| February 2008 |
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Vivian Hansen presents the first of a series of four narratives about the largest municipal park in Canada,
Calgary's Nose Hill Park.
---
Cf Fidler, HBCA E.3/2, 10 December 1792: "These hills run in a parallel direction with the Rocky Mountain
from their Northern termination near the Devil's head (near Lake Minnewanka) & their South end terminates
at the banks of this river [Bow R] -- they are high & run in Parallels with the mountain, they are covered with
Pine & Fir & very deep vallies between each parallel ridge." (1)
Thompson is travelling south, roughly along Highway 22X:
20 November 1800. "Lat 51/33/23N ... Bow Hills in Sight S12E 12 M where we put up at a spring ... We go in
a line parallel to the Mountain. ... The View is grand in a high Degree: on our right we have the Bow Hills,
lofty in themselves and Brown with Woods, above them stately rises the Rocky Mountain ..." (2)
Site
Here, the wind holds power and Medicine. Nose Hill is home to 130 bird species that take the wind
seriously. Twenty-Five species of mammals live here as well; they need the wind for warnings of an
encroaching city, or any human motion that might have the capacity to expunge them from the urban
landscape.
Here, you are high. High enough to see the mountains. Sound, or rather the lack of it, defeats the
encroachment of the city, but never the bubble of earth that is Nose Hill. The largest municipal park in
Canada, Nose Hill is 1127 hectares in size. Indigenous prairie plant species punctuate this glacial
drumlin, including rough fescue, parry oatgrass, crocus, golden bean, bedstraw, sage.
Nose Hill is something of an accident for a variety of reasons. No buildings were permitted there until the
1970s because of its proximity to the airport. And any plumber will tell you that human waste doesn’t run
uphill.
Here, a walk will take you past the ruts of old farm carts, the dilapidated forts of boys reliving their
exploratory inclinations, and the site of the sandstone mining pits that were the formation of buildings in
early Calgary. When I come upon these pits, hardly healed, nor grown over from the original mining activity,
I grow intensely uncomfortable. In attempting to reconstruct this stone echo, it is significant to note the
historical ravage of this place:
How do you remand a mining site, restore it to its former sandstone sleep beneath the prairie grasses?
The silent scream from the Hill, which continues to sound after its rape and pillage from this sandstone
mining, is audible in the wind. Nose Hill is paradox and core, a lookout where time releases story and
landscape and memory and a paradigm of urban landscape. It attains significance only because of its
marginality to the city.
I try to pull my imaginings back to the original prairie encountered by Peter Fidler and David Thompson.
Here, in that exploratory past lies the Nose Hill escarpment that predates Calgary; the Hill with formations
that extends to Cochrane. Thompson left his Bow River camp in late November 1800. He spent four hours
in a high place, where he describes his astonishing view:
A little more than a century later, Nose Hill overlooked the construction of a new city. In the early 1900s,
Nose Creek became the site of popular bordellos. Always on the margins, that hill, and always seeing the
trade of a city, making its only comment in silence and impression.
As I leave the park, navigating downward from Nose Hill’s western slopes, I stop to pick black-eyed
susans, bachelor buttons, long grasses – the flora I picked as a child. I encounter a woman who is on a
trek upward. She stops me, asking brusquely “what do you know about this park?” Smiling, I reply “almost
anything you might want to know”, thinking her a foreigner eager to learn the ways of the prairie.
“Don’t you know that you’re not supposed to pick flowers in a Park?” She is indignant, surly, self-righteous
in her anger. I am a prairie woman, but in London England I have seen the manicure of green collage
against brick and memory. People like this woman have insisted that I call gophers Richardson’s Ground
Squirrels, and refer to them correctly, thank you very much. This is just another way of demanding to hear
the names of the species in the Garden. Such an act presumes that she, and I, must have dominion over
this place; must articulate its accident, its meaning and sensuality in order to project its natural state.
My confusion at her hostility gives way to rebellion. I smile blandly, sniff the bachelor buttons, and move on
down the hill. A few steps later, I turn to watch her shaking her head, rage still clutching frantically to her
shoulders. I hope that whatever seizes her will drop into the grass, where Nose Hill can absorb yet another
artifact of humanity.
