I lived in Calgary from the age of one until I was 24 when I moved for school and left permanently to marry and live with my husband.

Calgary is a beautiful place to live. The views you get of the mountains are gorgeous. There is wonderful hiking, camping, skiing, etc. two hours drive from Calgary to the West. It is the prairie though, so you might find that there are few trees, little greenery, less flowers. The grass is often brown for long seasons due to the erratic weather patterns caused by frequent chinooks. We have a saying in Calgary, "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes"! Be prepared for sudden and dramatic thunderstorms, and hailstorms, and sometimes freak cold snaps in summer and often brief warm spells in the middle of winter. There is about 50% chance of getting a white Christmas any given year. Spring doesn't arrive until quite late so the growing season is short. Snow comes by Halloween.

Dress is overall more western-country style in Calgary then you will find elsewhere in Canada I think, although it's not full on western wear except for a week in July during Stampede, where many people just play along and dress western for fun. During stampede week you'll hear country music playing in a lot of (most?) stores. This annoys some people. The Calgary Stampede is the city's big event, although it also has any number of other cultural events going on, from the folk festival to the dragon boat festival, theatre, the philharmonic orchestra, Shakespeare in the park, and so on. There are museums and the science centre.

You can expect very high housing prices in Calgary and very long commutes to and from work. You have to account for driving time in your schedule. You will almost certainly drive a car living in Calgary, and you'll learn to drive it quite well if you live there long. You will have to deal with a barrage of every weather condition imaginable (aside from freezing rain) and there are red-light cameras and photo radar and the police will set up right after the speed change sign to catch you if you're going over just past the sign. The law's the law for traffic in Calgary. Don't go more than 10 over and even then, watch for cops. When it comes to pedestrians, Calgarians are super-courteous. The accepted practice is to stop and wait for a pedestrian to cross the street if you see one waiting to cross at the side of the road. This is so ingrained in us that it has caused the death of Calgarian pedestrians venturing abroad where motorists are not nearly so courteous and pedestrians cross the road at their own risk, whether or not it's at a corner.

Calgarians often go out for a beer in the same kind of way residents of other cities go out for a coffee.

The local sports teams are the Flames and the Stampeders. Since the Flames' playoff run in 2004, 17th avenue has been named the "Red Mile".

The streets in Calgary increase in number outwards from the middle of the city both North-South and East-West. This means IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU KNOW THE QUADRANT OF ANY ADDRESS YOU ARE GOING TO. Any address in the city can be found four times over, once each in the NE, NW, SE and SW. You will probably at least once go on a long drive only to realise you had the wrong quadrant and you don't know where you're actually going.

Peter's is the city's hamburger joint. There are some lovely world-class fireworks at Globalfest. I guess you'll learn the rest as you go. :)