Community Heritage and Family History
Burns Block, 1964
Alison Jackson Photography Collection
The Scottish origins of Calgary’s heritage are quite obvious. We have Macleods and Macdougalls and Lougheeds aplenty. Even the name “Calgary” is taken from a Scottish place on the Isle of Mull. What many people don’t realize is that Calgary had its Irish contingent as well. Many well known people in Calgary’s past have an Irish background and, given that Wednesday is St. Patrick’s Day, I’m going to tell you a little about a couple of the notable Irishmen that helped build this city.
The first and probably most famous is Patrick Burns. He was a man of humble origins, born Patrick O’Byrne near Kirkfield Ontario. A note on the census record for a town near Kirkfield in 1851 says that “the Gaelic is the general language spoken, the greater part of the people understand English particularly the young people. In some cases I was forced to hire an interpreter which cost me one pound.”
Burns came to Calgary, via Minnedosa Manitoba, in about 1890, when the Calgary-Edmonton Railway was under construction. Pat’s friend from his childhood, William McKenzie, had turned to him to provision the railway workers.
He’d only been here a short while before he set up his abattoir east of the Elbow, near Calgary Brewing and Malting. By 1903 he had moved into his beautiful mansion on 13th Avenue SW. By 1911 the Burns Building had been constructed. By 1912, Burns and his buddies had funded the first Calgary Stampede. Pat Burns died in 1937 and left his huge estate in trust to the Burns Memorial Fund, created to help children “reach their full potential.”
If you’re interested in Pat Burns and his contributions to Calgary, there is an excellent book by Grant MacEwan, Pat Burns: Cattle King available at the Calgary Public Library. You can also view pictures of the many buildings and businesses owned by Pat Burns in our Community Heritage and Family History Digital Library. Just search using the name Burns.
The second Irishman whose efforts helped make the city what it is today is John Glenn. He was born in 1833 in County Mayo, Ireland and rattled around England and the United States before finding his home where Fish Creek met the Bow River. When he settled there in 1875 he became one of the first European settlers in this area. He sold his original farm to Edgar Dewdney, the Indian Commissioner, in 1879 and moved to the south side of Fish Creek near the Macleod Trail crossing. He was one of the first farmers, along with neighbour Sam Livingston, to cultivate a cereal crop in the district. He was also responsible for the first irrigation system on the prairies which he shared with his neighbour Sam Shaw, who also used the irrigation system to operate his woolen mill.
John Glenn contributed the land for the building of St. Paul’s Anglican Church near Midnapore. This was in spite of the fact that Glenn was a Catholic. When the Catholics of the area wanted to build a church, it was John Glenn’s son, Patrick, who donated the land right beside St. Paul’s for the Catholic St. Patrick’s Church.
John Glenn was also a pioneer investor. When the CPR was selling lots for the townsite of Calgary in 1883, Glenn was the first to purchase. He built the Frontier Livery Stable, which was then the largest in the city, as well as two other buildings. When he died as the result of an accident in 1886 he left an estate valued at $2600. John Glenn was remembered as a charitable and hospitable man whose name was to be found on many a charitable subscription list in and around Calgary. The Glennfield picnic area in Fish Creek Park is named in memory of John and his wife Adelaide. Information about the Glenn family can be found in the Community Heritage and Family History Collection at the Calgary Public Library by searching the catalogue with the subject “John Glenn Calgary” (so you won’t get books about the astronaut). In particular, the DeWinton and area history book From Sodbusting to Subdivision has a lot of information.
There were many, many more Irish folk who came to Calgary and left their mark. These are only two of those notable sons and daughters of Eire. Slainte!
I was reading the old newspapers, again, when I stumbled on the announcement of the winner of the “name that district” contest on April 15, 1909. J.R.C. Smith, of 1811 Centre Street, Calgary, suggested the name Stanley Park for the new subdivision adjoining Elbow Park. For his prize, he was awarded a fifty-foot corner lot in the subdivision. Over seven-hundred people entered and this, according to promoters, was an indication of a potential rush of buyers for the new lots. I have no idea why the name Stanley Park was chosen over all the others and I have no indication of the significance of the name (although I am still looking). I am very curious so if anyone out there knows, please let me in on the tale.
