The Calgary posterA Calgary poster in a pale wood frame, on a sand-coloured wall, in bright dry light.0.707

Maps · Collection 01

Calgary poster, drawn from the real map

51.0447°N / 114.0719°W · Canada

Something you would only ever notice on a map: the downtown grid is turned at an angle to the whole prairie grid around it. Two street patterns side by side, disagreeing by a few degrees.

You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.

Compose my Calgary poster

What the map shows

A grid with no edge, and a downtown turned against it

That angle is the most informative thing on this map. North of the river the streets run true to the compass, as prairie survey demands. South of it, downtown is rotated, because it was laid out along the railway line rather than along the section lines, and the join between the two systems is visible as a seam. It is a small thing to see and a large thing to know: the older settlement was east of here, and the railway company laid out its own townsite to the west and moved the city onto it.

Read on

The two rivers meet at a place that was a gathering ground long before any of this, and the map still shows why: sheltered wooded flats at a confluence, on a route that ran north to south. The pale emptiness in the north-west is not a park in the ordinary sense but a surviving piece of rough fescue prairie, over a thousand hectares of it, kept unbuilt and grazed by goats to maintain the ecosystem. It is the one part of the sheet where the grid gives up, and it shows you what all the rest of this was before the lines were drawn.

Compose your own

What suits Calgary

The palette

A sand green holds the prairie, and the two rivers should cut across it in a frank green of floodplain rather than blending into the weave: they are the only lines here that owe nothing to a survey. Sign the centre with its turn, a few degrees is all it takes, and let the historic core carry a honey tone for the sandstone. Nose Hill in the north-west is a large tawny silence, and the yards to the south-east a dark tangle. Everything else can stay quiet, because the subject is regularity and regularity does not need help.

The framing

Vertical, and let the grid run off all four sides without a margin: this is a city that continues past the frame, and closing it in would make it look finished. Keep the river across the upper half with the confluence to the right of centre, so the eye can travel from the meeting of the water down to the turned grid of downtown. Come in closer and the angle of the streets becomes obvious, which is tempting, but the plateau in the north-west leaves the sheet and with it the only ground here that was never divided.

The caption

The title, a line beneath it, the coordinates. A street number, a date, the name of a river: that line is what turns a plan of Calgary into your plan of Calgary.

What the drawing tells

Three dates that explain the city

Before 1875The confluence was a meeting place for millennia

Where the Bow and the Elbow join is called Mohkinstsis in Blackfoot, and it was a gathering place for thousands of years before any of the streets on this map existed. It sat on the Old North Trail, the north to south route across the plains, and the flats at the confluence were wooded and sheltered, which made them a favoured seasonal camp, swept clear in winter by the chinook winds. The reason the city is here is older than the city by a very long way.

1883The railway moved the town

The first settlement grew up by the fort, east of the confluence, on the ground now called Inglewood. Then the Canadian Pacific arrived in 1883, laid out its own townsite on land it owned to the west, and the town simply moved there at the beginning of 1884. That is why downtown sits where it does, and why its streets run at an angle: they follow the railway, not the survey. A private company chose the centre of this city, and the map has been saying so ever since.

1886A fire turned a wooden town to stone

On 7 November 1886 fire destroyed a town built of timber. The council responded with a bylaw requiring non-combustible materials in the centre, and the era known as the Sandstone City began: more than a dozen quarries of Paskapoo sandstone operated within what are now the city limits, and the sandstone city hall opened in 1911. The main street of the centre carries the name of the first president of the railway, which tells you who the second founder of this place was.

Before ordering

The four questions people ask

Can I choose any place, any date?

Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.

What sizes do you offer?

From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.

What materials do you offer?

Four, from the barest to the most dressed.

Matte fine art paperA 200 gsm art paper with a deep matte finish: the bare print, to frame as you please.
Wooden hangersThe print suspended between two wooden hangers, ready to hang, in the spirit of studio posters.
The classic frameThe print mounted under acrylic glass in a slim frame, assembled by hand, delivered ready to hang.
Framed canvasThe piece printed on canvas, stretched over a wooden stretcher bar and set in a frame: a gallery presence.

How long does it take?

Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.

Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.

All the questions

Your Calgary

The quadrant you give when someone asks, the bend of the river you walk, the hill you go up to see the mountains. The grid is the same for everyone. Where you stop counting from is not.

Compose my Calgary poster