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City Parks, Rivers, and Wildlife

Mountain Man said:
The City has bought land to be included in the future Paskapoo Slopes Park (Article). Looks like it's just south of the Highland Shoppe on Piita Rise SW. I really hope they just leave the whole area as it is, easily my favourite MTB spot in the entire city!
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I expect the City will be looking to develop a paved pathway connection through the park approximately as shown below (following the existing more gently sloped dirt pathway that already runs across the hill). This would be a great connection of a missing link between Cougar Ridge / West Springs and the river valley & Bowness. I could see there being potential for conflicts with the mountain bike trails though!
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The reason I say no paved pathways is it would ruin that part of the park. They would have to do some major landscaping to achieve a reasonable slope for a pathway, and that would require removing a ton of trees, and the forest is what makes Paskapoo special. If they could connect Piita Rise to 85st, that would be the ideal scenario! It's a pretty steep drop between the 2, so I'm not sure its feasible.

Apparently there was a bear in Griffith Woods Park (Just south of Discovery Ridge) this weekend, the news had a picture of a Grizz, but didn't specify whether it was a brown or black bear.
 
Mountain Man said:
The reason I say no paved pathways is it would ruin that part of the park. They would have to do some major landscaping to achieve a reasonable slope for a pathway, and that would require removing a ton of trees, and the forest is what makes Paskapoo special. If they could connect Piita Rise to 85st, that would be the ideal scenario! It's a pretty steep drop between the 2, so I'm not sure its feasible.

Apparently there was a bear in Griffith Woods Park (Just south of Discovery Ridge) this weekend, the news had a picture of a Grizz, but didn't specify whether it was a brown or black bear.
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Yeah it would make the most sense in my mind to connect the two, even if they had to put in some switchbacks. It seems odd not to have a connection between Trinity Hills and SW Calgary with them being so close. Stoney and Sarcee seem like an unnecessarily long commute to connect two area a couple hundred meters apart.

If they could connect them without removing to much parkland all the better, especially if they don't have to cut the park in half with a road.
 
Mountain Man said:
The reason I say no paved pathways is it would ruin that part of the park. They would have to do some major landscaping to achieve a reasonable slope for a pathway, and that would require removing a ton of trees, and the forest is what makes Paskapoo special. If they could connect Piita Rise to 85st, that would be the ideal scenario! It's a pretty steep drop between the 2, so I'm not sure its feasible.

Apparently there was a bear in Griffith Woods Park (Just south of Discovery Ridge) this weekend, the news had a picture of a Grizz, but didn't specify whether it was a brown or black bear.
Click to expand...
One time I walked between the two for fun. It's too steep for a road, but a pathway (even a very straight one) wouldn't be a problem at all.
 
Good news! The park (and parkade) at the edge of Chinatown formerly named after James Short has been renamed to 和園 Harmony Park; James Short was a NIMBY who had led the fight (and said some pretty racist stuff while doing so) against the development permit for the first Chinese-owned building that started the core of our permanent Chinatown, the Canton Block.
 
Surrealplaces said:
Apparently he was the lawyer for the anti-Chinese league, so yep, definitely good that they are changing the park name.
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It's a little more nuanced than that.

What we think of as Chinatown is actually our third Chinatown. The first was on 8th Ave downtown (in the East Village area). In 1892, after a smallpox outbreak, there was an anti-Chinese race riot -- the Calgary police stood by during the riot, by the way, eventually the NWMP (now RCMP) intervened to help the Chinese Calgarians. The Anti-Chinese League was formed in the wake of the riots; 600 Calgarians attended anti-Chinese lectures at the Opera house, including lectures given by then mayor Alexander Lucas and then councillor (and future mayor) Wesley Orr. There is no evidence that James Short was involved with the riot or the league.

In 1901, outreach to the Chinese community by future mayor Thomas Underwood, Presbyterian minister James Herdman and others led to the development of the second Chinatown in the 10th Ave / 2nd St SW area. But in 1910, the CNR got a right-of-way on 1 St SW that led to the terminal by St Mary's Cathedral at 18th Ave (the old rail bridge on the north end of Lindsay Park; Alberta Ballet is now in the historic station building). This drove up land speculation in the second Chinatown area, and the Chinese residents, who were renting, were getting evicted.

James Short was in 1904 an educator; he was the first high school teacher, the school principal and basically developed high school education here in Calgary. The Central Public School was on the block of 和園 Harmony Park on the west side where the Transcanada building is today. It was a gorgeous 3-storey sandstone school designed by Dodd, who later designed old City Hall. After a few years teaching three grades and being principal, Short burned out, but he spent a decade on the school board as a trustee. He then spent a long career as a lawyer, including as a Crown prosecutor. The Central Public School was renamed after James Short in 1938 (it had been proposed to name it after him in 1918, and he declined). The school was demolished in 1969 to build a Greyhound terminal; the cupola from the roof of the school was saved; after spending time in storage and on Prince's Island, it was relocated to the park near where the school had stood in 1991. When the school was demolished, a school under construction in Pembrooke Meadows was (and is) named James Short Memorial School.

In 1910, a group of Chinese businessmen banded together to buy the land and build the Canton Block; by owning it, they would have permanence. It was understood that this would be a new, permanent Chinatown. They were opposed in seeking a building permit by a group of citizens that included James Short. Short's house was nearby; at 1st St SW and 2nd Ave (currently the north end of the Chinese Cultural Centre). The group petitioned the City to prevent the development of the Canton Block and Chinatown "on the ground that the residence of Chinese in the neighborhood deteriorates the value of the surrounding property, and makes it objectionable as a residential district, contrary to provisions of bylaw 1090." They proposed that Chinatown should be located somewhere else less valuable; near to either where the Drop-In or Mewata Armory are today.

A big political debate arose at the time; in the end, six delegates from each of the supporting and opposing side met with City commissioners to hash things out. Short was one of the delegates on the opposing side, the Herald quoted him in part:
"But there is not a man in the room, he said, who could get up and say there are not features in connection with Chinese homes that make them objectionable. They are a distinct race from whites, and nothing can eliminate the strong antagonistic feeling between the two races. When a Chinaman comes to reside in a neighborhood the whites will no longer live there."
In contrast, Stanley Jones, the solicitor of the applicants, said “The Chinese are citizens of Canada, and no bylaws can be passed that will discriminate against them because they are of a different creed and race.” And of course, the City did not rescind the building permit. In 1919, when a group of North Hill petitioners called for a limit to Chinatown's growth, Short was quoted in the Herald again:
“It is too central for Chinatown, anyway,” went on Mr. Short. “Those people do not beautify any property and in fact they tend to make a district obnoxious. They have no idea of sanitation at all.”

Final word should go to Luey Kheong, one of the businessmen who built the Canton block, in a letter he wrote to the editor of the Herald during the debate over the development permit:
I take your paper and see that some people in Calgary area saying some bad things about my countrymen here. This is not right. The Canadian government has given us the right to live here and pay our debts. We want to do honest business in Calgary, same as all men, and, Canada’s law will protect us. You send missionaries to our homes in China, and we use them good; also English business men. If my people are no good to live here, what good trying to make them go to Heaven? Perhaps there will be only my people there.
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This is the short (well, maybe medium) version; the City commissioned a report by Harry Sanders that I've been paraphrasing, as well as the Chinatown Historic Context Paper. 馬鳳齡 Fung Ling Feimo wrote an essay on the history of our Chinatown. with a Chinese perspective that should also be read.
 
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