inglewood neighborhood, which is geographically bounded on its north and east sides by the Bow River, on its west side by the Elbow River, and on its south side by the Canadian Pacific Railway yard. Inglewood defines itself as a river-based community with a strong environmental ethic. It is Calgary’s oldest neighborhood, having been established in 1875. Originally known as Brewery Flats, after the Calgary Brewery and Malting Company, in 1911 the neighborhood was renamed Inglewood, after Colonel Walker’s homestead in what is now the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary.

Today, Inglewood is a centrally located urban village. It contains a mix of industrial, commercial, retail, and recreational buildings, schools, a seasonal farmers’ market, and residences. The commercial district of Inglewood is centred in mostly historic buildings on 9th Avenue and is known as an arts and shopping district, hosting several annual festivals such as Sunfest, Beakerhead, and the Calgary Fringe Festival and home to several galleries including the Esker Foundation. Many Inglewood businesses are staffed by Inglewood residents, creating a tightly woven community.

BEND IN THE BOW PLACES

Inglewood Wildlands

The 34-hectare parcel known as the Inglewood Wildlands is located on a former site of the British-American Oil Company’s refinery operations.

Previously, the Wildlands are thought to have been hunting grounds for First Nations peoples. In 1882, Colonel James Walker established his homestead on the property, using the Wildlands area for an entry drive and livestock corral. After his death, ownership of the land was transferred to The City of Calgary, who sold it to the British-American Oil Company. Beginning in 1939, B-A refined crude oil delivered to the site by pipeline, generating oil products that were distributed via rail. A series of mergers and acquisitions transferred ownership of the property to Gulf Canada in 1960 and PetroCanada in 1985, around which time refinery operations on the site ceased and a period of remediation commenced. Today, the Inglewood Wildlands is a green space owned by Suncor Energy and leased to The City of Calgary, who maintains the grounds as parkland.

Inglewood Bird Sanctuary

The 67-hectare parcel known as the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary (IBS) is Canada’s only federallyrecognized bird sanctuary to be located within an urban setting. Before IBS was a sanctuary, the land was owned by Colonel James Walker, one of Calgary’s founding citizens who took up homesteading on the property in the early 1880s.

Colonel Walker became one of Calgary’s first industrialists when he opened a sawmill on his homestead property in 1882. Colonel Walker’s conservationist son, Selby, and naturalist George Pickering applied for and were granted Federal Bird Migratory Sanctuary status for the Walker Homestead land in 1929. After his father died, Selby sold a portion of the land to Consolidated Concrete for a sand and gravel operation. When Selby died in 1953, Ed Jefferies acquired the remaining property and operated a gravel pit while leasing part of it to the Alberta Fish & Game Association.

Agriculture has long been associated with the property, starting with Walker’s orchards and gardens and developing into farms run by Chinese families who leased land from the Walkers. Selby sold a portion of the property to Cornelius Brinks, whose company Brink Florist operated greenhouses until the year 2000.

In 1970, The City of Calgary purchased the property and has been managing it as a natural reserve ever since. The magnificent lagoon at the centre of the Sanctuary is a magnet for both wildlife and people. The sanctuary’s Nature Centre was built in 1996. With its exhibits, classrooms, meeting rooms, offices, and exhibits, it serves as a centre for planning and delivering environmental education programs to the general public, school groups, and summer camps. Children’s “nature exploration” programs include classroom work and field studies. Adult programs include bird adventuring, illustrated and interpretive walks, field journalling, photography, wetland study, urban wildlife rehabilitation, and volunteer stewardship. The Colonel Walker House and its lawn is also used for classroom and office space and can be rented for events limited to 30 people with a 3-hour maximum stay.

IBS pathways are open to the public from sunrise to sunset. Visitation peaks between May and June, with 75% of visits occurring on weekends. To address the popularity of its education programs, IBS is currently adding an outdoor classroom to create an immersive learning experience in the north field, a section of the Sanctuary previously used for storage. Longterm plans for the Sanctuary are focused around maintenance of the wildlife refuge, habitat reclamation and restoration, regeneration of the Balsam Poplar forest and grassland, development of river islands, wildlife rehabilitation, volunteer stewardship, education, and research expansion.

Bend in the Bow’s goal in the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary is to explore and address ways to preserve, enhance, and celebrate the only urban centred, federally recognized bird sanctuary in Canada, while retaining the historic significance of the Colonel Walker Historic Site.

“The Island”

The riverine peninsula of the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, between the lagoon and Bow River, is a cherished, precious, and important habitat. It is a rare gem that needs to be preserved as a wildlife refuge and sanctuary. A sense of wonder and feeling of significance accompanies crossing over the bridges in the lagoon to enter into this exceptional and verdant landscape. The immediacy of the light, color, sounds, smells, and life in this watery threshold permeates the senses. Crossing physical, sensory boundaries like this are often linked to crossing mental boundaries that can open up new ways of seeing the world.

This feeling is not unlike the experience of landing on an island. Indeed, in earlier times the present-day peninsular landform of IBS was an island, with what is now the lagoon then a side channel connected on both ends to the Bow River. In his homestead affidavit of 1882, Colonel Walker describes his plan for “storing logs in the western channel of the Bow River, which I feel I can accomplish by throwing a boom and dam across to the small island in the middle of the stream as shown in the plan filed herewith.”