I checked the Henderson’s directories to see if I could find out more information about Mr. Smith (suspecting, I must admit, that he was made up and this was all a publicity ploy) and what I was able to find was that there was a Smith living at 1811 Centre Street Calgary. Crispin Smith, who was a city magistrate, was the householder at that address. Could J.R.C. Smith have been his son? I don’t know and I haven’t been able to find any more information. No addresses turn up in Stanley Park in the five succeeding years of Henderson’s directories. Even though Stanley Park was named and lots were designated, little development took place until the 1950s. The park itself, was designated a park in 1924, but most of the development of the park took place when landscaping began in the 1960s. My resources are obviously incomplete on the subject of Stanley Park, so I would be most delighted to hear from anyone who can add to my information.
Even the photo I’ve put into this entry is not of the area of Stanley Park but of a lovely vista of the Elbo (sic) River.
I had the pleasure last night of giving a presentation to the Alberta Family Histories Society monthly meeting. I was asked to give a talk about some of the more obscure resources that we have for people researching their family history. I was given somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour to talk. How was I going to fill that time?
Well, I solicited input from my colleagues and cruised the shelves myself and came up with some really specialized kinds of resources. These are not the kinds of resources you would use to start your search. You would be led to many of them by research that you have already done. For example, you would not just pick up Alberta List, which is a listing of people in all levels of government, unless you had some reason to believe that your ancestor was in government in some capacity. Likewise you would not randomly start looking through school yearbooks unless some clue had led you to believe that your ancestor had attended a particular school.
Some of the resources I looked at were listings of passenger arrivals and departures from many, many different ports and collected from many, many resources. My favourite was suggested by my colleague who has Icelandic ancestors: Vesturfaraskra, 1870-1914: a record of immigrants from Iceland to America. I think I just liked the name but it came highly recommended as a great resource for Icelandic research. This is one case, too, where the paper versions of lists can be helpful. With Icelandic names, the transcription can be quite horrific if the transcriber is not familiar with the language. Online indexes are fabulous, don’t get me wrong, but they do rely on transcribers. With a book in front of you, you can scan down the index and see if the name, or some variant of it, is in there. It is much harder to do that with an online search. Vesturfaraskra is just one title. We have a lot of passenger list books for many different ports and from many different sources. Most of these are not available online so if you can’t find your ancestor in the regular resources (Ellis Island, Castle Garden or in Canada’s passenger lists) it may be because they came through another port.
If you are researching your “black sheep” side (which in my chart seems to be all sides, just kidding, ma) you may be interested in Original lists of emigrants in bondage from London to the American Colonies, 1719-1744. These lists were taken from the Treasury Money Books (because the Treasury had paid a contractor for the expense of feeding, clothing and transporting the felon). Some of us must certainly be descended from these folks
These are just a sprinkling of the various weird and wonderful sources I was able to dig up in the genealogy collection here at the Calgary Public Library. In preparing the presentation my eyes were opened to the genealogical possibilities of many unlikely sources. As always, it is a question of following the trail, even if it leads into unlikely areas.
I was recently asked by the publisher of the East Village View to write an article about the site on which Booker’s B.B.Q. is standing. I was happy to do this as the East Village is my second home. I have worked in this neighbourhood for all of my adult life and I love this place. It has changed so much, but there are still stories to be told about the residents and the buildings. The East Village View is our community newsletter and part of its mandate is to bring these stories to the residents. We have copies of the newsletter in the Community Heritage and Family History collection at the Central Library, if you would like to have a look at them.
Writing about the Booker’s site allowed me to tell the stories of a bunch of interesting people who made their mark down here. Booker’s stands at 316 3 Street SE just across the street from the Cecil Hotel. The current building was built in 1956, following a massive Christmas Eve fire in 1954 that destroyed the original Calgary Public Market building that was on the site.
The Calgary Public Market had been built in 1914 in response to consumer concerns over poor quality and lack of competition. It was a pet project of Annie Gale, who was the first woman “alderperson” in the British Empire. The building to house the market was built in 1915 (see the picture above) and it was immediately filled with vendors. It was a public utility until 1925. Even after that it continued to function as a market. It was purchased in 1946 by Sam Sheinin, who had been manager of the public market and had bought the building as a home for his businesses. He had operated various businesses on the site, Home-Del Foods, Calgary Cold Storage and Sheinin’s Live and Dressed Poultry. Sheinin rebuilt and operated his businesses until 1959. By 1960 the Alberta Poultry Marketers Co-Operative had moved in. They operated from the site until 1960.
