[pycal]

I grew up in Calgary, and after spending the last 14 years in Toronto I have decided to move back.

Income taxes are way lower in Alberta than Ontario; moving my remote-ok tech job to calgary was equivalent to getting a five-figure raise.

Cycling in Toronto is a life-threatening activity, and Calgary has something like 150km of paved urban pathway.

The politics are toxic in both places.

Calgary is just quieter and I like that. I’m sick of listening to construction, sirens, street car clattering, and apt hvac systems.

The water in Calgary looks appetizing - I spent a lot of time in the outer harbour in Toronto and am acutely aware of the water quality advisories.

The shoreline of Toronto’s harbour front is ugly as sin. Chunks of the Gardiner is falling on peoples’ cars, and is a source of horrible, dementia-inducing noise pollution. Anyone with a balcony in Fort York or City Place probably used it for the first time during the pandemic, and otherwise is just their storage locker.

Calgary has a stunning river that glows with mineralized rocky mountain water, and you can walk or cycle along it for exercise because it isn’t so oversubscribed as the pan am path.

Transit is terrible in both towns but living on the subway was great.

I can afford a 1700sqft inner city calgary home with a garage and a yard for the price of a 900sqft 2bed downtown toronto condo.

The recreation opportunities in Calgary are year round, but in Toronto I felt like the onot things to do in the winter were restaurants and the ago.

The food scene in Toronto is amazing. I miss sushi. The music scene too. But Calgary has world class examples of all this, and this stuff is a lower priority than it once was.

Everything is 8 minutes away from me in Calgary. Try getting anywhere in 8 minutes in Toronto, what with the choking traffic, and the fact that all your friends have to move to orangeville and whitby because of rising prices.

Both cities have incredible energy. I was in calgary for the red mile, and at yonge and dundas when the raps won.

Calgary for me is a better place on balance.

[mfenniak]

> Cycling in Toronto is a life-threatening activity, and Calgary has something like 150km of paved urban pathway.

Calgary has over 1000km of paved urban pathway. I'm the creator of a small webapp called yycpathways.ca where you can sync your Strava up to a map of Calgary pathways. As you bike/run/etc the pathways, it will "Pac-Man" away the path and just show you places you haven't been before. Two people have completely covered all the pathways using my app.

But if you leave it to actually go somewhere, cycling is still a life-threatening activity.

[pycal]

i was going from memory and trying not to exaggerate!

another factoid about the paths is the city clears them before roadways after a snowfall!

love the app!

[goda90]

Someone should tell Not Just Bikes about Calgary. He has had a lot to say about Canada's winter bike infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

[jonahrd]

He has a video about Calgary on his channel :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8F5hXqS-Ac

[yostrovs]

While in the video he compares the infrastructure provided in a Norway town compared to similar ones in Finland and Canada, he doesn't touch on the underlying financial situations in the three countries. In summary, Norway is loaded while Canada and Finland are not. And that's because Norway has drilled hundreds of billions of dollars of liquid oil over many years that Finland and Canada do not have.

[djkivi]

Alberta has a lot of oil, and even created a fund, the Heritage Fund, in the 1970s to save some of the wealth from drilling oil.

Unfortunately Alberta has mismanaged that fund so it is now far smaller than Norway's.

https://thenarwhal.ca/norway-s-oil-savings-just-hit-1-trilli...

[yostrovs]

Norwegian oil is vastly cheaper to extract and deliver to willing customers than Canadian oil sands.

[Scoundreller]

Canada has that, along with low population density. Ok, about 6 times the population and only 2.5x the oil production, but other resources too (we can actually grow stuff even).

We just prefer the colony model of letting the profits go to anyone but the local government.

[yostrovs]

Norwegian oil is vastly cheaper to extract and deliver to willing customers than Canadian oil sands. Canadian oil requires prices to be close to $100 a barrel to break even.

[ape4]

Toronto built a bunch of protected bike lanes during the pandemic: Yonge, University, Bloor, Bayview

[bparsons]

The cycling network there is pitiful for city that size.

[abdullahkhalids]

There have been a number of times when I was cycling in Calgary on roads where there was no bike path but not doing anything dangerous, and people slowed down their trucks (because that is what everyone drives in Calgary) to shout at me to stop cycling or get off the road.

[jlarocco]

That's a great app idea!

A while back I wanted to create something similar that'd help me ride every path and side streeet here in Boulder, CO, but it never went anywhere. I especially like the Pac-man idea for unexplored paths!

Any plan to extend it outside of Calgary?

[sixstringtheory]

Brilliant app idea. Any plans to expand to new places, or open source?

[pixelgeek]

Calgary is a very pretty place.

