Say goodbye to summer

Back to school signs are plastered from every department store window in the city and, although it’s still warm out during the day, there’s often a chilly breeze that makes you reach for your sweater.

This means two things: school has come and summer is done.

Photo: Holly Triebwasser

Some of you may look forward to starting classes, to buying new notebooks, pens, highlighters and textbooks. This feeling usually passes quickly — probably around the second day of classes, once you’ve observed your new professors, checked out your curriculum and started actually receiving homework.

After such a big summer in Calgary this year, getting into the groove of things is bound to be difficult.

Some of you may still be hung over from too many pub-crawls during Stampede week. But the Calgary Stampede, which celebrated its centennial this year, was a huge part of what made this such an exciting summer, with more people than ever to enter the grounds, breaking records with 234,674 visitors.

For many Calgarians, the Stampede might have been the biggest thing to happen this summer. But for the majority of the world, the Stampede wasn’t even a bleep on their radar (except maybe Bob Barker’s radar, who said we should “wind it up and close it down.”)

On July 27, all eyes were focused on London for the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Canada took home 12 bronze, five silver and one gold medal, which was won by 23-year-old Rosannagh “Rosie” MacLennan in trampoline.

Although many media outlets mourned Canada’s disappointing medal collection, there were a number of impressive accomplishments from Canadian Olympians this year, perhaps most notably from the Canada women’s soccer team’s bronze medal win which, according to CBC, is Canada’s first Summer Games medal in a traditional team sport since Berlin in 1936.

The Olympics didn’t completely overshadow our own events here in Calgary. There were plenty of shows and festivals to keep people busy nearly every weekend.

Celebrating another milestone this year was GlobalFest, which returned with its now 10th annual fireworks show at Elliston Park, joining many other big names such as the Folk Fest, Fringe Festival, Reggae Festival and Sled Island.

But now that August is over we can only look back fondly on the summer months, especially since there is only a small handful of events to look forward to from now until next April.

That leaves students with plenty of time to get started on the homework they’re already starting to receive (sorry about that).