OPUNTIA 457 Thanksgiving 2019 Opuntia is published by Dale Speirs, Calgary, Alberta. It is posted on www.efanzines.com and www.fanac.org. My e-mail address is:
[email protected] When sending me an emailed letter of comment, please include your name and town in the message. NOSE HILL PARK: EASTERN END 2019-10-03 photos by Dale Speirs Calgary has two massive natural parks within its boundaries, Nose Hill (municipal) and Fish Creek (provincial). It occurred to me that I haven’t depicted them as often as I should have, so over the winter I’ll run photos. Nose Hill is the easternmost foothill of the Rocky Mountains and until the late 1970s was the northern boundary of Calgary. The suburbs have long since sprawled past it. The western half of the hill was overrun by developers and is now covered in houses. A citizen group managed to preserve the eastern half as a natural park. The hill is bald-headed prairie, but it has coulees and draws along its slope that allow shrubbery and small trees to survive because the rainwater is channeled down them. The cover photo is a typical view of the easternmost end of the hill and shows the vegetation in the draws changing colour. We had our first snowfall on September 27 but when I photographed the area a week later, most of it had been removed by chinooks. Thanksgiving is usually brown in Calgary but by November we start getting more frequent bursts of snow. The park is a popular viewpoint, looming over the city as it does, and as you will see on the next few pages.