When the Calgary Balloon Club was founded in 1976, it didn’t even have a balloon to fly. Now, 50 years later, it has multiple balloons and 90 members who are all passionate about the sport. Linda Then, a club member, is its former chief pilot and 50th anniversary chair. She says the club is celebrating its history in a number of ways throughout 2026. “Our actual date of incorporation is Jan. 20, so we just opened up the whole year,” she said. Then says the club got its start training pilots to fly. “Those pilots turned around and trained other pilots, and it kept going so that we built up a huge community,” she said. “The community of the Calgary Balloon Club is made up of pilots; it’s made up of crews, and it’s made up of just people that enjoy ballooning.” Brian Hval is an honorary member today but founded the Calgary and Edmonton clubs. He says ballooning was experimental in the 70s, and pilots were learning as they went. “Every flight’s an adventure. That’s what’s unique about it is that you don’t know where you’re going to,” he said. “The training was, well, you know, do this, don’t do that. The manuals that came to fly these craft were sometimes two or three pages long, and that was it; you’re on your own after that.” Hval literally wrote the book on flying balloons in southern Alberta. The manual he typed out is now on display at the Hangar Flight Museum. He says as the years progressed, public interest in the sport increased. “We were in the initial wave of interest in that, but we were all learning at the time because no one ever anticipated there would be hot air balloons flying around the world,” he said. “People were learning how to fly under various conditions, and fortunately in Alberta we have excellent weather conditions for most of the year to fly.” Brant Leatherdale is a 20-year member who loved the sport so much he started his own balloon tour business called Kiss the Sky Balloons. He says much of his flying is all over southern Alberta, and members tend to stay out of Calgary airspace. “Calgary has become a much larger city,” he said. “It’s more difficult to get across, so you have to have the right weather conditions but also the right amount of wind to push you across but not too much wind, so all the balloons have been pushed out to High River and other smaller communities to balloon.” Leatherdale says if pilots tried to fly every single morning in this part of the world, they’d likely get in the air close to 50 per cent of the time. He says his best days in the sky are when multiple pilots take off at once. “That’s part of the ballooning that I enjoy the most: ballooning with other balloons and the camaraderie and friendships that you make when you balloon with other balloons,” he said. “I love the freedom of flying; it just is one spot in the world that you forget where you are. You’re just floating along so peacefully, and it’s really the freedom and the peace of flying.” His son Jagger, 13 years old, is well on his way to obtaining his pilot’s licence in a few years. “When I was like seven years old, my mom had her licence, and she took me up for my first balloon flight, and then I just started falling more in love with ballooning,” he said. Jagger now represents the next generation of the Calgary Balloon Club, and that’s just what its founding members like to see.
