The Genesis Centre in Northeast Calgary offers skateboarders like Austin Lynch, 19, plenty of room to try out their tricks. Areas like this have grown dramatically in the past few decades. The Genesis Centre in Northeast Calgary offers skateboarders like Austin Lynch, 19, plenty of room to try out their tricks. Areas like this have grown dramatically in the past few decades. The Globe is visiting communities across the country to hear from Canadians about the issues affecting their lives, their futures and their votes in this federal election. Greg Steiner used to live in the country. Moose and deer wandered through his four-acre plot. Badgers burrowed, and prairie dogs squeaked. The guy next door raised bison. Mr. Steiner, a teacher and landscaper, sold the place in 2006. Today, 35 houses sit on his old acreage in Northeast Calgary, most of them occupied by new Canadians. Signs along the roads advertise an internet service for Indian TV channels. A nearby restaurant serves both tandoori prawns and Szechuan chili chicken. Eighty-five per cent of the visitors to a local community centre that Mr. Steiner helped found are visible minorities, and 46 per cent speak a language other than English or French at home. Open this photo in gallery: This group of men playing cards in Saddlestone in northeast Calgary are all originally from Punjab. South Asians make up a large share of the community in the city's northeast quadrant. Welcome to the Northeast. What used to be sprawling prairie is now a bustling immigrant landing pad where big ambitions mix with anxieties about costs, overcrowding, crime, tariffs and, yes, even immigration – worries that are on the rise as Canada faces a trade war with the United States and a high-stakes federal election. Many of them spring from the district’s astonishing growth. Alberta’s population grew by 204,000 between July 1, 2023, and July 1, 2024 – an increase of 4.4 per cent, the highest of any province. The population of Calgary has roughly doubled in 30 years. In the most recent census, in 2021, four out of 10 people identified as a visible minority. The subdivisions and shopping malls of the new Northeast have leapfrogged Calgary International Airport to reach right to the city limits, ending abruptly in brown fields that stretch toward the horizon. Raj Dhaliwal, who represents part of the area on city council, says two-thirds of the city’s newcomers land there. One neighbourhood alone, Cornerstone, will have 30,000 residents when it is fully built out. Newly built homes in Saddletowne, and ads for more to come in Cityscape and Cornerbrook, add to the atmosphere of growth across Calgary. People come from all over: China, Nigeria, the Philippines, Ukraine, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, other parts of Canada. But in the northeast corner of the Northeast – the top right on a map of the city – the flavour is overwhelmingly South Asian. Northeast resident Naheed Nenshi, Alberta’s NDP Leader and a former mayor of Calgary, jokes that he lives in the least diverse part of the city. Many households have three generations living under one roof: teenagers in the basement, parents and grandparents upstairs. The Genesis Centre, the community hub Mr. Steiner helped start, says the homes its visitors live in have an average of 3.6 people each, the highest figure of any district in Calgary. A quarter of the families have children under 15. Gurpreet Saini, 43, owns a six-bedroom house on the very edge of the Northeast, right next to the Stoney Trail, a busy expressway. He bought the place new in 2018. His parents, his wife and his two daughters, aged 11 and five, all fit in it comfortably. So does his Ford F-150 Lightning, the electric version of the pickup truck, which he needs for his five-man construction business. The Genesis Centre is a non-profit focused on wellness and social unity in the Northeast. About half its visitors use languages other than English or French at home, a sign of the diversifying local population. Kaytlynn Legge and Sam Wikey, both 20, say they enjoy living in Saddletowne, but are concerned about careless and dangerous driving in the area. Raaed Al Najlat, 36, says he is grateful to Canada for helping him start a new life with sons Jamal, 10, Omar, 1, and Adam, 5, but he remains concerned with finding a suitable job. Shops like this one in Saddletowne try to fill newcomers’ demands for the tastes of home. Ashima Bhalla, who runs the Made by AKB bakery, calls the Northeast a ‘bumping place.’ Despite its reputation as a poor ethnic neighbourhood, the polar opposite of the richer, older, whiter Southwest, the Northeast has an up-and-coming dynamism. Many residents have started their own businesses. Ashima Bhalla grew up “a Northeast gal.” Her parents owned a jewelry store. She wanted to be a paramedic, trained as a dental assistant and then decided she would try to make a living doing something she loves: baking. After studying under renowned pastry chefs in New York, she opened Made by AKB, which she calls “this cute bougie little café in the heart of the Northeast.” Tucked into a mall, it sells ornate cakes and cupcakes – some of them, like the gulab jamun, influenced by the flavours of her parents’ native India. Ms. Bhalla, an effervescent 26-year-old, calls the Northeast “a bumping place” where “there’s always, like, someone getting married on your street. We’re fun, fun folks up here.” Like many locals, she has complaints, too. People are ruder these days. Bad drivers are a menace. “If you throw everyone in the mix and you hope for rainbows and sunshine, it doesn’t quite work,” she says. Jalal Uddin, 27, who designs electrical systems, feels the same way. He sees more road rage on the street and more garbage in the parks. He says that with so many people arriving, the Northeast is getting crowded. Though he admits with a laugh that it may sound strange, coming from someone born in Pakistan, that Canada has been taking in too many people. “Calgary is not what it used to be like,” he says. “It used to be a very good city to live in, but right now, I don’t think so.” He believes the country needs change and is leaning toward voting Conservative in the federal election. Open this photo in gallery: Naeem Chaudhry, a taxi company owner, had hoped to run in Calgary McKnight against the Liberal candidate, George Chahal, but the Conservatives deemed him ineligible. Calgary, like most of Alberta, is usually solid Tory blue in federal politics. The city didn’t elect a single Liberal between 1968 and 2015. It had just one Liberal MP at dissolution: George Chahal, who won a Northeast riding in 2021 and is running again. Navpreet Singh, 32, has worries, too. He and his trucking business partner, 27-year-old Gautam Handa, were strapping a load of shingles onto a flatbed destined for Arizona, but Mr. Singh says business is already slowing down as U.S. customers pull back over tariff uncertainty. Meanwhile, the higher interest rates of recent years have pushed up his monthly mortgage payments by more than half. Real estate broker Rana Matturi says the rising cost of living is on everyone’s minds. He opens his phone to show his latest monthly utility bill: about $600. Car and home insurance are up, too. One reason comes from the sky. Northern Calgary is subject to vicious hailstorms like the one that ripped through the area last August, denting cars, breaking windows and leaving house siding riddled with holes. Mr. Matturi’s car was totalled. Open this photo in gallery: McKnight–Westwinds station is one of the most northeasterly stops for the CTrain that ties Calgary together. Population growth in the Northeast has put more demand on the transit system. Governments are aware of the pressures rapid growth is putting on the Northeast. After years of neglecting the area, they are investing in transit, parks, schools and recreation centres. The newer neighbourhoods are designed to be more walkable than traditional suburbs. Lots of people get around on foot out here: elders out for a slow ramble, mothers pushing strollers, students with backpacks. More improvements are coming. Mr. Dhaliwal says plans are being made for a big new multisport complex, complete with a cricket stadium. The Genesis Centre is hoping to expand. Open since 2012, it already gets 2.5 million visitors a year. The giant complex has a library, skate park, YMCA, badminton courts and indoor soccer fields. People come to take yoga classes, learn English, get help managing their finances or bring their kids to the pool. “It’s a rip-roaring success,” says Mr. Steiner, who is 86 and still lives in the Northeast. He has fond memories of his old acreage. But he marvels at what it has become. East to West: More from The Globe and Mail The Decibel podcast Through the 2025 election, producer Kasia Mychajlowycz is travelling across Canada to ask locals what’s on their minds. In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, many spoke of increasing patriotism and anger at Donald Trump, as well as their struggles with cost of living in rural communities. Subscribe for more episodes. 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