Five days of eating downtown, a dollar at a time
Five days of $1 tastes, national bike titles in Bowness, and a suite rule that says yes 190 times out of 192.
Taste of Calgary opens today and runs through the long weekend — July 30, 31, and August 1, 2 and 3, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., with an earlier 8 p.m. close on the holiday Monday. Admission is free, which is the part worth repeating: you pay only for what you actually eat. Tickets are a dollar each and dishes run two to eight tickets, so grazing across a dozen kitchens instead of committing to one dinner is very much the point. There's live music from local players, artisans and marketplace vendors, and dogs are welcome on a leash.
Minnie reports for duty at emergency management
The Calgary Emergency Management Agency has taken on its first facility dog. Minnie comes from the Dogs with Wings Assistance Dog Society, which trains and places assistance dogs across Alberta and Western Canada, and she spent more than two years learning to stay calm and focused in rooms where nobody else is. When CEMA activates, she may turn up at a reception centre with residents who've been displaced, in the Emergency Operations Centre alongside staff working long shifts, or welcoming Canada Task Force 2 members home from a disaster scene. Her job is specific and small: rest her face in someone's hand, sit close, take the temperature down.
Braille shows up on Route 90's bus stops
Eighty-nine tactile, high-contrast signs are now in place along Route 90, the Bridgeland–University of Calgary run, with raised text and braille carrying the stop ID, route details and Calgary Transit's TeleRide number, 403-974-4000. Transit worked with CNIB on the design and is gathering feedback through a questionnaire, which will help decide whether the signs eventually go up on every bus route in the city. It follows last year's work at Sunnyside Station: automatic gate arms, wider crossing surfaces, tactile surfaces and ramps, cane-detectable features, upgraded lighting. Unglamorous hardware, but for a rider who is blind or has low vision it's the gap between travelling alone and needing someone along.
Bowness gets a national field this year
Tour de Bowness is a bigger animal in 2026. The race is hosting the Canadian Masters Road Championships and the provincial time trial championships, which means riders from across the country are coming to Bowness next week to chase the maple leaf jersey that goes to the winner. If you've only ever watched the racing go past from a lawn chair on a side street, this is the year to pay closer attention. A national title changes who shows up, and a deeper field makes for sharper racing on streets you drive every day.
Secondary suites get automatic approval; backyard rules stay put
Calgary is keeping its existing rules for backyard suites, while secondary suites will now get automatic approval — a concrete difference for anyone weighing whether to add a unit. The numbers underneath the backyard debate are the quiet punchline: of the 192 development permit applications for backyard suites submitted to the City last year, administration says all but two were approved. That's a process that said yes 190 times out of 192. Whether you read that as proof the rules are working fine or proof they aren't doing much of anything tends to depend on which side of the fence you're standing on.
Check the bus fee before August 31
The first bell rings Monday, August 31 for both the Calgary Board of Education and the Calgary Catholic School District, and fall arrives with nearly 2,000 new students in Calgary's public classrooms. More students means more teachers and more classrooms, which is the good news. The less welcome line item is higher bus fees for some families. If your kid rides, this is the month to look up the number rather than discovering it in September, because transportation costs are exactly the sort of thing that quietly resets while everyone is out at the lake.