So we’re watching this movie, a little known but most enjoyable flick shot in Calgary called Waydowntown (from 2000). The story is that a corporate drone who on a bet spends a full month living in the city’s extensive Plus 15 Walkway Network and never venturing outside. A dark comedy, it’s a look into the spirit-breaking culture of big business in a sterile, climate controlled urban-jungle hell made of glass and concrete.
To go “Waydowntown” is to commit suicide by jumping from a high rise office window. The film touches on this as a final outcome for a pivotal character.
With the credits rolling we were hit with this crazy notion. How about we explore the Plus 15, central to the story, every possible metre of it that’s publicly accessible?* Let’s imagine ourselves characters in the film, even if only for a short time and go where they went. What a great idea.
Goin’ Waydowntown: wandering Calgary’s Plus 15 Network. Presented by Chris Doering & Connie Biggart. (BIGDoer/Synd)
Businesses in the main parts of the Plus 15 are open on Sunday, the day of our visit and were kinda busy, but in most sections they’re shuttered and the halls eerily empty. We’d have the place to ourselves for long stretches and would go a good ten or fifteen minutes without seeing a single soul. And of the few people that passed most we’re bored security guards, more than happy to engage us in conversation. “Finally someone to chat with!” Seems that being alone like that can get to you. They talked our ears off!
Now let’s take in our strange journey…
1) 11:44:00 AM. It’s so frickin’ freezing outside. Mother Nature be damned! Here at Gulf Canada Square we enter the “system” and for the next three or so hours, we’ll call Calgary’s Plus 15 home. In that time we’ll cover every single section that’s open.
Scroll down for photos and to comment.
2) 11:52:22 AM. Just a waterfall thingy. The halls were so dead quiet that the sound it made echoed off the walls.
3) 11:54:18 AM. Put yourselves here any workday at noon-ish and it’d be a madhouse, but here it’s devoid of any signs of life. That’s a theme this day. Luckily, another food court is open in the complex. Wandering the Plus 15 can make a person hungry.
4) 11:57:14 AM. Thick glass keeps the bad outdoors away.
5) 11:59:42 AM. All the electronic gadgets that make the world go round.
6) 12:00:14 PM. The shoe shine place, the ladder-climbing corporate shill’s bestest friend. They do a good business here during the week.
7) 12:00:40 PM. The “screaming” room from Waydowntown. I think it was a smokers corner back then – back when they allowed smoking in buildings. It’s just a small glass enclosure big enough for a few people, with a door at each end. Bizarre.
8) 12:36:20 PM. Post lunch, lost in the Core Shopping Centre. What’s that, people down there? Open stores bring in a few shoppers. The Plus 15 here actually covers four levels, the upper one a food court – and Devonian Gardens, a large green space closed this day. Lots of trendy boutiques here which we could never afford to shop in.
9) 12:43:00 PM. The glass ceiling is covered in a thick blanket of snow. So much of the white stuff this year. What the heck, are we in Winnipeg?
10) 12:46:58 PM. An empty hall and a splash of colour. Back in high school, the days I bothered to attend that is, Adidas was the cool brand of running shoe. Any other and you were mocked.
11) 12:51:06 PM. 2017 was Canada’s 150th. Here’s to a 150 more – if we all join hands and work together and get along, it can happen.
12) 1:00:50 PM. It seems like we’re wandering aimlessly, but we have formula so we don’t miss any sections. Here, a giant size chess-game.
13) 1:07:58 PM. Winter still has a grip on the city and won’t let for two more months. A chance capture, two LRT trains passing. It’s how we got into the core. One of the few times I’m glad we’re not outside. The wind howls.
14) 1:08:42 PM. One leaving the Core Shopping Centre, things get quiet. We bumped into these same people a number of times. Then a guard kicked them out for bringing their dog.
15) 1:12:14 PM. Only the biggest wheels get in. And you have to know the secret handshake. A club where money and power are requirements to being a member.
16) 1:13:28 PM. Caribou Crossing Whisky. “Some tasty woody notes come out after a few minutes, but there is not much spice and no pepper until the end when it joins the tannic oak in a dry and spicy crescendo”, says one review. Through the glass at a liquor store.
17) 1:14:36 PM. In some nondescript hallway that seemed to never end, looking up, a snow covered skylight.
18) 1:19:58 PM. Pondering some investments. The darling of the Toronto Stock Exchange, Archon Minerals, is up! Whoo-hoo, next stop, the Audi Dealer! We’re in the Stock Exchange Tower.
19) 1:20:38 PM. It’s rare to find a payphone these days. Can’t remember the last time we used one. How about you?
