Brand New Calgary has nothing but blue skies

The weather gods were kind to Calgary boosters, and after a stormy spring day, the clouds parted Wednesday to coincide with the civic rebranding exercise.

After about 12 years, say goodbye to “Be a part of the Energy” and look up. Calgary will now be the “Blue Sky City”.

Calgary Economic Development (CED) and its partners have yet to release logos and visuals to go along with this new branding. But predicting his dominant tone is a safer bet than “The Maple Leafs lose to the Bruins in the first round.”

Here's how they promoted the event where it started.

Calgary going blue appears to be a sharp departure from the city's longstanding institutional embrace of red. Think of the Calgary Flames, the Stampedes, the Calgary Stampede, the Peace Bridge, all of which are ubiquitous in promotional images. The outgoing motto and the red hat on the “Heart of the New West” sign, which is the former motto.

When the Peace Bridge opened, it was one of the rationales for making it red.

Besides the giant ring by the airport and the map on federal election nights, what's blue in Calgary?

Yes, the sky. Residents and visitors typically see the blue 333 days a year, CED pointed out several times Wednesday.

CED chief Brad Parry told reporters: “A city of opportunities we never expected, ambitions as big as the blue sky we're united in.”

Link to Blue Sky Thinking and you'll receive a new crop of focus groups, surveys and wide-ranging consultations with 129 organizations across 26 sectors.

Boosters prefer to emphasize where we're going and what we're winning, and Parry insists that this big civic rebrand isn't a departure from anything — not red, not “energy.”

Red will still be in the iconography, he said. Indeed, there was a band reddish Between the sun and the dominant sky in the new banner image, a version of several organization leaders stand in front of it, most of them wearing thick blue jackets, scarves or glasses (while Perry wears a gray jacket and black shirt).

He also stated that this is not an old adage to the oil and gas sector. “We will always be an energy city,” he said in an interview.

But at the same time, the city agency's branding review told officials too many Calgarians don't see what they're doing in a transitional world and city where the current slogan is diversification.

“We've learned that 60 percent of Calgarians don't feel like they belong in Calgary,” Patti Pohn, CEO of Calgary Arts Development, said at a news conference.

The news may be disconcerting to Calgarians, but it's also likely to shake the energetic heads of recent arrivals.

The addition is a big part of the revised Calgary Square. The consultation and outreach was deliberately delivered to groups representing immigrant, 2SLGBTQ+ and Indigenous communities outside of the traditional tourism and business sectors.

They emphasized the collective nature of all living under the same sky for the “Blue Sky City”.

It's not common to hear mentions of the city's racism and marginalization at an economic developers event, but Anila Umar of the Center for Newcomers didn't hesitate to confront those issues at the CED event.

“Every piece of blue sky for me: How do we work with this hope?” he said. “Because hopelessly, without working together, we will never reach that ideal.”

Who doesn't know this city's blue-collar tendencies and Calgary's usual sense of optimism and opportunity? But to recognize this is to recognize that there is a binary in Boom and Bust City.

As the late singer Prince and any Calgarian this week will attest, sometimes it snows in April. Wildfires last year left the city with smoky days, and this year could be even worse.

“What happened to Blue Sky City?” Laughter hears the question. Every time Calgary betrays that nickname.

But, as Parry points out, the clouds and clouds will lift and the sky will return. (The city always follows that belief when fighting, doesn't it?)

Rebranding efforts always generate debate, conversation, and outcry from those obsessed with existing slogans. It was ten years ago when the word “energy” was dawning.

Sometimes slogans are tested – blue ski? -and don't work. CED's rebranding exercise 15 years ago called it “Canada's Most Dynamic City” and it quickly found itself in the dustbin of history.

Poor Edmonton, meanwhile, is trying, and nothing ever seems to stick.

Calgary leaders intend to make big strides with this new identity, which they will unveil at various local agencies in the coming months. Some see endless potential in it, while others frown upon it.

Yes, we writers have a field day with puns. There are endless possibilities there too.