We knew where we were going, we knew how to get there, and we knew when we arrived.
Still, it was nice to be welcomed.
And so we were, though the greeting was extended by a place I’d never heard of: Blue Sky City.
Formerly, ’Heart of the New West’, ‘The westѻý most progressive industrial centre’, ‘Host City of the 1988 Olympic Winter Games’, and of course, ‘The Stampede City’.
Calgary has had a variety of mottos and messages on its entrance signs over the decades. The new one, put up on signs a few months ago, is designed, I suppose, to convey a sense of optimism but it also references a meteorological fact: Calgary is the sunniest city in Canada.
It gets an average of 333 sunny days each year, according to The Weather Network.
So the sign is apt, and as a former Calgarian itѻý fine by me. But the single best thing about the Blue Sky sign is how fantastically cheap it is. It looks like it's made of cardboard stapled to two-by-fours, and the font and spacing has drawn plenty of comment on the Interweb.
“Did we travel back in time to 1976? I feel like that would be something you’d see in the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon,” one wag posted on a Reddit sub threat.
Another added: “I hope thatѻý just temporary signage and we’re still waiting on the final version that was designed by someone with two digits in their age.”
The Highway 1 sign cost $12,000, according to the City of Calgaryѻý public relations department. City staff built the sign, using the poles and base from an old sign to support it.
Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to the City of ѻýѻý new welcome sign, to be placed along Highway 97 near Duck Lake.
Itѻý a curvy five-level amber job, with imagery said to symbolize (take a big breath) Ponderosa pine trees, Indian carrots, Kokanee salmon, red-winged blackbirds, fruit trees, Indigenous pictographs, cedar bark baskets, western honeybees, grizzly bears, and Okanagan sunflowers.
Councillors were agog last fall when they approved it, praising what they said was its awesomeness and multi-layered imagery, even if they acknowledged its full majesty may not be apparent to people whizzing by at 100 km/h.
“Now, I know that people coming in, they might not understand it. But I just think itѻý really beautiful,” Coun. Maxine DeHart said.
“What a beautiful looking rattlesnake inspiration, if thatѻý what it was,” said Coun. Charlie Hodge.
Whatever it is, itѻý fantastically expensive.
City council heard last year the new sign, being created by local artists Crystal Przybille and Sheldon Louis Pierre working with CTQ Consultants, could cost up to $800,000, though that was just an estimate with a final tab to come. As of this week, there still isn’t an exact cost, with some unknowable expenses dependent on whatever building and siting stipulations may be required by the Ministry of Highways, Fortis, and Telus.
The plan is to have the sign in place by next September, though if I was a city councillor I might suggest the installation be slow-walked until just after the October 2026 municipal election. Because the minute it goes up, at a total cost approaching $1 million, the sign is going to be a perfect symbol of this city councilѻý hubris and profligacy.
A million bucks? For a welcome sign? What on earth were they thinking?? That’ll be top of mind for some voters as they consider who to vote for.
With a population 10 times bigger than ѻý, Calgary can get by with a welcome sign that cost 1/70th what ѻý is spending. Internet mockery aside, I'm pretty sure I know which sign taxpayers would prefer.
Ballot questions are usually pretty simple things, and they can focus on items that seem trivial in the moment. Several members of a previous city council got the boot in no small part because the city spent a lot of time in the aftermath of the 2008 recession pondering whether to allow backyard chickens. It was taken, rightly, as a sign of a city council woefully out of touch with the concerns of citizens.
Itѻý not often mentioned at ѻý City Hall, but ѻýѻý economy is looking very shaky right now. Since January, the Central Okanagan has shed a staggering 10,000 jobs, the apartment vacancy rate is third highest in Canada, and building permits have plunged to well below the most recent 10-year annual average.
Meanwhile, city taxes have risen almost three times higher than the inflation rate since 2023, the municipal workforce swells and swells, and unionized city workers got an unbelievable wage increase of 12 per cent over two years.
When that new welcome sign is in place, it could easily become a lightning rodfor voter discontent.
Ron Seymour is a ѻý Courier writer.