20) 1:21:36 PM. A multi-story statue in some lonely corner of the system. Then it hits us, it’s been like forever since we’ve seen another person. We’re the last people on earth.
21) 1:29:38 PM. A fun-house like view. We’re looking so thin! In back a Starbucks. Now there’s something you don’t see everyday.
22) 1:32:02 PM. Through the door is a downtown hotel – many of the outer reaches of the system lead to places like this, or parking garages. Maps are found in many spots along the way. That carpet!
23) 1:33:34 PM. Another dead-end. On reaching a turn around point like this we’d double back and look for the next hallway yet visited, assuring us in a systematic way that we’d take in every single open section this here day.
24) 1:37:38 PM. We all look the same on the inside.
25) 1:39:06 PM. A very backwater section of the Plus 15. The place was all ours.
26) 1:45:56 PM. The price tag of these specs was eye-opening! Downtown sure is expensive.
27) 1:49:00 PM. Waydowntown is definitely worth watching. Once again we’re alone.
28) 1:55:12 PM. The kilometres keep adding up. Some sections of the Plus 15 are new and shiny, others old and with an industrial feel, but they share one thing in common – no one is about.
29) 1:56:08 PM. The Sunterra Store looks empty, but inside bakers were preparing various goodies for the following business day. The smells were intoxicating. Hmmm….wonder if I could make it over the fence. The yellow pylon warns of a liquid spill long since dried up.
30) 1:59:10 PM. A reminder how horrible the day was outside. In this rare instance, we’re happy to be inside, even if the emptiness is getting to us. The brain wonders where everyone went. The Calgary Tower generally gets lost among all the tall office and condo towers in downtown but from this angle it stands out by itself, proud and in all its glory.
31) 2:16:12 PM. An old Noorduyn Norseman in retirement. This the first purpose designed bush plane made in Canada and was built from the 1930s to the 1950s. These rugged beasts could be outfitted with tires, pontoon floats or skis as seen here.
32) 2:26:26 PM. Silver and green, Connie waits back there. Here, something as quiet as a footfall echos loudly and a whisper becomes a shout. What an unusual effect. On a busy weekday, the din must be overwhelming at times.
33) 2:28:36 PM. Waiting for the bus out front of the Bay. The colder it gets, the later they seem to run.
34) 2:41:00 PM. Another empty section that’s ours and ours alone. Where is everyone?
35) 2:45:28 PM. Everything begins to blend together, one section of the Plus 15 looking much as every other. How long have we been wandering these vacant halls? An hour, a day, a month? Time losses all meaning. Then we round a corner and see this…
36) 2:45:42 PM. There’s cows about! They’re called, get this, “Udderly” Art (insert rim-shot here). Always wondered where they went. A bunch of them used to be on display in various parts of the city, but seemingly vanished long ago, like some eighteen years or so. Now we know at least where some of them went (not all are here).
37) 2:47:40 PM. Each cow is unique and reflects the personality of the artist which created it. All started with the same “blank canvas”.
38) 2:48:58 PM. Out the window, winter’s in charge. The hallway…there’s no one…just these cows. Us and cows. A low hum is heard from the heating system…
39) 2:53:08 PM. A vintage computer expansion card on the “cyber-cow”. Ohhh, extra memory! 640K out to be enough for anyone! And a real-time clock – no more entering the time on boot-up! This card probably cost a fortune in its day. Now it’s a reminder of how quick electronics hit obsolescence.
40) 2:59:42 PM. Some old folks out for a walk. The Plus 15 this day was a fine alternative to the cold, cold outside. Seems at least a few people had the idea to walk it. Safe bet we were the only ones that explored every last bit of it. And I doubt anyone else had heard of the film Waydowntown. It’s pretty obscure.
41) 3:02:54 PM. We liked the colour here.
42) 3:07:56 PM. Another food court with no one about. By now we’re getting a bit weirded out by emptiness and silence of it all. There should be people here, but there’s not. Nuclear war, some Twilight Zone Episode, do we smell that bad? Where have they gone?!
43) 3:09:28 PM. Modern sculpture that is also functional. These “trees” help control the wind down at street level. The fins help absorb and redirect gusts. They’re lit up in an array of colours come night.
44) 3:11:04 PM. We’ve close to to the end now. A part of us, the one that’s all safe and warm, doesn’t want to leave – it’s really thinks we could live in the Plus 15 for a month and wants to do it. But the other looks to the outdoors as some release, even if conditions there are somewhat inhospitable. The latter will win.
