 Aug 22, 2011 As some of you may have noticed, the old rickety wooden stairs up McHugh Bluff at the end of 9A Street have been removed. The contractor working on the Crescent Road Promenade at the top of the bluff managed to accidentally remove the stairs without the knowledge or direction of the City Parks department!
The City administration is very apologetic, and is taking immediate action to stabilize the badly eroded slope. They will shift the drainage to channel water properly to avoid further erosion, add new soil and stabilizing material to fill in the damaged areas, and plant grasses to knit the slope together.
Furthermore, the Parks department would like to consult with the community to install a temporary access up the bluff, which could be an interim set of stairs or a non-permanent path along the slope. A temporary zig-zag path would allow different users such as cyclists, strollers, or wheelchairs to go up and down the bluff.
The City will work with the Bow to Bluff initiative during our upcoming storefront engagement in September to ask citizens what they would like to see as long-term access for McHugh Bluff. The Parks department is willing to fund not only a permanent connector between the Bow to Bluff corridor and the Crescent Road Promenade, but also placemaking opportunities to sit, gather and enjoy the views along the way.
This is an opportunity to create a great public space! If you have any questions or suggestions about McHugh Bluff access, please email us at info@bowtobluff.org.
==Bow to Bluff initiative
Mar 28, 2011  There is a little-known public corridor in Sunnyside: a series of small “triangle parks” that run the length of the Hillhurst-Sunnyside LRT line, from Memorial Drive to McHugh Bluff. These pocket parks and the tenuous pathway threading through them are isolated, shabby and unloved. As a result, they are often havens for illicit activities, and mostly shunned by residents.
In the next few years, this public corridor will undergo several significant changes:
- The Hillhurst-Sunnyside LRT platform will be extended to accommodate four-car C-trains and the station will be upgraded.
- Battistella Developments is proposing to build a mid-rise 94-unit condominium building on 2nd Avenue and 9A Street.
- The old City-owned warehouse on 2nd Avenue and 9th Street is up for potential redevelopment.
- Public realm improvements, such as road narrowing and sidewalk widening, have been proposed for the Kensington section of 2nd Avenue.
Because of its location and connectivity, this neglected public corridor has enormous potential to transform into an important pedestrian and cycling connector interspersed with attractive and active public spaces. And because plans for significant redevelopment along the corridor are already underway, now is the right time to discuss how to improve the existing public space.
Urban designer and local resident Natalia Zoldak recognizes the opportunity to reclaim and transform the whole corridor. “Our neighbourhood is experiencing redevelopment and will increase to nearly 10,000 people,” she notes. “If we want redevelopment to be successful, it needs to coincide with providing public spaces to support a growing population.”
Zoldak, who is making an inventory of lost public spaces in Sunnyside, organized a site walk of the public corridor last fall (a Space to Place initiative supported by Sustainable Calgary and the Calgary Foundation). The site walk sparked an ongoing discussion by residents and supporters, who want to strengthen the corridor as a walking-cycling pathway and redesign the pocket parks as gathering places supporting a variety of community activities.
David White, head of the HSCA Community Planning Committee, is enthusiastic about the level of citizen interest to improve the corridor. “I am concerned about the supply of good quality public spaces in our community, especially with so much major redevelopment on the way,” says White. “So whatever underutilized or underdeveloped public land remains in our community, it should at least be considered as a potential opportunity for new public spaces.”
For area residents, business owners, avid cyclists and walkers, and anyone interested in placemaking and urban renewal, the Hillhurst-Sunnyside public corridor is a tremendous opportunity to reclaim a lost urban space and create a great public place.
For more information, contact Natalia or Tamara.
- Tamara Lee is a lifetime Hillhurst-Sunnyside resident and technical writer who is passionate about great public places.
Feb 3, 2011 And Sow It Grows …
In 1989, the year that the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Garden was first planted, another of the community garden’s wonderful neighbours came into being.
It all started the day Jo Anne Pauling looked out of her dining room window up toward Sunnyside Hill. What Jo Anne saw was a beautiful natural area in need of serious help. What she heard was a call to action to try to preserve the hill from the progressive erosion that was threatening to destroy this unique landscape.
Jo Anne was a member of the HSCA Environment Committee and shared her concern about Sunnyside Hill with them. The Committee got the ball rolling by asking the city to help to stabilize the escarpment. The whole project was kicked off
in July 1990 by officially naming the escarpment McHugh Bluff, after Felix McHugh. The McHughs were the first homesteaders in Sunnyside, and Felix McHugh (1851-1912) was an early Calgary businessman and rancher. The McHugh Bluff Natural Area Committee was formed and developed sweeping and ambitious objectives: the stabilization and naturalization of two kilometres of escarpment from 10th Street NW to Centre Street. Each spring from 1991 to 1993, the Committee’s dedicated and tireless efforts culminated in thousands of evergreen seedlings, young trees, and wild flowers being planted along the Bluff. These incredible events involved hundreds of community volunteers of all ages, students and teachers from Sunnyside, Rosedale, and Queen Elizabeth Schools, foresters, engineers, landscapers, aldermen, local businesses, funding supporters, the Barry McHugh family, and the indispensable services of twelve friendly llamas and their owners.