By 1972 the chickens were out and the “chicks” moved in. The Betty Shop, which seemed to be in every mall in the city when I was growing up, had its warehouse there. The Betty Shop was owned and managed by Lena Hanen. She was the daughter of a Rabbi, the wife of a successful businessman and the mother of Harry Hanen, the man who gave us the +15 system. She was also a very astute businesswoman and, by all accounts, a great boss. By the time of her death in 1979 she employed over 1000 people in 40 stores in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.
Lena’s family seems to have owned the building until 1985 when the Kingfisher restaurant opened its doors. The Kingfisher was famous for its owner, Sandy Cruikshank, and his “Tuesdays with Webster” discussions. In the late 1990s it changed hands again and became Booker’s.
This part of the city has a fascinating heritage, one which I am very proud to be a part of. If you are interested in researching your corner of the city, come down to the Community Heritage and Family History room in the Central Library. We’d be glad to see you.
Grave of George McDougall
Alison Jackson Photograph Collection, 1458
The City of Calgary is thinking about offering a new way of burying our dead. With Queen’s Park Cemetery rapidly running out of space, the City is planning for a new cemetery in the city’s southeast. As part of that burial ground they would like to offer a natural burial ground where graves would be dug by hand, bodies would be buried unembalmed and in biodegradable caskets and the land left to go back to its natural state. There would be no grave markers and anyone wishing to find a burial site would be given a GPS unit and the grave co-ordinates. This idea has kicked up a bit of controversy and lead to a bit of trepidation on the part of genealogists everywhere.
Genealogists love to find records and what is more solid and permanent than a grave marker? Genealogical societies the world over dedicate massive amounts of time and energy to transcribing markers. We have a very large collection of southern Alberta cemetery transcriptions in our Community Heritage and Family History collection here at Calgary Public Library. (If you’re curious, you can find them in the catalogue by typing “cemetery” in the search box and choosing “subject” from the drop-down menu). These are invaluable resources for people seeking their ancestors. But many of the transcriptions also include burial records so that those buried without markers or whose markers have disappeared can also be listed.
There are also, believe it or not, walking tour guides to cemeteries. To some this may sound ghoulish, but in reality, it is an excellent way to get to know the people and history of a place. By touring the graves, with a human guide or a guide book, you get a very personal view of who and what made a city or town what it is. A great one for Calgary is Calgary’s historic Union Cemetery: a walking guide by the inimitable Harry Sanders. Using the graves of Calgarians, both rich and poor, as a starting point, Harry examines every aspect of Calgary’s history.
So, this new way of burying may have unintended effects, but it is an intriguing proposition. It may affect the way we do genealogy, but then, even stone grave markers don’t last forever. The plot where my earliest ancestors in Canada were laid to rest is a parking lot now. If your people were buried in a potter’s field, they were in an unmarked grave and all that exists is a record of burial. The same would be true if your ancestors were cremated and not placed in a columbarium. I think choice in these matters is a good thing. We are a diverse city and burial customs are very personal and tied to the culture and history of our families. The city’s proposition seems to allow for choice, and, personally, I think I might like to be the granny they had to find with a GPS.
Torch Run in Calgary with the Bow Building in the Background, Jan. 19, 2010
Judith Umbach
With the Winter Olympics set to start in Vancouver in a few days, many Calgarians are casting their minds back to our own very successful Winter Games in 1988. I was working here, at the Central Library, and so had a front row seat for many of the events that went on in the Plaza. I also remember the influx of people from all over the world. It was a very exciting time in the city and I know that Vancouverites are experiencing the same exhilarating rush that we had twenty two years ago.
When the torch came through here on its way to Vancouver, Judith Umbach, who is one of the contributors to our Community Heritage and Family History Digital Library, was there to capture the event for posterity. The two photographs showing the torch with the Bow Building in the background are hers.
