At 21, I started to ask myself: What makes a good life? Is it the experiences we have, the places where we form life-changing memories, the money in our bank accounts, or the people we hold dear? Where can the magical milieu of the good life be found?
Throughout my search, I discovered that the cities and communities I lived in helped me move closer to answering such questions. I grew up calling many places home, and from July, 2016, to September, 2021, home was the city of Calgary. I spent those five years forming different experiences, relationships and friendships, and completing my first degree.
I arrived in Alberta during an important life stage: my last year of high school. I spent the first half of my childhood in Montreal and then later moved to a small town in Ontario. Calgary, a city of 1.3 million inhabitants, felt like both a sprawling urban centre and a small, suburban village.
I experienced many life changes, emotionally and physically, in Alberta’s most populated city. Yet despite my best efforts, the good life always felt a bit out of reach. Something inside me always felt anxious and a bit off.
I never quite fit into the overarching white Stampede culture that took over every summer, and my needs never seemed to factor into the car-dependent urban planning or new infrastructure deals that rarely delivered on promises of employment and cultural growth.
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Calgary’s division into four quadrants – southwest, southeast, northeast and northwest – created a map of division distinctly marked by class and race. Before moving to the city, I was not familiar with the covert racism that equated the quadrant you lived in with the privilege you held.
I was a young Black woman whose Nigerian immigrant parents settled in the southwest quadrant – an area almost exclusively associated with burgeoning white families. I quickly noticed the stares that resulted from being one of the few people of colour in my neighbourhood. I caught on to the negative assumptions associated with other parts of the city such as the northeast, which was home to many of Calgary’s new immigrant population and filled with communities of working-class Black and brown folks.
The racial divisions contributed to the anxious tensions I felt living in white suburbs, rarely seeing faces who looked like mine until I left my quadrant limits. I lived at home with my parents, and like many of my millennial and Gen-Z peers, I felt a yearning for the need to individuate and craft an identity outside of the prescribed roles suburbia provided. I was tired of seeing new experiences offered that seemed to primarily attract couples, and didn’t quite find my footing as a single twenty-something.
Calgary’s shortage of innovative and diverse options led myself and other millennials to search elsewhere for city living that relates to our unique challenges while inspiring us to shape our futures.
I felt isolated living a 20-to-30-minute drive from downtown. There were what felt like days driving on Deerfoot Trail, being stuck in heavy traffic on Macleod Trail, or moving through never-ending construction on Stoney Trail. I drove those routes countless times to meet friends. Once together, our conversations consistently seemed to land on the subject of life in Calgary and the city’s lack of cultural and social opportunities. We commiserated about the pull of Canada’s major metropolitan centres – contemplating a fulfilling life in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal. We spent hours strategizing how to leave Calgary after earning our degrees in search of better work opportunities, more romantic options and the idea of an exciting life.
Ultimately, my search for freedom led me to move abroad. Looking back, I realize how Calgary’s cultural homogeneity never aligned with my internal desire for diversity as a way of life, whether it was how my friend groups remained largely unchanged for the past five years, or the overwhelming whiteness of specific cultural circles.
I have also learned that getting an outside perspective of the city that shaped you can be healing. Despite the negative aspects of my experience living in Calgary, I now stand able to look back at a place I once called home and see the beauty in having been a witness to it all.
Nearing the end of my time in Alberta, I had the chance to briefly connect with artistic people whose lives were a testament to what alternative success looked like in a city that, on the surface, did not offer those opportunities. I wondered how the increased awareness that such a life is possible in Calgary could positively affect the city.
I have hope that the newly elected Mayor Jyoti Gondek, the expansion of Arts Commons, the revitalization of the Glenbow Museum, the grassroots activism redefining diversity and representation in Calgary and the long-contested LRT expansion will transform the city. Most of all, I have admiration for the people who affected my life every day, working and showing up at schools, offices, hospitals and stores, ready to care for community needs.
Every place you live can deeply change you, leaving its imprint on the story of your life in ways that reveal their meaning only in retrospect. While I’ve chosen to part ways with Calgary and continue my search for the good life elsewhere, I see that the seeds of change have been planted, and perhaps they will sprout a more positive future that could attract and retain a new generation of young people to call Calgary home.
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