Can you imagine it? The newly named McHugh Bluff was alive with the buzz of inspired people and exotic creatures ferrying large red sacks of tiny seedlings up to ready hands and smiling faces. George Pauling has created an excellent commemorative photo album depicting these events, a copy of which is at the HSCA office. As Jo Anne Pauling describes it, “the project planted an interest and brought four communities together in a wonderful way”. What began that day at Jo Anne’s dining room window sparked a passion for a beautiful hillside, which lives on in the hearts and minds of the people in the surrounding communities.
Linda Burtch is a resident of Sunnyside and wishes to thank Jo Anne and George Pauling for their contribution to this story.
Jan 4, 2011 And Sow It Grows …
In 1989, the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Garden was born, along with a lovely small park just to the west of the garden’s gate. This little park is one of the sweet spots in the neighbourhood. Shaped like a natural armchair, the backrest of trees, shrubs, and beautiful perennials in spring and summer creates a friendly welcome. A picnic table invites visitors to sit and enjoy a peaceful pause from life’s perpetual motion. If you have visited the park on a summer day, you may have met Jim Hollicky; perhaps he was busy tending the boulder lined pathways he has created recently. Jim is a long time
community garden member and he spends many days in the park sowing his special kind of TLC.
Just steps away toward McHugh Bluff is the new community orchard. The orchard was planted by the city in 2009 as part of a unique five year pilot project. The young fruit trees growing in the small park, as well as the trees at the H-S Community Centre, are all part of this project.
Whatever the season, these young fruit trees give people pleasure. In the spring, many of the trees displayed beautiful blossoms. In the fall, the community orchard was a busy buffet stop for birds and squirrels who took full advantage of the fruit feast on offer. Against the winter’s landscape, the apple trees are a dance troupe of lovely sculptured shapes. On your next walkabout, stop by and explore the orchard; apricot, pear, apple and hazelnut trees grow in easy companionship in their place at the foot of the bluff. In their young and somewhat vulnerable stage, they will benefit from your interest and good energy. You can learn more about the community orchard on the HSCA website. In addition to the fruit trees, the small park and the orchard have one other important thing in common; both have yet to be given names. Perhaps that could change in 2011.
February’s article will tell the inspiring story of another one of the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Garden’s wonderful neighbours. Until then, New Year’s Greetings to everyone.
Linda Burtch is a resident of Sunnyside.
Dec 3, 2010 And Sow It Grows …
Sleepy…ZZZ…ZZZZZ…ZZZ… The Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Garden is tucked up in bed, bringing the 2010 gardening season to a close. The dark bared earth and one lone well used shovel, its wooden handle worn smooth and shiny, attest to the hard work achieved on cleanup day by over 40 HSC gardeners and five trusty wheelbarrows. As modern gardeners, they followed long standing customs as they worked with hand tools that have been used for thousands of years across many civilizations. The sounds and rhythms of their voices and tools working together still echo in the garden like a lullaby for the earth.
So with the garden well nourished and breathing softly under its warm compost blankets, one can stoke up the fire, and make a batch of chutney. How about rhubarb chutney, in honour of the old faithful plants that inhabit the HSCG? They are one of the first vegetables to announce the spring and some return again in the fall to say a final goodbye.
Rhubarb is a plant that can keep its secrets too. For many centuries, it was cultivated in China and subsequently in the Western world, only for medicinal purposes. It took until the 1800’s before it became appreciated for its culinary potential, and it soon became known as pieplant. Stewed, chutneyed, puddinged and pied, whatever your fancy, the possibilities for enjoyment are endless.
What a delicious way to preserve some of the season’s great memories.
It’s always satisfying to write up your own garden story too. Documenting the important and interesting things that happened in the garden naturally begins to plant new ideas and possibilities in the imagination; and long before the seed catalogues have arrived, elements of the next garden are beginning to take shape. Somehow it seems fitting that, in the stillness that marks the season’s end, the HSCG garden is discovered for the first time by two delighted walkers up on McHugh’s Bluff. One of them spots the garden through the naked poplars, and calls out to the other, “Hey look! There’s a community garden”. They’re already imagining spring,
I think. And so are we.
Linda Burtch is a resident of Sunnyside.
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