45) 3:14:18 PM. Some three hours, some twelve or so clicks, a surreal adventure behind us. Step out into the light of day, out into the real world, first time in some time, our Waydowntown experience at an end. Even by our standards this was strange.
46) 3:17:08 PM. Follow the smoke. The smell was unbelievable. Snap back to reality. Off to the train station.
The Plus 15 system dates back to the 1970s and was conceived as a way to protect those moving about the city’s core from nasty weather. It’s since grown to be one the largest interconnected downtown walkways in the world. It’s not without its critics, many of who feel it keeps people off the streets, killing businesses there. It’s called Plus 15 (often stylized +15) as this is the height the walkways are above the ground.
* Some sections of the Plus 15 are card access only where as others are closed on Sundays meaning we could not explore all of it, just those sections open to the general public. In addition, a second section is disconnected from the main part, which if following the don’t go outside rule of the movie, means it was off limits to us (and mostly closed on Sunday anyway). Still, we calculated there’s some eight or nine clicks of it we could walk even if constant backtracking meant we’d put in about good fifty percent more in mileage (kilometreage?).
Turns out GPS doesn’t work well in the core (silly us), so we can’t share what was to be our spaghetti like route. Darn.
The “screaming room” from waydowntown is an airlock of sorts – there’s a giant rolldown door that closes the whole +15 and the screaming room allows access when the giant door is closed
We used to do something called the "pointless challenge" 🤪 and miss those days. It was so much silly fun and often frustrating as heck. In these we'd invite people to send in random photos of obscure locations, but not give any information, and then we'd track where it was and shoot something similar.
Most of these came from old family collections, as was the case here. Anyone up to resurrecting the series?
In hindsight, why didn't we pose someone in our shot?
Pointless: “Devoid of meaning (or) senseless” Merriam-Webster.
If you like what we do and want to support this ongoing project (12 years now), go here: https://www.BIGDoer.com/help-the-society/ Thanks to Connie for making this post possible.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: ca1970 and 2014. Posted by Connie.
Captured on a cold, cold day many years ago. We've been passing this old house for decades and it's little changed in that time. At some point we expect to drive by and it'll be gone.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2017. Posted by Connie.
When retired old railway cars usually get cut up for scrap. Sometimes, however, they find their way into the hands of the general public or whomever. Flat cars make good bridges, and boxcars can be transformed into storage buildings and the like. Case in point here. We see them used like this often enough and in this case, it's part of a corral.
Incidentally, this boxcar dates from 1950 and this was found by tracing the old road number, which is still visible.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2017. Posted by Connie.
This central Alberta racetrack was never a commercial operation but instead just a fun place for car enthusiasts in the area to get together. Early '70s or thereabouts and it only lasted a few years. Even thought it's been abandoned for that long, there is no doubt what was here.
You know we like the the obscure stuff and this one fits the bill perfectly. Found by accident while backroad cruising and the history comes thanks to local car guy Mike.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2022. Posted by Connie.
On top of little Myrtle Mountain in the Kimberley (BC) Nature Park.
There's some good wilderness fun to be had here and nice views as you can see, but the real reason we came is mining history. The whole area near the ski hill was extensively worked over a century ago and we were looking for evidence of this. We didn't find much in the area searched, but it's a big chunk of property and we hope to return to cover more ground again soon. Of all the subjects we cover, mining related is a favourite.
Still, it was a good hike and that can't be bad. Look to the comments for more info 👇.
Exploring nature and history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2022. Posted by Connie.
It's a strange curiosity in south Kananaskis, there on a hillside and we have no idea who created it. We asked around and no one's completely sure about its history. In the past it showed the Canada 100 logo from 1967 but in 2017 someone changed it to reflect the country's 150th.
That's our friend Emily from DanOCan.com having a look.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2017. Posted by Connie.
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Love this one!
Thanks, we love getting creative!
Always a fun time and what a creative approach.
I so love doing these! And if you do it, do it well.
Neat! I always liked exploring downtown…especially when it was not a busy work day.
Love the non-busy times. Very eerie wandering the empty halls. But mid-day during the week, no way!
Quite the hike, thanks for the tag-along adventures you bring us on!
You are most welcome!
The “screaming room” from waydowntown is an airlock of sorts – there’s a giant rolldown door that closes the whole +15 and the screaming room allows access when the giant door is closed
We were scratching our heads on this one. Ahhh, now it all makes sense. Thanks!
Cool photoblog! I run catering deliveries through the +15s on weekdays to various offices – I wish I had the chance to see them devoid of people!
Glad you like it! Quite the contrast, weekday to weekend. Lots of people, or nobody. It can get crazy at times, but we liked the dead quiet Plus 15.