(1) Fidler, Peter. A Look at Peter Fidler’s Journal. Journal of a Journey over Land from Buckingham House
to the Rocky Mountains in 1792 & 3. An HRC Limited Edition Series. Ed. Bruce Haig. Historical Research
Centre, Lethbridge. 1991.
(2) Thompson, David. Journey to the Bow River. David Thompson: The Columbia Journals: Ed. Barbara
Belyea. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 1994.
Belyea comments that both these references from Fidler and Thompson likely refer to the foothills east of
the Front Ranges, and not Nose Hill. (Electronic communication: March 28, 2007). Fidler and Thompson
certainly visited the area of present day Calgary, and thus the area of what is now Nose Hill in the era of pre-
European contact.
(3) Nose Creek and Nose Hill Park. The Applied History Research Group/The University of Calgary. The
Applied History Research Group. 1997.
(4) Thompson, David. Journey to the Bow River. David Thompson: The Columbia Journals: Ed. Barbara
Belyea. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 1994.
Photos of Nose Hill Park on main page by Kirk Ramdath.
Vivian Hansen presents the first of a series of four narratives about the largest municipal park in Canada,
Calgary's Nose Hill Park.
---
Cf Fidler, HBCA E.3/2, 10 December 1792: "These hills run in a parallel direction with the Rocky Mountain
from their Northern termination near the Devil's head (near Lake Minnewanka) & their South end terminates
at the banks of this river [Bow R] -- they are high & run in Parallels with the mountain, they are covered with
Pine & Fir & very deep vallies between each parallel ridge." (1)
Thompson is travelling south, roughly along Highway 22X:
20 November 1800. "Lat 51/33/23N ... Bow Hills in Sight S12E 12 M where we put up at a spring ... We go in
a line parallel to the Mountain. ... The View is grand in a high Degree: on our right we have the Bow Hills,
lofty in themselves and Brown with Woods, above them stately rises the Rocky Mountain ..." (2)
Site
Here, the wind holds power and Medicine. Nose Hill is home to 130 bird species that take the wind
seriously. Twenty-Five species of mammals live here as well; they need the wind for warnings of an
encroaching city, or any human motion that might have the capacity to expunge them from the urban
landscape.
Here, you are high. High enough to see the mountains. Sound, or rather the lack of it, defeats the
encroachment of the city, but never the bubble of earth that is Nose Hill. The largest municipal park in
Canada, Nose Hill is 1127 hectares in size. Indigenous prairie plant species punctuate this glacial
drumlin, including rough fescue, parry oatgrass, crocus, golden bean, bedstraw, sage.
Nose Hill is something of an accident for a variety of reasons. No buildings were permitted there until the
1970s because of its proximity to the airport. And any plumber will tell you that human waste doesn’t run
uphill.
Here, a walk will take you past the ruts of old farm carts, the dilapidated forts of boys reliving their
exploratory inclinations, and the site of the sandstone mining pits that were the formation of buildings in
early Calgary. When I come upon these pits, hardly healed, nor grown over from the original mining activity,
I grow intensely uncomfortable. In attempting to reconstruct this stone echo, it is significant to note the
historical ravage of this place:
- “The area around Nose Hill itself played a significant economic role in Calgary’s subsequent
physical transformation from police fort to prairie city. Much of the sandstone used to construct the
imposing public buildings that became Calgary’s hallmark after 1886 came from quarries local
entrepreneurs operated on Nose Creek. Stone from the J.A Lewis quarry provided the entrance to
the Imperial Bank and part of the new city hall erected in 1909. Masons used materials carted into
the city from Nose Hill to build James Short School and Calgary’s old courthouse as well.” (3)
How do you remand a mining site, restore it to its former sandstone sleep beneath the prairie grasses?
The silent scream from the Hill, which continues to sound after its rape and pillage from this sandstone
mining, is audible in the wind. Nose Hill is paradox and core, a lookout where time releases story and
landscape and memory and a paradigm of urban landscape. It attains significance only because of its
marginality to the city.
I try to pull my imaginings back to the original prairie encountered by Peter Fidler and David Thompson.
