Bowmont Park & Bowness

This past Friday gave me a chance to revisit an area of Calgary that played a large part in my youth. Bowmont Natural Environment Park is a wildlife area that was set aside years back when the municipalities of Bowness and Montgomery were absorbed into the City of Calgary, where they are now both older and adjacent neighbourhoods.

It is a long strip of land that runs along the river from the northwest corner of Bowness to the northwest corner of Montgomery, where you exit a couple blocks north of Shouldice Park. It also runs parallel to and below the southern edge of the more recent and more upscale neighbourhood of Silver Springs.

I was probably age ten when I first discovered this area and rode a BMX bike through it and age fifteen when I last passed through on a ten speed (remember those?). Once I turned sixteen and had a car, well, why would I ride a bike anywhere? That makes it four decades since I have traveled these hills. Things change a lot over forty years. The fancy entrance sign? Not there in the past. On the winding path in, that first S-curve, and the pond to the right as you go through it were almost unchanged. Then I reached the first hill.

The fancy signpost at the base of the hill was new to me. The guardrails on the curves and at intersections even more so. There was not so much concern with safety in the past. There were also practically no trees along the path in my youth. Those appeared later on as well. There were more changes at the top of the hill.

There were no fancy lookouts along the pathway in the past. They dot the trail at prominent viewpoints such as Canada Olympic Park, a scenic bend in the Bow River, and overlooking Shouldice Bridge. I think they are a useful and welcome addition.

There are other things that certainly haven’t changed a bit over time. I think there is an unwritten rule that there has to be at least one dick pic scrawled in chalk on the pathway somewhere on the journey. The BMX trails at the west side of Bowmont Park also remain intact and were buzzing with kids on bikes, just like they were when I was their age. I was not one of the kids buzzing on those trails, however.

I was born with a congenitally corrected transposition of the great vessels with complications. That means that my circulation runs through my heart the wrong way. The large, strong chambers that are supposed to supply blood to my body supply it to my lungs. The smaller, weaker chambers that are only supposed to supply my lungs with the red stuff now have to work too hard to supply blood to the rest of me, which they were never intended to do. I have crap circulation.

I could not ride my bike up the hills like my friends could. I walked slowly behind, pushing my bike and belatedly caught up with them. Sometimes they waited for me, but more often they didn’t, which was kind of lonely. At the BMX trails, they had fun racing up and down while I watched. I knew better than to try to join them by that point. There would be chest pain and I would pass out. Simple as that. As much as I loved this park and this pathway, it sure didn’t love me back and visiting it always rubbed salt in the wound that is the heart condition I live with. This past Friday, however, it was not an issue.

I goddamn well cheated this time. Say hello to the Circooter Raptor Pro electric scooter. It has dual 800w motors and enough power to go straight up the side of a brick building. THIS visit, well, I beat the joggers and even the other cyclists up the hills and it felt fine. It’s an off-road scooter and I could have taken it down the BMX trails if I had wanted to, but I didn’t. That urge is gone. It was satisfying to know that I option if I felt like it.

This hill above is burned into my memory because it is the one my mom nearly died on when I was eleven-years-old. Mom was an insulin dependant diabetic, but she was not great at managing her own illness despite being a registered nurse. That’s how she lost her eyesight to diabetic retinopathy in her thirties.

Mom had decided that she needed more exercise, so she instructed me to take her along on this river trail I had told her so much about and to describe it to her. She didn’t bring insulin. She didn’t bring her glucose. She didn’t even bring enough water for her Seeing Eye Dog and it was a hella hot summer day.

I knew enough at that time to recognize when Mom had low blood sugar. She was starting to act drunk. I barely got her up the hill and sat her on the single bench at the top (there are two now). She didn’t look good. I wanted to go to a house and call an ambulance, but she said no, it would cost us too much. We were on assistance and the ambulance bill was not covered. I was to ride to the store and buy her something with a lot of sugar.

Well, I tried. There are a lot of hills between where I left Mom and where the Super Value store was in Silver Springs. I realized I wasn’t going to make it there and back in time. I had full-on chest pain and my vision was going white at the edges, so I knew I was going to pass out soon if I kept pushing. There was just no way I could make it to the store and back. I banged on a door of the closest home, explained the situation, where my mom was, and an ambulance was dispatched. She was unconscious and in bad shape when they got to her, but they took her to a hospital and revived her. Wherein she was absolutely pissed at me for costing us an ambulance ride. They also couldn’t fit her guide dog in the ambulance, so Addy was left tied to the bench in the heat unattended. I found her and walked her home. I caught hell for that as well.

Not a great memory for me.

Mom and I were below the poverty line until I was a teen and started working. I dropped out of school to work full time so that we would have food and that the constant threat of eviction for unpaid rent would finally go away. When you’re poor, it is something you are aware of 24/7. Especially as I rode past what we called “tony” (upscale) homes back in the day. There are a lot of expensive homes along the Bow River and seeing the decadence of them adds insult to injury when your family can’t even afford decent groceries.

One nice thing is the perspective afforded by age. Were things great four decades back? Nope, and they even got worse for a bit. Here’s the important part: I made it. As a middle-aged adult now I’m a homeowner myself. I’m living comfortably as an insurance professional. My daughter has not known hunger, and she obtained the education I could not. I can let go of the old envy because I survived, I thrived, and it feels damn good to recognize it. This trip helped me unpack some more of the luggage that has followed me through life.

