Calgary Is Special
Photograph by: Gavin Young, Calgary Herald
My wife and I were featured in The Calgary Herald‘s Home section this week. The feature, written by Jacqueline Louie, profiles different people in the city talking about their community, their home, and the favourite room in their house.
In the article, I call our house a “Calgary Special”. It’s a term borrowed from “Vancouver Special“. In Vancouver’s housing boom decades ago, many of the houses looked the same.
Calgary’s boom in the early 2000s has had the same effect: all the houses look the same. Drive our street and you’d be hard pressed to tell where in the city you are until you turn a corner and see the COP ski jump 5 blocks away.
While we love the location of our home on the west side of Calgary, we wish there were big, old trees, water, and closer public schools.
Here’s an excerpt from the article and some more of the great photos taken by Gavin Young for the piece.
Photograph by: Gavin Young, Calgary Herald
Question: Describe your home.
Answer: We are in a “Calgary special.”
Ours is a two-storey, 1,800-square-foot home (2,300 square feet including the basement), with a bonus room, three bedrooms, an office and a finished basement.
Our home, which was built in 2006, feels more like a townhouse than a house — it’s long and thin.
Question: Which room in your home is your favourite — and why?
Answer: The living room/kitchen/dining nook. It’s a funky room; it takes up a quarter of the main floor.
Because the house is rather narrow, it was an awkward space for us. We had Aly Velji, one of Calgary’s best-known interior designers, help us pick the colours and the layout.
Question: What activities do you — and other family members — do in this room?Answer: We cook, eat, play, read and watch TV. It’s the centre of our home.
I have an Apple TV hooked up to a small 26-inch TV in our living room — that’s for the boys to watch their movie before bed. And I can watch a show while I’m preparing dinner.
Read the rest at The Calgary Herald
Buzz Bishop
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