Highwood

A 1954 grid with its own outdoor pool, high and level above the escarpment.

Highwood was established in 1954 and filled through the oil-boom years that followed, low postwar houses on a plain grid at about 1,110 metres. 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. The community association runs an outdoor swimming pool alongside a lit and boarded hockey rink, an outdoor skating rink and playfields, which is a set of assets very few Calgary communities still hold. Confederation Park opened down the slope in 1967 and Nose Hill became a park in 1980, so a grid drawn in 1954 acquired two of the city's largest parks within a walk.

We wrote the full story on The Desk. Living in Highwood.