The Bend in the Bow project is exploring the possibility of reconnecting the lagoon to the river by creating a small cut at its north end, with a weir installed to control flows of water. The south end of the lagoon already connects to the river with a weir. In addition to re-creating the island, the ecological benefits of this move would be to flush the lagoon periodically as well as minimize shoreline damage to the lagoon during floods because the high water would be allowed flow through freely.

The Bow River as it passes through Calgary includes several other islands, one of which sits adjacent to Pearce Estate Park, forming the western edge of Harvie Passage. Historically, and to some degree today, the islands, with their riparian habitat of towering poplar trees and saskatoon, willow, and berry bushes, acted like small green oases in contrast with the otherwise treeless prairie.

Islands possess a sense of isolation and individuality, something “other.” They can be vividly out of sync with their surroundings; even distinctly strange and unconventional. Arriving at an island can sometimes feel like stepping back or forward in time and affords us perspective through which to view our surroundings through a new lens. An island that is small in size, like that at the Sanctuary, can be large in the impact of the message it transmits. It can be a compact platform for enacting transformative difference on a societal scale.

map of Colonel Walker’s Island Sanctuary, printed in the Calgary Daily Herald, March 16, 1929

Walker’s homestead affidavit, 1882, describing his plans to build a dam to a “small island,” allowing him to float log booms supplying the sawmill he proposes to build

Calgary Tourist map c. 1950, with the Inglewood neighborhood in the right foreground and a rectangle around current site of the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, shown as an island

Pearce Estate Park

The 21-hectare parcel known as Pearce Estate Park is located on the former property of early Calgarian William E. Pearce, who donated the land to The City. The park lies alongside a bend in the Bow River that features gravel bars, islands, and the Bow River Weir, which diverts water to inland areas for irrigation. Pearce Estate Park combines natural habitat with active recreation, including a swath of riverine forest, floating fens, and natural shoreline areas as well as picnic tables, a playground, and river access for non-motorized boats.

The park is also home to the provincially operated Bow Habitat Station, built in 1973 and including a Discovery Centre with interactive exhibits and aquariums tied to different ecosystems, the indoor Sam Livingston Fish Hatchery which raises millions of rainbow, brown, brook, cutthroat and bull trout and arctic grayling every year, a canal and fenland used to release and filter effluent from the Hatchery, and the catch-and-release “Kids Can Catch” Trout Pond. An interpretive wetland and winding Coldwater Stream include aquatic habitats that supplement displays in the Discovery Centre. Similar to programs run by The City at Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, the Province runs educational programs at Bow Habitat Station, with an intention of fostering awareness, appreciation, and responsible use of Alberta’s natural resources.

Bow Passage Overlook

Bow Passage Overlook is an experiential environment overlooking the Bow River Weir in Pearce Estate Park. It is composed of natural stone, including large basalt columns that evoke the power and force of the Bow River. Artist Lorna Jordan, design team lead, was inspired by the geology of the Bow River watershed, including its Rocky Mountains and stepped terraces. Bow Passage Overlook was completed in 2014. It was commissioned by The City of Calgary Public Art Program and Utilities and Environmental Protection Department through a partnership with the Inglewood Community. No changes to Bow Passage Overlook will occur with Bend in the Bow.

The Corridor

The portion of Bend in the Bow known as the Corridor comprises two existing adjacent open space elements, the Inglewood Ball Diamonds and a narrow sliver of landscape along a segment of the Bow River Regional Pathway.

Bow River Regional Pathway

The Bow River Regional Pathway is a paved multi-use regional pathway connecting a network of riverside parks between Bearspaw Dam on its northwest end to Fish Creek Provincial Park on its southeast end. The Pathway is used by pedestrians, cyclists, joggers, rollerbladers, and dogwalkers and includes several river crossings integrated with train and automobile bridges.

The Pathway enters the south end of Bend in the Bow near a stormwater outfall, then runs alongside a railroad spur threading between the Sanctuary and Wildlands. From there it continues west, beside a row of houses, until it hi ts the river and turns north into the Corridor. After the pathway passes under the Cushing Bridge, it travels through Pearce Estate Park and exits Bend in the Bow by passing under an iconic railroad trestle, heading west toward downtown Calgary. The regional pathway has a high use by cyclist commuters. Other users include Inglewood residents and people from other places visiting the parks, especially Pearce Estate Park where it forms a primary circulation route. The pathway will remain mostly intact and in its current alignment as it moves through Bend in the Bow, except for a few small segments where minor adjustments may be made to accommodate both wildlife passage and human activites. The landscape flanking the Pathway in the Corridor will be enhanced for wildlife mobility.

Inglewood Ball Diamonds

There are two well-used baseball diamonds in a field enclosed by a chainlink fence south of Blackfoot Trail and west of the regional pathway, with an adjacent informal parking area in the previous alignment of the Grand Trunk Railway. Because of their active recreational use and large footprints, as well as the future transitway along the Blackfoot Trail, the diamonds are incompatible with the wildlife mobility corridor planned as part of Bend in the Bow. Thus the City plans to relocate the fields. However, this section of Bend in the Bow will continue to have active recreational uses.

Clockwise from top left:

1. Pearce Estate, 1952, with irrigation weir & early Blackfoot crossing 2. Walker Estate, 1920, with agricultural plots and corral in center of present-day Wildlands 3. Bend in the Bow site, 1990, with remediation features in the

Wildlands 4. Calgary aerial, c. 1970s, with Bend in the Bow site on the right, oil refinery at Wildlands, and Bow and Elbow Rivers 5. Inglewood Bird Sanctuary and Gulf Canada refinery on present

Wildlands site, with adjacent rail yard, 1975

4.