The purpose of this week is to interconnect, and to start learning the different businesses under the HCE system. Companies collaborating, working together, and getting to know one another properly.
Nine working sessions across Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, held between the Marriott and Christan's place. Saturday is arrivals, Sunday is Banff and the welcome party.
Roles as Christan has them. Click a name for their LinkedIn. Gold means flying in.
Saturday is unstructured, so this is the Beltline and the two strips either side of it. Hover any pin, click for a Maps link you can send to your phone. Banff has its own map further down.
Fourteen businesses across the week, three of them the Steward Organizations that carry the HCE System. If you only half know what one of them does, this is the section for that.
Flights come into YYC through the day. The airport sits on the north edge of the city, roughly twenty five minutes from downtown when the Deerfoot behaves itself.
Home base for the visiting crew is the Residence Inn in the Beltline, a block off the downtown core and walking distance to most of what you would want on a Saturday night. Christan is meeting people at the hotel through the day.
Stephen Avenue is four blocks north of the hotel and closes to traffic, so it is the easy first walk. Seventeenth Avenue SW is the other direction and is where Calgary actually eats and drinks on a Saturday. Both are covered further down this page.
Arrivals into YYC. Ieva. Milo from Hive. Chris De Pew and Santiago Aguilar from ITA Global. The KETRICS three come in later: Josh Reichmann and Rachel McPherson on Sunday, Jamie Webster on Tuesday. Post your times in the channel.
Check in at the Residence Inn, Beltline. 610 10 Ave SW. Ten minutes on foot to the core, five to Seventeenth Ave.
Nothing formal. Everyone is on their own for dinner and whatever else. The hotel sits in the Beltline with Stephen Avenue four blocks north and Seventeenth Avenue a few blocks south, which is most of the good food in the city inside a fifteen minute walk. There are pins for all of it on the map above.
Pickup is 08:30, outside the Residence Inn. Up to Banff for the day, lunch in the mountains, and back in Calgary around 5:00 pm so there is time to land before the evening. Open invitation, so say in the channel if you are coming.
Then 6:30 pm at Christan's place, the welcome party. Appetizers, music, a lounge sort of evening, running late. This is where everyone actually meets, which is why Monday morning is company introductions rather than personal ones.
It is the Labour Day long weekend, so Banff is at its busiest of the year and the townsite parking fills early. The 08:30 departure is not arbitrary.
It is 128 km from downtown Calgary to the Banff townsite, about an hour and a half on the Trans Canada. The prairie runs flat for forty minutes and then the front ranges come up out of nowhere all at once. That moment is worth the drive on its own.
Nothing here is fixed, it is just what works. Leave Calgary early, do the far thing first while the light is good, work your way back toward town, and eat in Banff before you drive home in the dark.
Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, or the Banff townsite loop? Doing both properly in one day is a stretch. Louise and Moraine are another 57 km past Banff and Moraine can only be reached by shuttle. The townsite loop, Minnewanka, the gondola, Bow Falls and the hoodoos is a slower, easier day with more time to actually talk.
Gondola or no gondola? Sulphur Mountain puts you at 2281 m with a boardwalk along the ridge and the whole Bow Valley underneath you. It is the single best hour for a first time visitor. Book online ahead, it uses dynamic pricing and the walk up counters cost more.
Pickup outside the Residence Inn. 610 10 Ave SW. Coffee in the vehicle, cameras charged. The mountains start showing up around Cochrane and do not stop.
Lunch in the mountains, and whichever way the group votes for the day, lakes or the townsite loop. Both are laid out in the Banff guide below.
Back in Calgary. Enough of a gap to drop your bags, change, and get your bearings before the evening.
The welcome party at Christan's. Appetizers, music, and a lounge sort of evening that runs late. Everyone is invited.
Three working days, three sessions a day, two hours each. The gaps between them are not leftovers, they are for one on ones and breakouts. Sessions run between the Marriott and Christan's place.
Fourteen places worth the drive, roughly nearest to furthest. Nobody does all of them in a day. Pick four and do them properly.
Calgary is already higher than Denver's suburbs. By the time you are on Sulphur Mountain you are more than twice as high as the highest point in most of the countries anyone here flew in from.
Hover a bar for the number. Drink more water than you think you need, go easy on the first night's drinks, and the altitude will leave you alone.
A city of one and a half million that still gets called a cow town, sitting where the prairie stops and the Rockies start. Everything below is within twenty minutes of the hotel.
Ten things that will save someone an awkward moment, a cold morning, or forty dollars.
Calgary runs about 20°C in the afternoon and drops to 6°C overnight. Banff is colder and higher: roughly 17°C by day, 2°C at dawn, and September is the first month it can snow up there. Layers, not a coat.
September 7 is Labour Day in Canada, and the working sessions start that morning. Venue access, catering and restaurant availability all need confirming against a holiday, which is an open item on the planner. Sunday the sixth is the long weekend itself, so Banff will be at its busiest of the year.
The Canada Strong Pass ends September 7, so Sunday the sixth costs nothing to enter. From September 8 it is $12.25 per adult per day, so anyone driving out later in the week buys a pass at the highway gate or online.
The road has been closed to private vehicles since 2023. Shuttle from the Lake Louise Park and Ride, roughly twenty five minutes each way. Book ahead or do not go.
Elk wander through the Banff townsite like they own it, and in September the bulls are in rut and genuinely dangerous. Stay 30 m from elk and deer, 100 m from bears. Never get between an animal and its young.
Five percent GST and that is the whole story, the only province in Canada that can say so. Tipping runs 15 to 20 percent in restaurants and bars, and card machines will suggest more than that. You are allowed to press the lower button.
A warm wind comes over the mountains and Calgary can climb 15°C in a few hours in the middle of winter. There is an arch of cloud on the western horizon when it happens. Half the city gets a headache. Less likely in September, but you will hear about it.
Solid in Calgary, solid in Banff and Lake Louise, patchy to nothing on the highway between and gone entirely on the Bow Valley Parkway. Download offline maps before you leave the city.
Airport to downtown 17 km. Downtown to Banff 128 km. Banff to Lake Louise another 57 km. Everything takes longer than the map says once the September traffic is on the Trans Canada.
Sunrise near 7:00 am, sunset near 8:20 pm. The hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset are when the mountains turn gold and every photo suddenly works. Plan one of them deliberately.
Click a card. There will not be a test, but there will be a moment where someone says one of these and watches your face.
It ticks off and remembers, on this device. Built for a September week that has a boardroom and a mountain in it.