The party we are meeting arrived last night, on the Rocky Mountaineer excursion train. They were a couple of hours late. Mostly they are new to the area, whereas we're old hands so they're exploring the town while we do laundry at a laundromat that hasn't changed much in 30 years. There's another in Jasper we'll probably hit before leaving.
A real part of the charm of national parks is how slowly they change. Mostly the natural features which are their attraction change very little. Even some of the older buildings are pretty much the same.
Banff townsite has developed quite a lot since we first came here some 40+ years ago. That statement needs some explaining; I refer to Manhattan-style development, not CA style.
The "footprint" of Banff is no larger than it was in the 70s, the acreage is the same. What has happened is that old small buildings have been bought up, demolished, and replaced with newer, larger, fancier structures.
Parks Canada won't let the townsite sprawl, so it has become more intensively developed on the existing footprint. There are lots of glossy resort-style hotels now, our friends are staying in one such. When we first came here the busloads of Asian tourists were Japanese, and most shops had a Japanese-speaking assistant. There are still busloads of Asian tourists but today they're Chinese. I expect shops now have a Mandarin-speaker.
Interesting sidelight: the deterioration that happened to the Japanese economy twenty years ago may now be happening to the Chinese economy. Many indicators point in that direction. Getting capitalism "right" appears to require cultural elements that are not universally present, and not entirely understood. Cronyism and corruption seem to be design flaws of many cultures.
