Highwood

The Atlas

Highwood keeps a swimming pool. An outdoor pool, run by the community association rather than the City, and on the first warm week of June the whole neighbourhood remembers it at once. The rest of the year the boards go up on the rink and the same crowd relocates about forty metres. Very few Calgary communities still hold their own summer this way.

Grounds

High level ground, about 1,110 metres, sitting on the north side of the escarpment communities and holding nine tenths of a square kilometre. McKnight Boulevard closes the north, 4 Street the east, 40 Avenue the south, and John Laurie Boulevard swings around the west with Nose Hill beyond it. Inside those lines the streets run a plain postwar grid, avenues in order and traffic thinning block by block off the boundary roads, so the address number tells a buyer roughly how much road noise a house will hear before the buyer ever stands on the step. Nothing here is a landmark, which we count in its favour. The community orients itself by what sits at its edges, meaning the hill on one side and the park down the slope on the other, and residents give directions accordingly.

Highwood was established in 1954 and filled through the oil-boom years that followed, low postwar houses on a plain grid drawn at the moment Calgary was building this ring outward as fast as it could pour footings. Both of the large green spaces that now define the address arrived afterwards. Confederation Park opened in 1967 for the country's centennial, 160 hectares along the North Hill Coulee, saved by the Centennial Ravine Park Society after a decade of argument that the coulee should be kept. Nose Hill became a park in 1980, 11.27 square kilometres of rough fescue grassland and the fourth largest urban park in Canada. A grid laid out in 1954 for its own reasons ended up with two of the city's biggest parks within a walk, which is the kind of luck no developer can plan for, and the first thing we say about the address.

Homes

Predominantly single-family postwar houses across roughly 993 dwellings, with a smaller share of condominiums and apartments and a rebuilding line that has been working through the grid for years. The original stock is small, plain building, bungalows and split-levels on lots the postwar plan drew with room, which is exactly the combination that draws a rebuild. So a Highwood block reads in sequence, original house, new pair, original house, until the sequence breaks and starts again. The lots are the argument, and we make it from the lane rather than the street, where the width shows. A buyer looking for a detached house inside the city with room to grow into it tends to find this grid on a second weekend of looking, because it sits north of the escarpment communities and keeps the walk to either park. What comes with the plain house is a plain lot on a plain street, and a set of community assets that a great many newer neighbourhoods would trade for. Nine hundred and ninety-three dwellings sit inside nine tenths of a square kilometre here, which is a grid dense enough to hold a pool and a rink and open enough that every one of those houses has a yard behind it.

Everyday

The community association is the centre of gravity, and its facility list explains why. A main hall, meeting rooms, a stage, a gymnasium and a studio for dance and fitness fill the building. Outside it sit an outdoor swimming pool, a lit and boarded and fenced hockey rink, an outdoor skating rink and playfields. That pool is the rarity, and we know of very few community associations in the city that still run one. A community-run outdoor pool is a thing Calgary had a lot of in 1960 and has very few of now, and it changes what July looks like from a Highwood front door. Confederation Park runs down the slope for the long walks and the December light display, Nose Hill sits across John Laurie for the trails and the view, and the pathway network connects both. Highwood School and Colonel Irvine School serve the area, offering Mandarin bilingual programs. Designations change year to year, so confirm current catchments with the Calgary Board of Education and the Calgary Catholic School District.

Edges

McKnight Boulevard north, 4 Street east, 40 Avenue south, John Laurie Boulevard west. Four roads, no rivers and no ravines inside the boundary, which is a plainer arrangement than the bluff and coulee lines organizing much of the inner northwest and means a resident always knows which side of a line they are standing on. East across 4 Street, Highland Park runs the Centre Street corridor. South past the park, Mount Pleasant holds the older grid and the pool everybody else drives to. The wider map sits on the full neighbourhoods index.

The Highwood Edit

Where to start. Hours move, so check before you go.

Nose Hill Park
Across John Laurie. Eleven square kilometres of grassland, and the city from the top.

Confederation Park
Down the slope. A hundred and sixty hectares, opened for the centennial in 1967.

The boarded rink
Lit and fenced, beside the hall, with a second sheet of flooded ice alongside it.

The Highwood outdoor pool
Run by the community association. The reason July is different here.

We keep the listings on the neighbourhood page, updated as the market moves. Start with Highwood homes for sale.