“You will pass under a total of 13 bridges on your float,” explains the safety briefer at the Paddle Station before my husband and I board the raft that will take us down the Bow River. The number surprises me. There are cities known for bridges: Amsterdam, with its expansive canal system, contains more than 1,200; Pittsburgh, at the junction of three rivers, has 446.
But here in Calgary, aside from the striking pedestrian Peace Bridge designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, overwater structures — and, for that matter, water in general — don’t typically spring to mind. When non-Calgarians think of Cowtown, they likely associate it with the Calgary Stampede first, or perhaps the city’s proximity to the Rocky Mountains.
Similarly, I was unaware of how Calgary’s waters impact its urban landscape and lifestyle — and I grew up here. I lived in Calgary until I left for university in Toronto, where I stayed for 14 years, until the pandemic inspired a homecoming. Growing up, I occasionally spent summer afternoons at the man-made Sikome Lake, in the city’s southeast, but my life wasn’t connected to the waterways, particularly the glacier-fed Bow and Elbow rivers that flow right through Calgary.
As I’m rediscovering my newish hometown, however, I’m starting to dive into activities on the urban waters I’d overlooked. And Ravi Thaker, founder and CEO of the Paddle Station, says lots of other residents and visitors are doing the same. When he launched his company in 2017, he expected to serve 2,000 people per summer. Instead, the business is now putting 1,000 people into rafts and kayaks on the Bow every day.
“It’s become a rite of passage for most Calgarians [to float or paddle down the river] at least once per summer,” says Thaker. And it’s getting to be that way for visitors, as well — like actor Pedro Pascal, who floated the Bow with the Paddle Station while filming HBO’s “The Last of Us” in 2021. “That’s a testament to how beautiful our city looks from the river,” says Thaker. “It’s a genuinely cool activity.”
Thaker wants to make the waterways even more accessible, which is why he’s working on creating self-serve, semi-autonomous kayak lockers, to be placed strategically along the river. “The idea is that it’s like Bird scooters or Lime bikes, but for kayaks,” he says. The Paddle Station plans to test its prototype this fall, with hopes of launching the lockers next spring.
While visitors to the city, and even some Calgarians, are just discovering the appeal of the urban waters, one group has long been in the know: anglers. Among them is Quinn Soonias, owner and operator of Drift Out West Fly Fishing, and a member of Red Pheasant Cree Nation, whose ancestors lived and fished on the banks of the North Saskatchewan.
Today, Soonias offers half- and full-day guided fly-fishing excursions for every skill level on the blue-ribbon section of the Bow — a nutrient-rich stretch that begins near the centre of Calgary and extends for roughly 80 kilometres to the Carseland Weir, where trout are famous for their size. “So many people, especially locals, have no idea that this river has this fishery,” says Soonias. “But a lot of (anglers) hear about it and travel from a long way to come fish it.”
On my half-day float aboard Soonias’s three-seater drift boat, from the Graves Bridge launch point to Fish Creek Provincial Park, the city fades away. I find myself hypnotized by the backward and forward motion of casting; a fish on my line would just disrupt the tranquility. But when I do eventually get a bite — a feisty whitefish — I spring to action and have the confidence to reel it in, thanks to Soonias’s assured teaching style. Now that I have the basics down, I plan to rent some gear from a local fly shop and attempt a walk and wade into the Bow on my own.
While the Bow is larger and gets more of the attention, the Elbow is just as scenic and contains an outsized feature: the Glenmore Reservoir. Situated in the southwest, the reservoir is the source of 40 per cent of the city’s drinking water, and it’s also a place where Calgarians come to play. Numerous water-based clubs, including the Calgary Canoe Club, Calgary Rowing Club and the Glenmore Sailing School, call it home.
In June, I took keelboat sailing lessons on a San Juan 21 through the Glenmore Sailing Club. Over two days, I learned how to competently crew, manning the jib and main sail and even taking a turn as skipper, cruising the reservoir’s calm waters, with the Rocky Mountains gleaming in the west. “If you can sail the Glenmore Reservoir, you can sail anywhere,” my instructor said, crediting the reservoir’s notoriously ever-shifting winds.
And there’s still more water to discover. Recently, I paddled Carburn Lake, a small man-made pond just east of the Bow, on one of Calgary Kayaks’ transparent vessels equipped with colourful LED lights, which illuminated the water (and scared off the resident ducks) at dusk. Before the summer is up, I’d like to rent a pedal boat on the shallow lagoon at Bowness Park, on the Bow in the city’s northwest.
As my husband and I near the end of our Bow River float, the glistening towers of the skyline now at our backs, we look out for the George C. King Bridge (“the one that looks like a skipping stone,” our safety briefer said); from there, we must stick to the right, as it’s just a bit further to our end location on St. Patrick’s Island, a lush, 31-acre, trail-covered park in the Bow.
We successfully arrive at the designated spot to disembark, where our raft and gear are collected. As we regroup on shore, I look around and take note of this location: the Cove on St. Patrick’s Island. In this serene cut-out, which feels like a secret lagoon, sunbathers lounge in lawn chairs on the banks, kids splash in the shallow water, and fisherman have dropped in lines in hopes of a late-afternoon catch.
It’s yet another urban water zone to add to my growing list, one of many in Calgary beckoning: Come on in, the water’s fine.
Some activities were provided to Dominique Lamberton as a guest of Tourism Calgary, which did not review or approve this article.
