LiveWire Calgary’s top photos of the year, as selected by LWC photojournalist Aryn Toombs. Although not every photo represents the biggest headlines, or the largest news maker, each tells a story about Calgary over 2022.
January
The year’s top photos in January began with a pair of new beginnings for the communities of Hawkwood and Parkdale. Each photo shows off new facilities that expanded the opportunities that community members, and Calgarians in general, had to access park spaces and amenities.
The opening of the Hawkwood outdoor recreation facility was the culmination of LWC coverage of the facility that began in the summer of 2020 and continued through 2021.
LWC would return to the Parkdale accessible outdoor arena in the summer to photograph the Parkdale Pet Festival and wiener dog races.
February
In February, Calgary’s Ukrainian community gathered at the Peace Bridge to denounce the war that began in that nation after the illegal invasion by forces of the Russian Federation. Although in subsequent months evacuees fleeing the war would come to Calgary, and many more stories would be written about their plight, the image of Calgary’s symbol of peace, framing that first protest on the day the invasion began remains an important one.
February also saw more bittersweet memories, as SAIT Trojans players gathered to memorialize slain teammate John Smith after he was killed at a downtown nightclub in 2021.
The month was also the return of lion dances for the Lunar New Year to Calgary’s Chinatown. They were not being held because of the pandemic.
March
It would be hard to define March as anything but the month that held the final confrontations between anti-mandate, anti-government protesters and the residents of Calgary’s Beltline. Community members were fed up with continued weekly protests and road shut downs on 17 and 12 Avenues. The City of Calgary was awarded a court injunction against the protests, and after several arrests, weeks of being unable to march, and the end to public health restrictions by the province, the protests dwindled into the tens of people.
March was also the month that LWC’s Aryn Toombs was able to capture a photograph of a porcupine beloved by the users of Confluence Park, which then became a popular front cover photo for The Daily Flip.
April
It’s hard to say that if Jason Kenney had known at the time that his April 1 press conference announcement would eventually lead to the tanking of his political fortunes, that he would have decided to fill up the tank of his blue pickup. Then-CityNews reporter Tom Ross captured a video of then-Premier Kenney being unable to remove the fuel hose nozzle from his truck, leading to much condemnation and many memes on social media. After months of his popularity slipping within the public and his party, Kenney resigned from the Premiership.
The day after, advocates for public education in the province held an emotional and often at times difficult protest against the proposed curriculum changes by the province.
In April, ultra-low-cost carrier Lynx Air launched with the Calgary International Airport as their hub. LWC’s Aryn Toombs took the inaugural flight to Vancouver and back, capturing the firefighter salute given to the first flight as it left the Vancouver International Airport terminal.
May
May was a month of sport, as the Calgary Flames battled their way through the Stanley Cup playoffs. Calgarians flocked to the local watering holes as they always have during a run for the cup. The Calgary Flames’ Red Lot was opened up after the demand for seats inside the Saddledome outstripped the capacity of Calgary’s NHL arena. By far one of the most unusual places to watch the playoff games was the Telus Spark planetarium, making it a top photo for 2022.
The month was also a big year for high school sports, with track and field competitions returning to the Foothills Athletics Park.
June
June was a month of some serious fires in Calgary, including the one in neighbourhood of Evanston Close. That fire ended up destroying multiple homes and caused the evacuation of St. Josephine Bakhita School. Despite the thin blanket of smoke over the neighbourhood, dozens of people gathered in the streets and at the school yard to watch as Calgary Fire Department firefighters battled the blazes.
It was also the month that significant construction was completed in the Culture and Entertainment District. Both the 9 Avenue Bridge was opened, and the BMO Centre Expansion steel framing made significant progress.
July
Calgary in July means the Calgary Stampede for many of the city’s journalists, and LWC was no exception. From pancake breakfasts to the rodeo and chuckwagons, and all of the events in between, the Stampede takes over the city in a way no other events do. The First Flip would be Mayor Jyoti Gondek’s first in her role as mayor and Premier Jason Kenney’s last.
