It was a sunny June 22, 1975, when Calgary Alderman Virnetta Anderson and Premier Peter Lougheed officially opened phase one of Fish Creek Provincial Park.
Turning the proposed Calgary green belt into a park had been a dream of then-Premier Lougheed, whose Progressive Conservative party announced the plans in 1971 to transform 2,800 acres on the south edge of the city into a park.
That decision not to sell the lands back to the City of Calgary ended up being a decision that has shaped the way Calgarians view their city, and ended up spurring the creation of Nose Hill Park, unspoiled by a planned 600 acres of residential development.
Some 50 years later, Calgarians celebrated the 50th anniversary of Fish Creek Park in style on June 7.
“We’ve got 35 different community groups that came out today, which is phenomenal,” said Katrina Terrill, Executive Director for the Friends of Fish Creek Provincial Society.
That group itself also celebrated decades of connection to the park, having been formed in 1992 by concerned volunteers who wanted to ensure that the park remained for future generations.
“It’s all part of making sure that this park stays in the beautiful shape that it is in, or even better, ideally, for the next 50 years. It’s all interconnected. You can have recreation absolutely, but we need to make sure it’s responsible so that we can continue recreating in it,” said Terrill.
Currently, one of the major initiatives in the park has been to restore the native grasses that were replaced in the 19th century for ranching purposes, she said.
“We’re actually going out with the Alberta native plant rescue Foundation, picking up plants from areas that are slated for development around the city. So, they’re coming in, they’re going to bulldoze it anyway. We go in, we rescue a whole bunch of plants, then we bring them out here and plant them,” Terrill said.
“What we at the Friends are doing now is actually trying to restore the native grassland, which isn’t just grass, it’s also 50 per cent flowers and forests. We’re really trying to bring that native prairie back into this park. There’s only about one per cent of the native grasslands actually present in Fish Creek Provincial Park.”
Terrill said keeping the park in good shape for the next 50 years also means creating greater flood resiliency, although not completely removing the natural flood cycle, which some species like poplar trees require to spread their seeds.
Prominent floods in both 2005 and in 2013 reshaped much of the eponymous creek flows through the park.
“One of the biggest things to do is actually make sure we have beavers around, which I know everybody goes, ‘oh, don’t they flood the place?’ But what beavers do is they’re actually stopping the water flow from going so quickly, they’re deepening Fish Creek as well, which makes it a better habitat for fish,” Terrill said.
“We want those. They’re in the name. We want to make sure the fish are staying here, too.”
Viewing Fish Creek Park through the strokes of the brush
Artist Doug Levitt has been one of the Calgarians who have watched the park transform and change over the decades.
As a painter, his work has chronicled the way that Fish Creek has been shaped, but his connection goes far deeper.
“I was coming here as a Grade 12 student when [Bow Valley Ranche] was an abandoned building. I just sat there and played my guitar on the corner of the building, just to have a quiet moment after school and enjoy nature,” he said.
“Now it’s this thriving, award-winning restaurant in the middle of this opulent artisan garden, and it’s like, how has this happened?”
He said that other creations, like the new Listening Gardens and a one-of-a-kind outdoor art gallery within the park, were reflections of how art has become a major part of Fish Creek Park.
“I have very different paintings from before the flood, compared to after the flood. There’s a whole spit of land that used to be my favourite place to paint, where there was a bit of a backwash of the river. Once the flood happened, it sheared off that whole land mass was just gone. So, the topography is entirely different,” Levitt said.
“I literally do feel like I’m a chronicler of history that does occur here, and that’s one of the things that art can do.”
The 50th anniversary celebration is about what the next 50 years will look like for the park, said Larry Wasyliw, President of the Bow Valley Ranche Historical Society.
“We’ve accomplished so much in a very short term, and 50 years flies by very quickly. But the important thing about what’s happened over this time is how the communities embrace change and how they’re participating in so many things—and the young families that are coming in, that is the future of where we’re going,” he said.
“How do we tell this story in a good way and welcome them as the BVR family?”
He said that had a 1994 decision by the community to battle a demolition order for the Bow Valley Ranche building not happened, the park would have been very different looking in 2025, and with a lot less art.
Wasyliw said the outdoor gallery next to the Bow Valley Ranche has become a way for people to connect with some of the greatest Canadian artists interpreting the park in different ways.
“There’s 72 Canadian artists there, and they all had a sort of direction to represent history through art. So if you meander through the gardens, and you look at different pieces of art, you find some form of history resonating in their representation,” he said.
“We have a great programs where a lot of schools come here and their students come in, and the talent that comes out of that, it’s self-expression. So, this is what a lot of things are missing: going back to some of those basics of what do we know? What do we know about our history? What do we know about our past? What is the fabric of our community?”