Torch relay in Calgary with the Bow Building in the Background, Jan. 19, 2010
Judith Umbach
We have a great deal of material in the Community Heritage and Family History collection about the Olympics in Calgary. We have a copy of a speech given by then mayor Ralph Klein in 1984, one month before Calgary accepted the Olympic flag in Sarajevo. We have numerous reports and briefings and other official documents. But we also have fact books, athlete biography sheets, pin-collectors’ guides (remember pin collecting?), a guide to finding your brick on Olympic Plaza, a list of souvenirs and their suppliers, and lots and lots of other very cool stuff. It occupies at least three shelves in the Local History room. If you are at all nostalgic for the glory days of ’88, come down and check out our ’88 Olympics collection in the Community Heritage and Family History collection on the 4th floor of the Central Library.
Hidy and Howdy Welcome you to the 1988 Calgary Olympics
Postcards From the Past 1337
February is Black History month in Canada. This is a fairly new recognition despite the fact that people of African descent have been playing a role in Canadian history since the time of Samuel de Champlain. Black History Month began as Black History Week in the 1970s. By 1976 it had become Black History Month. It was officially recognized by the House of Commons in 1995 and in 2008 the Senate unanimously passed a motion to recognize the event.
Albertans are often unaware of the history of black people in our province. Most of us know about John Ware, a former slave, who became a legendary cowboy and rancher in Southern Alberta. But many of us do not know of the settlers who came and established towns such as Breton, Campsie, Wildwood and Amber Valley. Many came from Oklahoma, which became a state in 1907. The government there made it quite clear that black people would be segregated and treated differently from the white settlers who were rushing in to homestead. Many of the state’s black residents fled to Canada, about 1000 to Alberta and Saskatchewan. They did not have an easy time of it. They faced prejudice. Canadians were alarmed by the influx of these immigrants and tried various measures to keep them out. In 1911 an Order in Council would be passed which deemed African Americans unsuitable for the climate in Canada and prohibit their immigration. They also faced the difficult reality of the land north of Edmonton. Their homesteads were in heavy bush which had to be cleared by hand. The land was not overly productive and many men had to work in Edmonton to support their families. In spite of this they stayed and Amber Valley, alone among the other primarily black settlements, survived into the middle of the 20th century.
The history of the immigration of African Americans into the Prairie Provinces is a story of determination and courage. You can find out more about it in the Community Heritage and Family History collection at the Central Library. We have The Window of our Memories volumes 1 and 2, by Velma Carter, which is the story of Black pioneers in Alberta and includes the stories of those pioneers and their descendants. Another very interesting book is Deemed Unsuitable by R. Bruce Shepard which looks at the problem of racism on both sides of the border and how it affected the immigration of African-Americans into the Canadian Prairies. And, for those of you who would like to try out an old-school format, we also have a thesis on microfiche by Judith Hill, “Alberta’s Black Settlers: a Study of Canadian Immigration Policy and Practice”. (You can find other works by searching the library catalogue using the subject terms “Black Canadians History”). These works tell us a lot about the immigration of black people into Canada, but they also have a lot to tell us about ourselves and how Canada came to be. It is not always easy to read, but it is crucial to our understanding of our history and our future.
To celebrate this year’s Black History Month, the Calgary Public Library has scheduled a number of programs which can be viewed on our website http://blog.calgarypubliclibrary.com/blogs/cplnews/archive/2009/12/28/black-history-month.aspx
Mission Bridge and Elbow River, ca 1936
Postcards from the Past, PC 1278
The next Heritage Roundtable will be held at our beautiful Memorial Park Library. At this meeting we will hear about the historic site inventories piloted by the community associations of Parkdale and Cliff Bungalow-Mission. There will be representatives from the Municipal Heritage Partnership Program, which helped support this initiative. We will also be able to get a glimpse of the much-anticipated City of Calgary Heritage Website Discover Historic Calgary. This is going to be a real gold mine for people who are interested in the built heritage of this city as it will provide access to information on hundreds of historic buildings.
We will also get information on the upcoming Lion’s Awards, the Jane’s walk, the Brewery and other heritage matters. If you are at all interested in the history of Calgary and the efforts being made to preserve it, record it and celebrate it, I encourage you to attend the Community Heritage Roundtables. I have always found them interesting and valuable. The information and ideas that come out of these roundtables are inspiring and the opportunities for networking are unparalled. Hope to see you there.
