365: Red; MechanoTree

More building and building and building... three little homes that were old, and dwarfed by the two huge condos next door, and the new-ish, huge grocery store across the street, were torn down over the winter, to be replaced by this huge metal growth.

365: Red; The Twenty-Year Tear Down

We moved into this neighbourhood in 1987. Here were the homes into which soldiers and their families usually moved on leaving the army. They are only a few blocks from where the MQs - the married quarters - used to be.

In 1998, Canadian Forces Base Calgary was closed, and pretty much everyone moved to Edmonton, leaving the MQs a virtual ghost town. Then people started renting those old houses on those tree-lines streets with sidewalks through the middle of the trees... and then Canada Lands took over. That's when everything started to change.

Our community used to be the other side of the tracks; people were middle class - barely. When we told people the community we lived in, they'd reply "Oh," with that "poor you," look. Once things in the MQs started to change, the whole area started to gentrify. House prices went from the $87,000 range to $1.5 million around here. Not even 20 years. Now, when we tell people where we live, we get that "Oh," except now it's with the "Oh, you rich people" face... except we live in exactly the same house still.

This house was at the end of the block just one north of us. We see something like this pretty much every day around here. Sometimes, I don't recognize my own street any more; we're the only stretch in this community with all original houses on it. For now.