Here, in that exploratory past lies the Nose Hill escarpment that predates Calgary; the Hill with formations
that extends to Cochrane. Thompson left his Bow River camp in late November 1800. He spent four hours
in a high place, where he describes his astonishing view:
- Our View from the Heights to the Eastward was vast & unbounded – the Eye had not Strength to
discriminate its Termination: to the Westward Hills & Rocks rose to our View covered with Snow,
here rising, there subsiding, but their Tops nearly of an equal Height everywhere. Never before did I
behold so just, so perfect a Resemblance to the Waves of the Ocean in the wintry Storm. When
looking upon them and tentatively considering their wild order and appearance, the imagination was
apt to say, these must have been liquid, and in that state, when swelled to its greatest agitation,
suddenly congealed and made solid by power omnipotent. (4) November 24, 1800
A little more than a century later, Nose Hill overlooked the construction of a new city. In the early 1900s,
Nose Creek became the site of popular bordellos. Always on the margins, that hill, and always seeing the
trade of a city, making its only comment in silence and impression.
As I leave the park, navigating downward from Nose Hill’s western slopes, I stop to pick black-eyed
susans, bachelor buttons, long grasses – the flora I picked as a child. I encounter a woman who is on a
trek upward. She stops me, asking brusquely “what do you know about this park?” Smiling, I reply “almost
anything you might want to know”, thinking her a foreigner eager to learn the ways of the prairie.
“Don’t you know that you’re not supposed to pick flowers in a Park?” She is indignant, surly, self-righteous
in her anger. I am a prairie woman, but in London England I have seen the manicure of green collage
against brick and memory. People like this woman have insisted that I call gophers Richardson’s Ground
Squirrels, and refer to them correctly, thank you very much. This is just another way of demanding to hear
the names of the species in the Garden. Such an act presumes that she, and I, must have dominion over
this place; must articulate its accident, its meaning and sensuality in order to project its natural state.
My confusion at her hostility gives way to rebellion. I smile blandly, sniff the bachelor buttons, and move on
down the hill. A few steps later, I turn to watch her shaking her head, rage still clutching frantically to her
shoulders. I hope that whatever seizes her will drop into the grass, where Nose Hill can absorb yet another
artifact of humanity.
(1) Fidler, Peter. A Look at Peter Fidler’s Journal. Journal of a Journey over Land from Buckingham House
to the Rocky Mountains in 1792 & 3. An HRC Limited Edition Series. Ed. Bruce Haig. Historical Research
Centre, Lethbridge. 1991.
(2) Thompson, David. Journey to the Bow River. David Thompson: The Columbia Journals: Ed. Barbara
Belyea. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 1994.
Belyea comments that both these references from Fidler and Thompson likely refer to the foothills east of
the Front Ranges, and not Nose Hill. (Electronic communication: March 28, 2007). Fidler and Thompson
certainly visited the area of present day Calgary, and thus the area of what is now Nose Hill in the era of pre-
European contact.
(3) Nose Creek and Nose Hill Park. The Applied History Research Group/The University of Calgary. The
Applied History Research Group. 1997.
(4) Thompson, David. Journey to the Bow River. David Thompson: The Columbia Journals: Ed. Barbara
Belyea. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 1994.
Photos of Nose Hill Park on main page by Kirk Ramdath.
Eleventh Transmission is Calgary's
arts, culture, media, and activism
magazine. We feature the work of
emerging and established writers and
artists from Calgary and beyond.
Eleventh Transmission believes that
art involves awareness and
connection -- to the community, and to
what goes on in the world at large. We
have a special interest in work that is
socially engaged.
New issues debut the first Monday of
every month. Next issue March 3.
If you like the magazine, or any
content in particular, please take a few
moments to share the link with your
friends.
Feel free to join our Mailing list or our
Facebook group.
arts, culture, media, and activism
magazine. We feature the work of
emerging and established writers and
artists from Calgary and beyond.
Eleventh Transmission believes that
art involves awareness and
connection -- to the community, and to
what goes on in the world at large. We
have a special interest in work that is
socially engaged.
New issues debut the first Monday of
every month. Next issue March 3.
If you like the magazine, or any
content in particular, please take a few
moments to share the link with your
friends.
Feel free to join our Mailing list or our
Facebook group.