The view from Nose Hill Park in Calgary, which at 11 square kilometres, is one the largest urban natural parks in Canada.Ranjani Iyer Mohanty
Ranjani Iyer Mohanty is a writer and academic editor who divides her time between India and Canada.
As a teenager, I often travelled to visit my American cousins, who lived in New Jersey. Playing outside in their backyards and parks, I used to tell them, “Your sky here is lower; in Canada, our sky is bigger.” They must have thought their Canadian cousin was nice enough, but a bit kooky; they’d laugh kindly and tell me, “The sky is the same everywhere.”
It’s not. Every year, when I come back home to Calgary, I go for a walk on Nose Hill. It’s a fairly unimpressive name for a vast area in the north-west of the city. It measures some 11 square kilometres and is one the largest urban natural parks in Canada. And if the sky is indeed big in Canada, it is bigger in Calgary – and bigger still, when standing on Nose Hill.
Benches dot Nose Hill, where passersby can enjoy the view.Ranjani Iyer Mohanty
Nose Hill – or what is now known as Nose Hill Park – has been a part of my childhood. Even before it was officially designated a park, it was simply the open land on the edge of the city where I used to go for long walks. The hill is essentially a vast tract of rolling prairie grassland and wild flowers, populated by small animals such as mice, squirrels, gophers and porcupines as well as larger animals, such as coyotes and white-tailed deer. It’s now criss-crossed by several paved trails used by walkers, their dogs and cyclists. Strewn along the trails are large stones with information on local flora and fauna. Scattered here and there are benches for the weary and those who want to leisurely savour the views. You can see the houses of Edgemont to the west, the office towers of downtown to the east, the rest of Calgary spread out below, the Rockies in the distance – and of course, the big, ever-changing sky overhead, high and broad against the clear and expansive horizon.
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Just like our skies, there are other nearly imperceptible differences between Americans and Canadians. For example, our values. As a country, we believe in politeness, gun control, universal health care, climate change, free speech, as well as respecting others and the rule of law. We also think it unseemly to brag.
Take, for example, the mighty American state of Texas. We’ve all heard in legend, song and Western movies how big the state of Texas is. It’s the land of huge ranches owned by presidents and celebrities, ranges with thousands of heads of longhorn cattle, oil rigs as far as the eye can see and home of the incomparable J.R. Ewing. Everything, the saying goes, is bigger in Texas. But it turns out that the province of Alberta is just 2 per cent smaller in area than Texas. Who knew?
Or compare the sayings on Montana’s car plates and Alberta’s. The Montana ones are up-front: the state is “Big Sky Country.” In Alberta, if such things are measurable, we likely have an equally big sky – or dare we say, bigger – but do our plates shout that? Nope. We choose as our symbol something quieter and softer – a humble little flower – and put on our plates “Wild Rose Country.” And in the past few years, even that has been dropped.
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Another detail that’s seemingly representative of the Canadian psyche is how the trails on Nose Hill were carved. On either side of the official paved trails, walkers have etched slender unpaved paths over the years. Canadians are largely law-abiding people who generally walk the line; even our dogs tend to do so. But Canadians – both human and canine – are also lovers of nature, and so sometimes, they step off the beaten path, in a gentle and respectful manner, to feel the earth beneath their feet.
So I step off the paved trail and walk along a dirt path to reach my favourite bench. There’s already a couple seated there, trying rather awkwardly to take a selfie. I offer to take the photo and attempt to capture them and the panorama, albeit with limited success. After exchanging a few pleasantries, they leave and I have the place – the bench and the expansive view – all to myself.
Yes, our sky is indeed bigger; it’s our ambitions that tend to be smaller. Perhaps it’s time to step off the paved trail, make a new path, find like-minded fellow travellers and journey forward together to a better future.