I miss the food in Vancouver and I wasn't even that much of a foodie. I miss the more diverse population. I really miss Commercial Drive (quiet sob)

But we moved because of house prices. All of the amenities of Vancouver were great but we couldn't actually afford to live there. Its the same reason I don't live in San Fran. I had the opportunity to do so and would have loved to but the prices were insane.

When we first moved I was a bit worried because I would see people in Calgary complain about traffic congestion and traffic noise and then when I finally settled in I wondered what the heck they were even talking about. Even on a bad day it is still much quieter here than Vancouver.

After a certain age the food and the music and the theatre isn't as important.

The rivers are great though and driving down 14th into the core is a nice view.

Then you get downtown...

[moneywoes]

How was the weather been? That is the main reason why I would hate to leave Vancouver

[mmastrac]

It's cold to very cold from Nov 1 to April-ish with occasional Chinook breaks. If you can live somewhere else for those five months, they are the worst for sure.

[pixelgeek]

The chinooks are amazing. It means 'snow eater' in the Blackfoot language and it is true. The wind comes in and the snow disappears.

They typically come with a 'chinook arch' here in Calgary where there is a band of clouds to the south that demarcate the different weather systems.

Its truly something to behold

[mmastrac]

It is definitely one of the things that have made winters (barely!) bearable for me. If we had Winnipeg-style winters I would have left in my 20s. :)

[waltherg]

Gosh. Did Winterpeg for a year. That was an experience for sure. So long Windypeg.

[pixelgeek]

The weather has been rather weird lately. The summer was very hot and smokey. Who knows what winter will be like.

I grew up in Northern BC so I don't mind the winter. It gets cold for a few weeks but is otherwise bearable.

You get an actual spring here which is nice. Lots of new growth and green things. It is an actual dramatic change which Vancouver doesn't have.

Despite the snow I would never want to be in Vancouver again in winter. The clouds are over your head all the time. It feels oppressive. Winter here has lots of light and sky. And you never get that brown leaf mush stuck on your shoes like you do in Vancouver.

[racl101]

> The politics are toxic in both places.

Can't speak to outside of Calgary, but as long as politics is toxic in most places, reason why I stay here even though I could make more elsewhere is cause I can actually be a single guy and afford a decent place in Calgary.

I know married families in Toronto who individually make more than I do and still are struggling to come up with money for a freaking condo. That's insane.

The less than stellar transit and dead downtown scene notwithstanding.

[FredPret]

I’m making the exact same move and for the same reasons.

Toronto has gotten so much more expensive in the years that I’ve lived here. I’ll miss the restaurants and the Island, but it’s going to be so amazing to have some space

[noizejoy]

>Income taxes are way lower in Alberta than Ontario; moving my remote-ok tech job to calgary was equivalent to getting a five-figure raise.

How did you get to the lower income tax amount, given that it would appear from the official Canada Revenue Agency website figures[0] that provincial income tax seems generally higher in Alberta than in Ontario - especially the first 45k where the Ontario rate (5.05%) is just over half of the Alberta rate (10%). But even in the highest marginal tax bracket, Ontario seems to top out at 12.15% while Alberta tops out at 14%.

So your statement about income tax savings seems difficult to reconcile with the income tax charts without some other explanation.

[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individ...

[winter_blue]

> Income taxes are way lower in Alberta than Ontario; moving my remote-ok tech job to calgary was equivalent to getting a five-figure raise.

This is completely false.

Albert’s income tax rates are:

10% on the first $131,220 of taxable income, + 12% on the next $26,244, + 13% on the next $52,488, + 14% on the next $104,976, + 15% on the amount over $314,928

Ontario’s income tax rates are:

5.05% on the first $45,142 of taxable income, + 9.15% on the next $45,145, + 11.16% on the next $59,713, + 12.16% on the next $70,000, + 13.16% on the amount over $220,000

Sales tax is lower in Alberta (5% be 13% in Ontario), but income tax, especially on the first $100,000 is significantly higher.

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individ...

Why are you lying, so blatantly?

[xtracto]

> I can afford a 1700sqft inner city calgary home with a garage and a yard for the price of a 900sqft 2bed downtown toronto condo.

I thought that Canada used the metric system. You and also the article expresses measurements in imperial units. Is that still used in Canada?

[kingofpandora]

Officially, it's all metric but in practice, it depends.

For people, height is in feet and weight is in pounds.

For distance, it's metric all the time. And that's how we measure our groceries.

For temperature, it's Celsius (except when taking someone's temperature, in which case it could be either).

For the size of your house, it'll be square feet.

And I'm sure a lot of what I just said this will depend on age and location.

[swader999]

The skiing is a little better too.