subject: Calgarys Expansion During The Oil Boom [print this page] Historically, during the exploration and subsequent settlement of the Canadian territories, Alberta and the modern cities that you may know today contained in the province were only small towns and forts that dotted the area. Now you may not recognize it as one of the major cities in Alberta, Calgary is now the third most populous city in Canada.
When they discovered that Alberta has huge reserves of untapped oil, the small town of Calgary suddenly became the modern cosmopolitan city that is widely known today. Excavation in Calgary became a priority during this time as oil was being dug up everywhere while buildings and skyscrapers swiftly sprouted up from the ground one by one in a construction spree unseen in any other city in the world at the time. Post holes in Calgary were being dug up in a rapid fashion as Bobcat service in Calgary had become a booming business. In the nearby towns, landscaping in Cochrane was constantly being discussed as plans of further enlarging metropolitan Calgary were put into consideration. With the city becoming more and more populated each year, the bother of maintaining the city had grown to be a real problem and thus septic fields in Alberta were being dug up every month or so as a result of more people settling in.
It was a good time to live in Calgary during those years. The city grew to its potential, culminating in it hosting the 1988 Winter Olympics which became the vehicle to it being known across the world. But like all things, it was not meant to last. A massive economic depression left Calgary disabled as it depended too much on oil and gas as its main production. It was this time that oil prices dropped all across the board and forced companies to shut down or cut its losses. Consequently, thousands of employees were laid off and unemployment rates soared to record levels. It was only in the 1990s that Calgary was able to recover economically. Continuous oil prices kept the pace of recovery slow as Calgary undoubtedly still depended too much on its oil reserves.
Today, the city has grown economically in many different ways. With the thought of another economic collapse not far from the citizens minds, a diverse range of products and services were introduced as a way to insure or at least avoid the same debilitating failure from happening again.