You can register for this program online at the Federation of Calgary Communities online registration site: http://www.calgarycommunities.com/events.php or by telephone at 403-244-4111
The meeting starts and 7:00 and ends at 9:00. Doors will be open by 6:30. Refreshments will be provided. Memorial Park Library is at 1221 2nd Street SW and it looks like this (sans cannon):
Memorial Park Library, ca 1933
Postcards from the Past, PC 943
City Plan, 1914
Calgary: a preliminary scheme for controlling the economic growth of the City by Thomas Mawson
On Friday, in the John Dutton Theatre at the Central Library, The Calgary Foundation and the Calgary Public Library, with support from the City of Calgary’s Office of Sustainability are hosting a discussion based on issues raised by the 2009 Vital Signs Report. You are invited to come and add your voice to help shape our rapidly changing city. We are interested in building a sustainable city and need your input. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to The Calgary Foundation either through their website http://www.thecalgaryfoundation.org/ or by telephone at 403-802-7719.
This discussion will embrace many topics and certainly one that we must consider, and one that is dear to my heart (this is a heritage focused blog, right) is the importance of sustaining the built heritage of our city. The Community Heritage and Family History collection at the Central Library is integral to that goal. The mandate of this collection is to preserve and make accessible items relating to the history of Calgary. We have a wide range of resources for people interested in finding out more about their homes, their communities and the way our city has developed.
The collection, itself, is something of an historical artifact. It is as old as the Calgary Public Library. Our first Head Librarian was Alexander Calhoun, a man whose innovative ideas, including tailoring the library collection to the needs of the community, made the Calgary Public Library a dynamic and responsive organization from the day it opened its doors on January 2, 1912. Calhoun was very involved in his community and was very interested in making Calgary a great place to live. The city was facing then, as it is now, unprecedented expansion that saw the city grow from 12,000 people in 1906 to 44,000 in 1912.
Calhoun was a member of the first city planning commission in 1911. It is possible that he heard the presentation by Thomas Mawson, “The city on the plain and how to make it beautiful” which he delivered to the Canadian Club of Canada. The city planners engaged Mawson to make a plan which would see Calgary into its future. They believed the city would reach a population of 1 million by the year 1914. (We never see those "busts" coming, do we?) Mawson’s Plan, called Calgary: a preliminary scheme for controlling the economic growth of the city, is available, along with transcripts of the two speeches he gave in Calgary, in the Community Heritage and Family History collection at the Central Library. If you have never seen it, you must come down and have a look. Our downtown would have looked very different had the planning commission been able to affect any of the changes he suggested. Mawson was very concerned with the way people lived in cities. He was influenced by the City Beautiful movement and the Garden City movement and his plan reflects those influences. It was a very beautiful vision of the future of Calgary. Here is a picture of what he envisoned for the market area of the city.
Mawson’s report is only one of the resources relating to city planning that we have in our collection. We are on the 4th floor of the Central Library (616 Macleod Trail SE). Drop in for a visit.
Disney Themed Display
Calgary Brewing and Malting Company Gardens, 1960
Alison Jackson Photography Collection, AJ 51-08
The days are getting longer. Thanks to a wonderful Chinook things are warming up. Now is the time to think about gardens. OK, so maybe it is a bit early to think about actually gardening in Calgary but I stumbled across this picture of Snow White in the Brewery Gardens and I thought now would be a great time to talk about those particular gardens and what they’ve meant to Calgarians over the years.
The gardens were originally developed in 1932 and were a project of James Cross, the son of A.E.Cross who had taken over management of the Brewery from his father. Originally the plan for the garden was a bit of a make-work effort. In keeping with the Cross family tradition of looking out for their employees and giving back to their community, the gardens were an idea designed to reduce the need for layoffs and to give employees something to do during the Depression. It was a simple design, stands of trees and shrubs and a few flower gardens.
