Immigration

Visit Visa
Information - If you want to visit Canada, you may need a visa. Canada requires citizens from some countries and territories to get a visa before they can enter Canada. To enter Canada, all visitors, except those exempt by regulation, must obtain a Temporary Resident Visa or, as it is usually called, visitor visa.

Student Visa
Information - If you want to study in Canada you must meet the necessary requirements and you may require a temporary resident visa. A temporary resident visa is an official document issued by a visa office abroad, which is placed in your passport to show that you have met the requirements for admission to Canada as a temporary resident.

Work Permit
Information - Normally, Work Permits will only be granted by Canadian immigration authorities and supported "Labour Market Opinion" (LMO). LMO is nothing but approval issued by Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC), indicating that the proposed employment will not adversely affect Canadian workers. However, foreign workers seeking to be employed in the province of Quebec may be additionally required to obtain a Certificat d'acceptation du Québec (CAQ) to be eligible.

Live In Caregiver Program
Information - Special program to help Canadian families to find help where no qualified workers can be found in Canada. Certain criteria apply to both the family and the foreign caregiver. Opportunity to apply for permanent residence after completing 2 years of work with the family. Family members may be included in the application for permanent residence but not for the application for work permit.

Skilled Worker
Information - The Federal skilled worker class is point based and confers permanent resident status to applicants who are able to demonstrate an ability to becoming economically established in Canada. Prospective applicants are assessed under 6 factors and numerous sub factors of assessment providing for a total of 100 points. The main factors are: Education, language, experience, age, arranged employment, & adaptability.

Successful applicants must receive a minimum of 67 points with at least one year of experience within the past 10 years in one of the occupations listed in either Skill Type 0 or Skill Level A or B of the National Occupational Classification (NOC).

Business Class
Information - This Business Immigration program was specifically developed for those individuals who have business expertise, entrepreneurial skills, successful experience and attainment in business, and who can invest in, start, or buy enterprises in Canada and contribute to support the development of a strong and prosperous Canadian economy.

Family Class
Information - Canadian citizens and permanent residents living in Canada, 18 years of age or older, may sponsor close relatives or family members who want to become permanent residents of Canada. This particular class promotes the reunion in Canada of close relatives from abroad and is designed for family reunification.

Canadian Experience
Information - This program is for temporary foreign workers or foreign students who graduated in Canada. To apply under this category, you should have knowledge of English and/or French and have qualifying work experience

Calgary Arts

Calgary Arts Academy

Information - Calgary Arts academy is the result of the combined effort of several people. And that's how Calgary Arts Academy and Research Centre was built. Five years ago, a group of concerned parents and community
members gathered to discuss the possibility of starting a school that would be different; a school that focuses on the student as its first and only customer; a school that leaves tradition behind and embraces new educational methods and learning style theories.

Calgary Blues Music Association

Information - Calgary Blues Music Association is the proud presenter of the annual Calgary Midwinter Bluesfest in February, the annual Calgary International Blues Festival in August, and ongoing blues music events.

Calgary Cultural District Olympic Plaza

Information - The Olympic Plaza Cultural District’s revitalization plan, released May 31 2007, is a manifesto for change in Calgary’s downtown, a call to ‘re-enchant’ the city. Let’s reinvent how we live in our downtown. Let’s
experiment with new ways of achieving lively streets, comfortable gathering places and wonderful culture. Let’s make
this Calgary’s post-card to the world, the first place you take out of town guests to show them the city – and exceed everyone’s expectations. What would YOU do to make this a place you love?

Calgary Fringe

Information -

The Calgary Fringe Festival is set to run July 31 - August 9th, 2009, in Inglewood. This non-juried, uncensored artistic event will feature raw and innovative local, national, and international theatrical productions alongside street performers, international film presentations, food and arts & crafts vendors, visual art displays, music, outdoor stage events - and MORE! And 100% of the revenue goes to the artists! The Fringe will enrich our civic culture, stimulate economic growth in surrounding neighborhoods, broaden the audience base for local artistic events, and highlight the
enormous contributions made by local and national artists and artistic communities.The festival will also raise public
awareness of local arts organizations and their ongoing endeavors, and build bridges between audiences, artists, and the business community.As they have done for over fifty years, Fringe Festivals around the world continue to generate
atmospheres of spontaneity, collaboration, and risk-taking. We're excited to bring this ongoing artistic legacy to Calgary. Prepare to experience our tremendous artistic community in action!

About Calgary

In 1875 a foot weary troop of North West Mounted Policemen topped the valley rim and saw what they were looking for: two clean rivers, forests of spruce and Douglas Fir on the shady north face, poplars tracking the river's edge. It was the ideal place to build a fort, and though they had no reason to look that far ahead, it was the ideal place to build a city too.

First called simply "The Elbow" or "Bow River Fort" then briefly "Brisebois" by Inspector A.E.Brisebois. This was not acceptable to Brisebois's superior officers and Colonel James McLeod came up with the alternate title "Calgary" after his home in the Scottish Highlands.

The fort happened at Calgary because of whisky and the Indian tribes abused by its trade, but Calgary formed around quite different purposes. The rich grassy foothills to the west, fescue grasses in the rolling land to the northeast, the vast grass prairie to the east and southeast. The robe trade had removed the free roaming buffalo from the grasslands, so the Canadian government decided to use grass and cattle as a first stage in the process of colonization and opened the territory to ranching.

