Nothin' but blue skies in the new Calgary brand

Jason Markusoff · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 17, 2024 9:03 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

The weather gods were kind to Calgary boosters, and the clouds parted Wednesday after the spring-stormy days to match their civic rebranding exercise.

Say goodbye to "Be Part of the Energy" after about 12 years, and look upward. Calgary will now be "Blue Sky City."

Calgary Economic Development (CED) and its partners haven't released the logos and visual elements yet to go with this new brand. But predicting its dominant hue is a safer bet than "Maple Leafs lose to Bruins in first round."

And here's how they promoted the event where they launched it. 

Calgary turning blue appears a dramatic move away from the city's long-standing institutional embrace with the colour red. Think of the Calgary Flames, Stampeders, the Calgary Stampede, the Peace Bridge that's ubiquitous in promotional images. The outgoing slogan, and the red hat on the bygone "Heart of the New West" sign, that more bygone slogan.

When the Peace Bridge was unveiled, this was among the rationalizations behind making it red.

What's blue in Calgary, aside from the giant ring near the airport, and the map on federal election nights?

Ah yes, the sky. The blueness that residents and visitors typically see 333 days per year, CED repeatedly noted Wednesday.

"We are a city of unexpected possibilities, where ambitions are as big as the blue skies we converge under," CED head Brad Parry told reporters.

Throw in references to "blue-sky thinking," and you've got this new product of various focus groups, surveys and extensive consultations with 129 organizations across 26 sectors.

Boosters prefer to accentuate where we're going and what we're gaining, and Parry insisted this big civic rebrand isn't a departure from anything — not red, and not "energy."

The red will still be in the iconography, he said. Indeed, there was a band of rouge in between the sun and the dominant sky in the new banner image, a version that he and several organizational leaders stood in front of, many wearing bold blue blazers, scarves or eyeglass frames (while Parry went grey jacket, black shirt).

He also declared this wasn't an abandonment of the old tagline's nod to the oil and gas sector. "We'll always be the energy city," he said in an interview.

But at the same time, the city agency's branding review told officials that too many Calgarians didn't feel that the current slogan covered what they're doing in a city and world of transition, where diversification is ever the buzzword.

"We learned that 60 per cent of Calgarians don't feel like they belong in Calgary," Calgary Arts Development CEO Patti Pon told the news conference.

That finding may jar longtime Calgary residents, but also get vigorous nods from more recent arrivals.

Inclusion is a big part of this revised Calgary pitch. The consultations and announcement deliberately reached beyond the traditional tourism and business sectors to groups representing immigrant, 2SLGBTQ+ and Indigenous communities.

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

One doesn't typically hear remarks about a city's racism and marginalization in an economic developers' event, but Anila Umar of the Centre for Newcomers wasn't shy about confronting those issues at CED's event.

"For me, the whole blue-sky piece of this is: How do we work together with that hope?" she said. "Because without hope, without working together, we're never going to actually achieve that ideal."

Who isn't aware of this city's blue-sky tendencies, and Calgary's routine optimism and sense of possibility? But to recognize that is to also know there's a binary here in Boom and Bust City.

As the late singer Prince and any Calgarian this week can testify, sometimes it snows in April.  Last year, the wildfires brought the city a distressing glut of smoke-sky days, and this year is threatening to be more dire.

Expect to hear a bunch of quippers ask "What happened to Blue Sky City?" every time Calgary betrays that moniker.

But, Parry notes, the haze and clouds ultimately lift and the blue returns. (In times of struggle, a city always carries that faith, doesn't it?)

Rebranding efforts always provoke debate, conversation and cries from those who grew fond of existing slogans. It happened a decade ago as the "energy" tagline dawned.

Sometimes, slogans get tried out — blue-skied? — and don't work. Fifteen years ago, a CED rebranding exercise came up with "The Most Dynamic City in Canada," and that quickly found history's dustbin. 

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

Calgary's leaders intend to go big with this new identity, unveil it across various local agencies in coming months. Some will see in it an endless expanse of potential, while it will make others feel blue.

And yes, we writers will have a field day with puns. Endless possibilities there, too.