This would all change with the introduction of the fish ponds. James Cross was interested in water. Calgary Brewing and Malting’s slogan for a time was “The water makes the difference, naturally.” Indeed, the brewery was founded where it was because of the presence of an artesian well on the property. Water was important to good beer, and James realized that fish, too, needed clear, clean water to thrive. The symbolism was not lost on James Cross. From 1938 to 1972 a fish hatchery would be operated on the Brewery site. Water, warmed in the brewing process, would be used to sustain the hatchlings and the fish raised at the hatchery were used to populate the ponds and streams in the garden. The hatchery was just the first step in a process that would make the Calgary Brewing and Malting site a community centerpiece. By 1960 the Cross family had opened a large aquarium on the site – the largest inland aquarium in Canada. The second floor was designed to house James’ collection of western memorabilia. This would become the Horseman’s Hall of Fame in 1963.
The gardens themselves would house artifacts. A cabin, believed to be the oldest building in Calgary, was rescued and moved to the gardens in 1933 (see the picture below). Streetcar 14, after completing its final run, was moved for preservation to the site. Its frame was used to build the replica streetcar that runs at Heritage Park.
Cabin in Brewery Gardens 1957
Alison Jackson Photography Collection, AJ 21-14
The gardens were open to the public and were a very popular spot. In the winter, decorations were put out to make the gardens a year-round attraction. The first photograph shows a Disney-themed display from 1960 as viewed by Alison Jackson, whose collection of photographs can be viewed in our Community Heritage and Family History Digital Library.
According to a 1997 Historical Resource Impact Assessment of the site by Ken Hutchinson Architect Ltd. (which is available in the Local History room on the 4th floor of the Central Library) the structure of the gardens were found to be intact “with the important exceptions that the pools no longer contain water and fish and that the gardens no longer have the floral displays”. The 1875 cabin was still on the site, as was a replica of the original buffalo mascot. The talk surrounding the Calgary Brewing and Malting site has included the possibility of bringing the gardens back to their original state. That would be an interesting development and one many residents of the area (and others) would like to see.
Calgary Brewing and Malting Company Gardens
Postcards from the Past, PC 1406
Interior of a Newspaper Printing Office, Daysland, Alberta, ca. 1914
Postcards from the Past, 841
Facing another decade in the new millennium, I was pondering, as I often do, the doings of our forebears as they entered a new year and, really, a new era at the beginning of the year that would see the formation of our country. New Year’s Day in 1867 was a Tuesday. The papers were published (at least the Globe and Mail was published) so I was able to read about the goings on in Toronto, Canada West, for that day. What were those hard working, decent people, those solid citizens, up to as they prepared to meet the new year? Well….from the front page of the Globe:
POLICE COURT
Monday Dec. 31
"…As usual on a Monday morning a considerable number of drunk and disorderly persons came before his Worship.
Michael Blake, 47, drunk, not known to police, was fined $2 and costs, in default 20 days in gaol. …It appeared that he had been found drunk on Church Street, with a considerable amount of money in his pocket, and his Worship thought that it was worth something to him, under the circumstances, to be taken care of by the constables, and so he was made to disgorge.
Margaret Kennedy, 31, vagrant, known to the police, was sent to gaol for 20 days. She …has been going round, book-in-hand, begging, ostensibly for an apocryphal widow named Sophia Shaw. Among others, she bled his Worship to the amount of a couple of dollars. She entered volubly into a history of herself, Sophia Shaw, and their affairs, which narrative was stopped with some difficulty, by the time she had succeeded in mystifying the Court and all present."
Not everyone was whoopin’ it up. The various churches held celebrations in fitting with their “dispositions”. Members of the Methodist congregation prayed out the old year and in the new. St. John’s Church held a midnight service, the bells at St. James were rung from 11:30 PM and military and other bands played.
I can read these articles because the library has a subscription to “Globe and Mail: Canada’s Heritage from 1844” in the E-Library. This is a searchable database and is just one of three historic newspaper subscriptions that we have. We also have “Toronto Star: Pages from the Past” which dates from 1894 and the “Times of London Digital Archive 1785-1985”. These can be of great interest to genealogists researching in the area because they are searchable. I ran a search on one of my family names through the Globe and Mail and found an article about a boy from Norwood who had been kicked in the mouth by a horse. Not necessarily a nice article, but one that contained information about a possible ancestor (yes, weird information but that’s what makes genealogy so interesting.)