The railway came in 1883 and pioneer ranchers poured in from across Canada and beyond. In 1884, with a population of 4,000, Calgary was officially proclaimed a city.
Its first boom was on.

Calgary started out looking like most western towns: a series of wood frame houses, usually two story, with the occasional wooden church steeples and a city hall clock tower. The town was destined for a change, that change came in the form of the great fire of 1886.

Fire fighters did their best, but a large portion of town burned down in spite of them. The results were, those about to build considered materials more fire proof than wood. The answer was found sticking from the banks of the Bow in several nearby locations, sandstone. The cool, yellow stone was not only practical, it was attractive and for more than
twenty years, local quarries couldn't quarry fast enough to keep up with the demand. Calgary was suddenly a city with an image, "The Sandstone City" an image separate from other cities and arguable superior. Building in sandstone became more than mere fashion, each school, bank or private mansion built from it was a contribution to identity, an act of local patriotism.

By 1912 , it had a reliable supply of natural gas, it had a street railway, it had a vaudeville house and a 1500 seat, first class theatre, the Sherman Grand.

At the peak of the surge in 1912, with 47,000 people living in Calgary, something happened that was destined to out last the Sandstone.

A cowboy promoter by the name of Guy Weadick talked four of the most powerful men from the Calgary area into financially backing an experiment called the Calgary Stampede. "The Big Four", Pat Burns, Archie McLean, George Lane and A.E. Cross,
planted the seeds of what was to grow into the Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth.

Although one in every three citizens turned out for that stampede, it still lost money. Weadick did not return to try again until 1919. Since then, the Calgary Show has never looked back. In 1923, it was merged with the Calgary Industrial Exhibition to become the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. for 10 days each July, Calgarians put away their business suits, grab their white Stetsons and join one million visitor s for a noisy celebration of the Old West.

After 1913, the boom in Calgary real estate faltered and the sandstone was exhausted. The cost of adding to the city's sandstone image eclipsed the desire to do so.

Just when it seemed that Calgary might have to content itself with a less than dynamic future, oil made its presence known in 1914 with the Dingman well in nearby Turner Valley. This was to be one of the shortest booms ever, lasting from May to August 1914, coming to an abrupt halt with the outbreak of World War I.

The First World War hit Calgary hard thousands of young men left to join the war effort, hundreds would not return.

In 1924 the roar of high pressure oil and gas erupting from a drill stem, Royalite drilled below the Dingman well and struck it rich. Through '25 and '26, well after well was sunk and the flares from the successes were so brilliant that it was nearly daylight at midnight in Calgary, twenty miles away. In Calgary, life took up where it had left of in 1914. This boom would not begin to sputter until 1927.

The Depression of the 30's hit Calgary hard, those with savings weathered the 30's best, but thanks to a penchant for speculation, Calgarians had investments instead.

The Depression ended in 1939 with the start of World War II, the strong demand for oil drained the Turner Valley oilfield south of Calgary. The effects of the war on Calgary differed little from those on other Canadian cities. Many young men lift to fight, to many didn't return. At the end of the war, the long pent desire to get rolling again, to know prosperity in peacetime, was as strong in Calgary as anywhere, and Calgary had the gift in the ground to do it with. Turner Valley wasn't going to last forever, but it wasn't the only oil formation in Alberta either. In 1947, oil was found at Leduc and, though the field was only fifteen miles from Edmonton, Calgary managed to keep an administrative grip on the bonanza that followed.

In the 50's Calgary became the fastest growing city in Canada and it stayed that way for a long time. From 100,000 in 1947, it mushroomed to 200,000 by 1955 and 325,000
by 1965.

The growth continued to center on oil, with reliable and constant help from the agricultural industries. The establishment as oil capital in the heyday of Turner Valley held, and as the oil patch spread across provincial boundaries and into the untapped North, Calgary remained the heart of the industry.

After the formation of OPEC sent oil prices spiraling upward in the 70's, a fresh boom began in Calgary making past booms look tame.

At the peak of the boom, 3000 people a month were arriving in Calgary. Old Calgary,what little was left, was being smashed down by the city block to make way for the new. The pressure to accommodate the boom was such that there really wasn't time for master planning. The buildings were approved with little thought given to the views to the
relationship of one building to the rest.

The recession that had much of the rest of the world in its grip finally found Calgary in 1982. Some would say the recession was brought on by : the federal government's National Energy Program , the failing cohesiveness of OPEC, Reaganomics, or a world oil glut. Whatever the cause the boom in Calgary had come to an end and was going
the other way. Minute vacancy rates shot up to 20% for office space downtown. Full employment became 15% unemployment and the trains going east were fuller then the ones coming west.

Stereotypes live long and its hard to change them. Calgary has been known from the beginning as a cow town and still has that wild west image. The reality, is to expect a forest of Manhattan like sky scrapers, one will see the impressive and monumental new municipal building nest to the well preserved sandstone structure of old City Hall. The Olympics has left us with the legacy of the country's best hockey arena, the Saddle dome. The speed skating oval is simply a marvel of architecture and technology, only the second covered structure of this kind in the world. We are proud of a large and still growing university and three institutions of college rank. A new, very functional rapid transit system
links residential areas with downtown in minutes. But the Calgary of today will welcome you to our city with a traditional, warm "Howdy ".

With Calgary's large ethnic presence, one can delight themselves with the best gourmet meals and a variety of events virtually from around the would.