The ride through Bowmont Park also brought back some of my best memories of being a kid in the Bowness area. The railroad bridge pictured above is called the Bowness Trestle. It is one of two rail bridges crossing the Bow River. The first one crosses the river proper and the second a small offshoot. It was too dangerous to jump off the second one into the offshoot, so all the kids jumped off the first one. This was something we were absolutely forbidden to do because there was nowhere to go but off the bridge if a train came – there was no outrunning one.

Of course we were trespassing. We had ignored the five thousand NO TRESPASSING and DANGER signs to crawl through a hole someone cut in the fence. Then we would sneak onto the bridge while watching and listening for trains and jump off the trestle into the river below. Well, it is harder to hear a train than you think when you’re a bunch of scatterbrained ten-year-olds talking and laughing and not paying attention, so I did have a couple of close calls with trains (thus the warning signs). I think most of us did at some point. CP Rail security was sometimes sneakier than we were and I was always the one to get busted because my friends could all run and I could not. You know how they say when a bear is chasing you, you only have to be faster than the slowest person? Yeah.

It was still a hell of a lot of fun and I’d go back after being grounded and do it again. There’s nothing like jumping into a cold river on a hot day from a place grown-ups have told you is off-limits no matter how deadly it is. Young males are dumb.

The Bow River itself has always been magical to me. It doesn’t matter what season it is; I look at it and it is a beautiful thing. I have swam in it, fished in it, boated on it, and ridden tubes and inflatable rafts down it. It’s a slice of Heaven on Earth to me. I have never seen it running as low as it is right now, however. It should be running high with spring runoff and it is not. This is a bad sign.

Seeing Canada Olympic Park brought back recollections of the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. I have no interest in sports and I can’t ski without breaking something (not kidding), but it was exciting to be in Calgary then.

I was working in a video store at the time and in came the Soviet downhill ski team. This was two years before the USSR went kablooey, so they had on grey, red and yellow jackets that said USSR and CCCP with the hammer and sickle on them. There was MUCH excitement when they found the adult section. I take it there was nothing of the sort at home. As to the movies they rented, they took out Gone with the Wind, The Godfather, and the Star Wars Trilogy, all of which were all verboten to them in the USSR. I know they lobbied the political officer who was with them to also rent a blue film and that was a hard no, but he turned a blind eye to the others. It was obvious he also wanted to see them.

Lots of other strange things happened during the Winter Olympics, but that was my favourite.

Dale Hodges Park is new and attached to Bowmont Park. They named it after Dale Hodges, Calgary’s longest-serving and arguably best alderman. The guy worked so hard that he once passed out from exhaustion on the job and had to be forced to take time off by his colleagues. He was responsible for getting the northwest LRT line built, expanding numerous parks in Calgary, and standing up against the Hell’s Angels by having their clubhouse demolished (one member was convicted of attempting to blow up Hodges’ home in retaliation). It is damn fine to see a fresh addition to Bowmont Park named after the guy as I respected the hell out of him when I lived in the city. It is full of boardwalks, marshes, and water features. It’s beautiful.

There are some parts of Bowmont Park that aren’t so appealing. They’re humdrum in the summer when it is green out and painful to look at during the dead season. They can all be beautiful in the fall if you catch them in the five minutes between the leaves turning golden and the wind taking them off the trees. That green building by the river has always been an eyesore. I wish they would let a local artist paint the wretched thing. Also? Mosquitoes haunt the drab parts.

I had a lot of fun scootering through the park on Friday, even if it did bring back some of the not so great memories. The good ones the excursion brought back won out. It also felt darn fine to go up hills and blow past joggers and other cyclists there for the first time in my life. I’m definitely going back after it greens up to do it some more. The icing on the cake was spotting a classic truck as the path curled past a portion of Silver Springs. I really dig old vehicles.

I ended my trip with a quick spin through my old neighborhood. I lived on the north end of 73rd street in Bowness, which put me about three blocks away from Bowness Shopping Center on 77th. It looked like crap to me as a preteen and it is even more worn out looking today. The Mac’s convenience store is gone and there is an empty space where it was. Kin’s Chinese Food is now Mmm Chicken. The Dell Cafe and Sweet Home Bakery are still there and even still have the same signs. The cafe may even have the same blinds in the window. They look just as busted now as they did forty years back.

Bow Foods also has the same sign they did when I was younger. I think it is the only part of the strip mall that has aged well. It sat almost next to another Asian run convenience store, the name of which escapes me. I just remember that the families were mortal enemies. I imagine Bow Foods is doing well now as I think they are the last grocer of a sort operating in most of Bowness. Mac’s, the Safeway, and the forgotten other store are all gone. So is The Bownesian, an upscale foodie mart that came and went long after I moved away. Bowness is close to being a food desert these days.

As for Dell Cafe and the bakery, I have fond memories of grandmother visiting us in Calgary while I was in elementary school. She would take Mom and I to The Dell for a burger and fries. We would each get a chocolate dipped doughnut from the bakery to eat on the way home. Those were some of the better times I recall from living there and it makes me happy to see both are still in business. I am hoping to take my wife and daughter to the cafe for a burger and the bakery for a treat this summer. They need to share in the fun.

Friday’s images (save one) were all made using my Canon EOS R5 with my Holga for Canon lens. I could only take one body and one lens on the scooter and those were my choices. The intro image of the swanky Bowmont Park signage was made with my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.