You can also use these databases to find details about the life and times of people in the past. Because we don’t have a good index for the Calgary Herald, we often use the Toronto papers when we are looking for dates of significant events, especially in the area of military history. When we find the date of a particular battle, or of the death of a soldier, we can go to the right date of the Herald and look for local coverage.
Newspapers can be gold mines of information for genealogists and historians. Check out our historic newspapers in the E-Library section of the Calgary Public Library homepage. The link is in the black bar at the top of the page. Once you’ve entered the E-Library, choose History and Genealogy from the menu and then, from the menu that comes up, select your newspaper. You will need to enter your Calgary Public Library barcode from the back of your card and your PIN.
I am intrigued by the history of the Banff area. It was and is a very special place and we are privileged to live so close to Canada’s first National Park. Anthony Henday had visited the area in 1754 and David Thompson had explored the Bow Valley but it was the fall of 1883 when three Canadian Pacific Railway construction workers stumbled across a cave containing hot springs on the eastern slopes of Alberta's Rocky Mountains that the Banff we know now was born.
The people responsible for the park and the town within it were the wardens. A warden was a jack-of-all-trades and his position involved long hours and a wide variety of duties. Walter Peyto was one of those wardens. He served from 1914 to 1948 and as part of his duties he was required to keep a journal of his activities. His grandson David Peyto has edited and published four volumes of these journals which he has called Banff Town Warden. They offer a fascinating glimpse into the activities of the men who fought fires, controlled nuisance animals, feed the zoo animals , maintained the telephone lines, controlled predators, and looked for lost hikers, among other duties. What must have been Walter’s most memorable duty had to have been the eleven days spent in a freight car with two buffalo bound for the Toronto Zoo. The life of a warden was not a boring one.
David will be coming to the Central Library to talk about his grandfather and the duties of the Banff wardens. The program will take place on Wednesday January 13 from 6:30 to 7:30 PM in the meeting room on the north side of the 4th Floor. You can register online (http://calgarypubliclibrary.com/programs.aspx), in person at any library branch or by telephone at 403-260-2620.
Buffalo in Banff National Park, 1905
Postcards from the Past (1570)
Horse and Buggy
Postcards from the Past (1263)
Often, when I am fishing for a subject for the blog, I turn to the newspapers. I love to read the old papers because it gives you a very interesting perspective on the early denizens of this city. For example, here is what was going on the week of Christmas in 1889:
“Shortly after six last night the children of Knox church, to the number of nearly a hundred sat down to a sumptuous tea. After regaling themselves…all eyes turned to the next and no less interesting item of the program—the Xmas tree. A handsome evergreen had been procured and now looked doubly resplendent in its colored wax candles and rich freight.” (Calgary Herald December 21, 1889) This sounds like a recipe for disaster, to me, 100 children and open flames on a wooden structure, but there are no subsequent articles about a fire in Knox Church, so all must have gone well.
In the same paper Christmas goodies were advertised including cheeses, calves foot jelly, mock turtle soup, galantine of wild boar’s head pate and a variety of other delicacies, all available for the festive season at G.C. King and Co. in the Post Office Block.
Continuing my cruise of the Christmas newspapers (it is actually a great way to dodge real work – we call it research) I was also intrigued by an ad I found in The Albertan for Saturday December 21, 1901. We often think of our forebears as stolid, no-nonsense folk not given to frivolity. Then I found this ad:
Buy your Horse a Xmas Present
Few people stop to see if their horse appreciates a gift as much as their dearest friend
JUST TRY HIM ONCE
Give him a comfortable blanket for those chilly days, or perhaps a more comfortable collar to draw his load with. Then make him look well and fell well by dressing him in the latest styles – at the
Calgary Saddlery Co. Ltd.
So, now when I feel the need to buy my dog a Christmas sweater, I feel better knowing that I am following a long line of strange people who feel the need to dress their animals up for Christmas.
The staff in the Humanities Department wish you the best of the season.
