Keith's Odyssey to Planet Fitness: Some city panoramas

Saturday, April 18, 2026

Some city panoramas

For a while I was quite taken with Calgary's skyline. When you're a new photographer Calgary is a lovely city for skylines. For it's population, Calgary has a lot of tall buildings. That's what oil and gas money and egos will do. For a while it seemed there was a bit of a 'my building is taller than your building' sort of thing happening.

There's good viewpoints in nearly every direction from downtown, and with all the lines it's easy to tell if you goofed on focus. Add in the east west avenues, the wide variety of angles for sunrise and sunsets, with all that glass for reflections, and it's photo heaven for those into it.

The photo culling continues, and between some that have not been blogged for whatever reason, I discovered a few new ones I hadn't edited at the time. No idea why. The first 3 are from 2016, then 2 from 2021, then 2 from 2022. for Calgary residents, think about the vantage point. All are public property, no special access required.

What's interesting is that the Calgary Tower is essentially invisible, except for being off to the edge of #3. Built in the late 60's, for nearly 20 years the tower was the undisputed king of the skyline. There are so many photos of the tower, a small skyline, with a Rocky Mountain backdrop.

Then the crane-birds arrived and big buildings started to go up. In the early 80's what is now called the Suncor Energy Centre, and was then informally and derisively called Red Square, started to edge higher than the tower. The proper name for it was the Petro-Canada Centre, and according to some locals it was all a plot by Trudeau (the father, not the son). There were people that believed there was a law on the books in Calgary prohibiting buildings from being taller than the tower. There wasn't, of course, although there are about shadows on the Bow River. And the buildings kept going up. Now there's 7 buildings taller than the tower, and several more that are almost as high.

I've had my share of views from the top of various buildings. I've never yet paid for a trip to the top of the Calgary Tower, but have been hosted several times. And yes, I like jumping on the part of the floor that gives you a view straight down. The photographer within wishes they kept the windows cleaner. One of my buddies at the time (late 80's) worked on the top floor the Petro-Canada Centre, and we spent much of a weekend there working on a long and complicated document for our SCA group. There was a day long meeting (early 90's) at the top of what was then the Nova Gas Transmission building, but I don't know what it's called now. About 2013 I had a shared window office on the 42nd floor looking west from Banker's Hall. About 2019 I came back from New Zealand to start a job that had me visiting a client at the top of Brookfield Place. Sometime 2019 or so a photo tour took me to the top of The Bow, to get sideways photos of Telus Sky being topped out. I've had job interviews in the TransCanada Tower, and in Western Canadian Place, and while they were in meeting rooms high in the building, I was paying more attention to the interview than to the view.

This isn't the first time I've blogged about the skyline, here, for example. Or some of the views from The Bow, (the tower not the river) here, and here, to look down on the top of the tower.

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