Balgonie
Balgonie has a Subway restaurant, two gas stations, an outdoor pool, and an ice arena. It is also home to Greenall School.
History
Balgonie was named for Balgonie Castle in Scotland. In 1882, the first train ran through the area on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and a post office was established in 1883. In 1884, Sir John Lister Kaye established a model farm near the railway in Balgonie, with the town being the easternmost point of the old 76 Ranch lands.
A school was built in 1891, and Balgonie was incorporated as a village in 1903 and as a town in 1907.
One of Balgonie's most famous residents was William Wallace Gibson (1876–1965), who created the first Canadian-built airplane. Gibson successfully flew his airplane in Victoria in 1910. Gibson was the subject of the 1991 stop-motion animated short The Balgonie Birdman, directed by Brian Duchscherer and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
The town's population plummeted during the 1930s and 1940s, but the completion of the Trans-Canada Highway in the late 1950s brought new growth.
Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Balgonie had a population of 1,756 living in 621 of its 628 total private dwellings, a change of -0.5% from its 2016 population of 1,765. With a land area of 4.76 km (1.84 sq mi), it had a population density of 368.9/km (955.5/sq mi) in 2021.
2021 | 2011 | |
---|---|---|
Population | 1,756 (-0.5% from 2016) | 1,625 (+17.4% from 2006) |
Land area | 4.76 km (1.84 sq mi) | 3.15 km (1.22 sq mi) |
Population density | 369.2/km (956/sq mi) | 515.8/km (1,336/sq mi) |
Median age | 36.8 (M: 36.4, F: 37.2) | 33.3 (M: 32.6, F: 34.3) |
Private dwellings | 628 (total) 621 (occupied) | 574 (total) |
Median household income | $122,000 |