Carnegie Library (now Memorial Park) Christmas Postcard ca. 1912
Postcards from the Past (152)
Ski Jump on the Roof of the Grandstand,
Built for the Calgary Winter Festival, 1921
Postcards from the Past
Because Calgary is so close to the mountains, a ski hill within the city may seem unnecessary. What we need to remember is that at one time, getting to Banff and the surrounding area was not a simple drive up the highway. It could be a journey fraught with peril along the Banff Coach Road (so called, I believe, because it was designed for coaches not cars!) For a devoted skier, this was not an acceptable situation so over the years ski hills have been developed in and near Calgary.
A pioneering organization in the development of local ski hills was the Calgary Ski Club which was founded, originally, early in the 20th century by a handful of Scandinavian immigrants interested in ski jumping. The presence of this group led to the strangest sight ever in Calgary winter history, the ski jump on top of the grandstand at the Exhibition Grounds (see the postcard above).
In its second incarnation, founded in the 1930s, The Calgary Ski Club looked for a suitable venue in or near the city so that avid skiers could ski during the week. Golf courses provided some possibilities. They were unused during the winter and some, like Shaganappi, were owned by the city. So it was to Shaganappi that the Ski Club turned in 1938. A perennial problem in Calgary, of course, is the chinook wind and that, coupled with the drought of the 1930s made skiing in the city a sporadic affair. The Ski Club experimented with farm equipment and eventually started using a grain blower to blow snow from areas where it was abundant onto the hill. Despite its great location (on a bus route), the installation of a rope tow and its popularity, Shaganappi ski hill lasted only until 1951.
Asked to move from the municipal course the club sought another hill, and found what it thought was a good choice, on the north side of what is now Coach Hill, just above Bowness. It was not a unanimously popular choice and the development of Paskapoo in 1961 kind of put an end to that idea.
View of the Chalet at Happy Valley Ski Hill, 1950
Happy Valley Calgary's Year 'Round Playground
Paskapoo remained a public hill and many of us learned to ski there. It would later become Canada Olympic Park. Just down the road a bit (advertised as being 5 miles from the city limits) was Happy Valley, “Calgary’s year ‘round playground,” which included a ski hill with a chalet and two poma lifts. The photograph of the beautiful chalet comes from a brochure dating from 1950 that we have in the Community Heritage and Family History collection here at the Central Library. Also in that collection is the book I used to find out about the Calgary Ski Club, Calgary Goes Skiing: a history of the Calgary Ski Club by David Mittelstadt. If you are interested in finding out more about skiing in and around Calgary, we have some great resources in the Local History Room and we would be happy to show you the ropes (rope tows,perhaps 
).
Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
R.B. Bennett Receiving Nomination Convention of Conservatives, Winnipeg 1927
Postcards from the Past PC 503
This is the second of my installments about some of the subscription databases (other than Ancestry LE) that genealogists should try. This week I want to introduce you to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
In my introductions to the genealogy collection here at the Central Library, I always like to mention National Biographies as a potential resource. Many countries have them and they are the semi-official records of the people who played a role in the formation of their respective countries. The grand-daddy of these is the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB – I warned you about libraries and acronyms!) DNB is the national biography of Great Britain. Calgary Public Library owns the original 22 volume set and the 15 volumes of supplements. Sources such as these can be very useful especially if you have ancestors who were notable in some way. In Canada, sometimes being notable just meant being here early so the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, in addition to politicians and industrialists, includes, pioneers, fur traders, and First Nations leaders. The articles are written by many different, reputable authors and include extensive bibliographies of primary and secondary source material. The DCB (again with the acronyms!) covers people who died between 1000 and 1930 (it is traditional in national biographies to include only dead people and to indicate coverage by date of death)
The Dictionary of Canadian Biography was started in 1959 as a joint project of the University of Toronto and the Université Laval. It is available in English and French and has been a staple reference source, in its paper incarnation, on reference shelves in libraries across Canada for decades. Now that it is available online it is much easier to use and the full text searching pulls up names of people mentioned in articles but not necessarily the subject of an entire article themselves.
You can access the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online through our E-Library accessible through the catalogue or via the link at the top of our homepage. In the E-Library you can click on either “Canadian” or “History and Genealogy” and scroll down to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. You will be asked to sign in using your library card number and PIN. Choose your language, and off you go. You can browse the collection by name, by category or by geographic location.
You can also search the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online through the Biographi.ca site http://www.biographi.ca/index-e.html at Library and Archives Canada.
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