The biggest landowner in Calgary is the City of Calgary.

Perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise, especially when you think about large parks and other public areas in the city.

But a discussion of a possible interchange at a major intersection on Macleod Trail made me realize the city was sitting on pieces of nearby land that any casual observer would not know the city owned.

How long has it owned that land? How much did that cost? Was it making any revenue by renting out the space to owners of nearby businesses?

Too many questions and too few answers.

So I started asking a bigger question: how much land does the city actually own? It turns out the answer is a lot.

In fact, the city owns so much land, no one really knew exactly how much. I asked someone with a little pull to make some inquiries internally, and what happened next was a surprise.

There isn't a single map that outlined all of the city's holdings. It actually had to be put together, and was made by asking each department the same question: what land do you own?

Ultimately the answers from each department were plotted onto a single map, and that's the document we've re-produced here for your perusal.

I'm not naming my source because he'd rather not be known but he felt it was your right to know. After all, it is your land.