The title of this blogpost should be "Red Deer" but that would involve two words and since I embarked upon this blogging journey, I have only ever used one word titles. Anyway - Red Deer - not the four-legged creatures that roam about the Scottish Highlands but a town in the middle of the Canadian province of Alberta. Currently it has a population of just over 100,000 but back in 1901 when it was first given township status, it only had a population of 323.
The present citizenship mostly consists of white folk of European extraction (88.4%) and the next significant group are Métis people - descendants of First Nation inhabitants who mixed with the original white settlers (3.1%).
In just over a hundred years, Red Deer has established itself as the third most significant city in Alberta - after Calgary and Edmonton. It's amazing to think that such a short time ago it was little more than a river crossing. Now it has fifty schools, shopping centres, parks and industries as well as modern homes often set in spacious grounds. With all the greenery and trees you might say that Red Deer has evolved into a beautiful garden city.
Last week, I climbed aboard the Google Streetview car to cruise around Oldham, Lancashire but this week I am off to Red Deer to see what we can see in six equally random pictures snipped from Google imagery...
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| Red Deer Golf and Country Club |
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| Red Deer River |
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| Red Deer City Hall |
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| Exclusive Spencer Street in the southern suburbs |
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| The Riverside Meadows area - often seen as the toughest neighbourhood of Red Deer. |
And finally The Club Cafe with its attached massage parlour. This
is known to be very popular with senior male members of the local
birdwatching fraternity... including Red from "Hiawatha House".
Well, this is something! My town on an international blog. The house you show is across the street from mine. You can make up a good story.
ReplyDeleteAfter this blogpost, Red Deer will be thronged with tourists this summer. Japanese visitors will emerge from tour buses to snap pictures of Spencer Street, hoping to catch a glimpse of its most famous residents.
DeleteHa ha! You're causing trouble from the other side of the world, YP!
ReplyDeleteAnd that was a nice, if brief, tour. Maybe Red can delve deeper.
Red can certainly delve deeper... in the massage parlour.
DeleteIt looks like a mostly pretty place which causes me to wonder why nobody was inspired to create an attractive city hall and why civic buildings are almost universally ugly?
ReplyDeleteIn England we have some magnificent civic buildings Kylie. See Sheffield's Town Hall...
Deletehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/setsuyostar/3573343783
Oh dear! A hundred schools! That's a lot of schools. They must be a well-educated lot in Red Deer! You'd better watch your "Ps" and "Qs" when around Red, Yorkie!!
ReplyDeleteYou should have alerted Red of your visit so he could run out onto the street (not before looking both ways and than the other way again) to give a wave! :)
Red on Streetview? Look closely through the top window of the massage parlour and you will see him waving from the leatherette couch.
DeleteLove your tours of various places.............please keep them coming.
ReplyDeleteEH
Thanks for dropping by and leaving an encouraging remark "Unknown" visitor.
DeleteI really like your Street View tours, too.
ReplyDeleteRed Deer is only about 10.000 people "bigger" than my home town, but we have nowhere near 100 schools!
Where I went to school is a sort of campus consisting of four different schools, and that seemed a lot to me back then.
Ooops! I miscounted. There are only 49 schools. Thanks for querying this.
DeleteI had no idea Red Deer was that large. It sounds like such a little village, with that quaint bucolic name! I'm going to have to look at a map and see where it is in Alberta.
ReplyDeleteUntil I "met" Red from "Hiawatha House", I had never even heard of Red Deer.
DeleteRed Deer is the place where many from my home town of Empress,Alberta would go for high school. It had one of the best schools in Alberta. I didn't go, I went to Edmonton.That was a mistake. Thanks for the tour.
ReplyDeleteHave you thought of working for their tourist board?
ReplyDelete