July was also a milestone month for the Mayor, as the messaging around the need to do better at telling Calgary’s story about our city’s burgeoning Downtown Core recovery and focus on technology, especially cleantech, is a break from the way outsiders have and continue to view Calgary. From her presentation at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce to the YYCHacks hackathon at the Platform Innovation Centre, that message was one that would be reverberated for the rest of the year.
August
August was a month of friends reuniting. Exchange students from Japan were given white hats in a ceremony at the Calgary French and International School, re-igniting a tradition that had been put on hold because of the pandemic. The month was also the return of Calgary’s Dragon Boat Festival which had been also missing from the city’s cultural calendar because of the pandemic.
September
The month of September began with a lot of hype, but not a lot of action as the province’s plan to introduce a replacement weekend for Labour Day, in the form of Alberta Day, drew small crowds. First, a disappointing launch for organizers at Calgary’s City Hall, where musicians played to, at times, one person in the civic square. Then at the Alberta Day weekend events at Prince’s Island Park, which drew far fewer participants than other festivals like the Calgary Folk Music Festival and Expo Latino did weeks earlier.
In contrast, Calgary Pride had one of its best parades in recent memory, drawing crowds on par with the annual Calgary Stampede Parade. The Stampede parade itself broke records. More than one hundred thousand people lined 9 Avenue to take in Pride, with tens of thousands remaining to continue the party at Fort Calgary.
September was also the return of former mayoral candidate Jeromy Farkas to the city in official form, after he completed his journey along the Pacific Crest Trail for Big Brothers Big Sisters. He raised more than $210,000 for the charity in the process.
October
Calgary’s City Hall is often the place where people come to grieve, as much as it is a place to celebrate. Following the brutal crackdowns and murder of protesters by Iran’s regime, Calgary’s Iranian community gathered at the beginning of the month to protest and to ask the federal government to put more pressure on that nation’s rulers. Thousands gathered, and in the following days, the Canadian government would continue to place additional sanctions against key members of Iran’s morality police, regime military forces, and others involved in the detention and murder of protesters.
Sisters in Spirit Day also marked some of the continuing horrors at home, with the many missing and murdered Indigenous women being remembered in a solemn march down Stephen Avenue with a ceremony at Olympic Plaza. That event was attended by Calgary’s Police Chief Mark Neufeld, who promised to continue the work of providing justice for those women. It was also an event that saw CPS Indigenous Relations Sgt. Alan Chamberlain given a warrior’s blanket after his work to provide justice for Calgary’s Indigenous community.
October was also a month of more lighthearted events, as goats took over part of Nose Hill to assist in the efforts to eradicate weeds and other invasive species from the urban park. Much to the delight of the hundreds that visited the goats during their walks before the snow began to fall.
November
November began with the final steel beam being put into place on the BMO Centre Expansion, marking a major milestone in that project’s completion towards a 2024 opening. It also represented a renewed interest in the Rivers District, with new announcements of further development of the East Village and the Culture and Entertainment District following CMLC’s master plan to redefine the east end of Calgary’s downtown.
It was also a month that saw the triumph of the human spirit. First with the donation of bikes to the Forest Lawn High School and other Calgary Board of Education schools across the city to help mobility for students with developmental disabilities. Second, Calgary’s Croatian community celebrates the bittersweet entry of Canada vs. Croatia in the World Cup. For Canadian fans, it was fretfully a first (and subsequently only) goal by Edmonton’s own Alphonso Davies.
December
December wrapped up as a month of overcoming, and remembering those who didn’t. LWC also photographed Douglas Craig, a professional Santa Claus at his home at the beginning of the month as he relayed his story of how he went from being a member of a notorious 1970s Alberta Biker Gang, to eventually becoming an ordained minister and a beloved fixture of the Christmas season in Kensington.
It was also the tragic reminder of the everyday losses that homeless Calgarians face. Lost friends were remembered during the Longest Night of the Year. The backdrop was the juxtaposition of a homeless Calgarian kept out of a memorial himself by the City of Calgary’s barriers installed on the municipal atrium.
