"Rosscarrock" William J. Tregillus Residence

Alison Jackson Photography Collection, AJ 14-06

I’ve written before about the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (you can see the previous entry by clicking here) It is a resource that we library folk have always relied on to provide authoritative biographical information about Canadians. For years we used it in its paper form so we were overjoyed when it went online. In almost all of my genealogy presentations I point out the value of national biographies for genealogists and historians. They contain well-researched articles about notable people in a country’s history. The ability to search such a resource online is a great advantage. Online searching provides access to all the names in the entry, not just that of the principal subject. Anyone mentioned in an article will come up in a search. You can access the Dictionary of Canadian Biography through the “E-Library” link on the Calgary Public Library homepage. Just click on “History and Genealogy” to see the menu.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography turned 50 last year. The Supervisory Editor, Willadean Leo, will be at the University of Calgary, in the History Department, Social Sciences Building room 623 at 12:30 on Wednesday November 24^th to give a talk about this venerable resource, its history and plans for the future. She will present examples of completed biographies, talk about some of Western Canada’s famous and infamous DCB subjects and talk about some of the biographies that are underway.

This will be a most informative lecture, one I’m sure many genealogists, biographers and historians will be interested to hear. Come and share your ideas for DCB s next half century. I hope to see you all there.

Headstone of Sam Livingston, at Heritage Park

Alison Jackson Photography Collection, AJ 0848

John Snow was a man of many accomplishments. He was born in Vancouver in 1911 but moved with his family to England where they rode out World War I. His family returned when he was eight and moved to Olds. At seventeen he joined the Royal Bank of Canada, where he would work until his retirement in 1971, with time taken out for service in the RCAF and RAF during World War II. These stints in the air force gave him the opportunity to see the world and its great museums. This would nourish and influence John’s artistic side and this is why we know John Snow.

In addition to his accomplishments as a banker and a soldier, he was a great artist. He had absorbed the European modernist approaches, and his desire to see art accessible to all people led him to printmaking. He was great friends with the architect Maxwell Bates, with whom he had studied life drawing after the war. They salvaged a couple of lithograph presses and began experimenting with printmaking. They essentially taught themselves an art form that was stagnant at best and breathed new life into the medium.

Snow’s work would apply his European influences to prairie subjects and express them in a new and contemporary way. The studio he established in his basement was, at one time, the only facility of its kind outside of educational institutions in Western Canada.

In addition to his own work, Snow printed images for other artists in including Bates and Illingworth Kerr. Due in no small part to John Snow, Alberta is regarded internationally as a centre of printmaking. In addition to his talents as a printmaker, John was an accomplished painter and sculptor. He also helped form the Calgary Film Society in the 1940s. John Snow was inducted into the Alberta Order of Excellence in 1996. He passed away in 2004.

His spirit, however, lives on. His house, which was built in 1912 and purchased by John in 1951, was purchased after his death by Jackie Flanagan, who used it to house artists of another medium, those involved in the Markin Flanagan Distinguished Writers Program. In 2008 the house was offered to The New Gallery. They successfully lobbied for zoning changes to allow them to house their Resource Centre, offices and a multi-use cultural space. The official opening of the John Snow House is this Friday at 7:00. Check out their Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=10805587592822)The house itself was named a Provincial Historic Resource in 2003. You can find out more about the building at Calgary Heritage Initiative (http://www.calgaryheritage.org/documents/JohnSnowHouse.pdf)

The Golden Calgarians - It's Fun to Be Alive

From the Author's Collection

I may be showing my age here, but punk rock meant a lot to me. I had the misfortune to have missed golden era of counter-culture rock, I was still a pup when The Beatles broke up and the Rolling Stones had gone all “Emotional Rescue” on us. We were mired in glittering lights and Saturday Night Fever. But then my brother came home from university with a bootleg Ramones tape and my life gained new meaning.

I was lucky that I lived in Calgary. Young people are often shocked to learn that conservative old Calgary was once a hotbed of punk music. We saw the best bands and we produced some of the great Canadian punk rock bands. Do you remember The Golden Calgarians? The keyboardist from that band will be coming to talk about this city’s punk rock past. With him will be Lori Hahnel, local author and founding member of the all-girl band The Virgins. She will read from her novel, Nothing Sacred, which draws on her punk rock background and evokes very vivid memories of that time and place.

Because punk was a new kind of music, perceived to be violent and anti-establishment, a lot of the venues available for shows were the older, seedier hotels such as The Calgarian, The New Noble and The National. Kids with Mohawks and multiple piercings would invade the space occupied by the old fellers and good ole boys. I gained an appreciation for the old hotels and their gloomy bars and probably spent more time in them than was healthy. Maybe it was this that led to my interest in old buildings? (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

Cow Town/Punk Town is just one of the many programs we are offering on our Heritage Weekend, November 6 and 7, at the Central Library. Check it out on our website http://calgarypubliclibrary.com/programs.aspx - just type ‘heritage weekend’ into the keywords search and you will pull up all the programs we are offering. You can also register in person at your local library branch or by telephone at 403-260-2620. Hope to see you there.

Calgarian Hotel

Alison Jackson Photography Collection, detail from AJ 1326

The Airport, Calgary, Alberta, Canada (circa 1940s?)

Postcards from the Past, PC 1122

We’re pursuing the theme of Mavericks this season, partly because of our inaugural One Book One Calgary celebration and partly, I think, inspired by the results of our recent election, where Calgary voters surprised the world with their “maverick” choice for mayor. Interestingly enough, the mavericks I had in mind for this week’s blog entry, were the aviators; people who took to the skies when flying was still in its infancy. Reaching for a segue, I suppose I could mention that Mayor Nenshi wants very much to provide access to the Calgary airport by finding ways to build a tunnel under the new airport runway (well, it is a stretch, but…)

One of the first manned heavier than air flights in Calgary was a truly maverick operation. Two young men, Alf Lauder (15 years old) and J. Earle Young (12 years old) designed a kite like flier powered by a motorcycle engine. It would not lift off, however, so they borrowed a two-cylinder Buick car and towed the contraption and finally did manage to get it off the ground.

Prior to World War I, most flying in Calgary was done for entertainment. Fliers exhibited their skills at the Calgary Exhibition and at air shows. After the war, though, flying took off, so to speak, and Calgary, with its typical can-do attitude soon had an aircraft company, the McCall Aero Corporation Ltd which was founded by Freddie McCall in 1919. An Aero Club was established in 1926. This club trained more pilots under a scheme by the government of Canada that saw flying clubs earn $100 for every pilot’s certificate its graduates attained. Sixty people graduated from the ground school in 1928, with a girl at the head of the class.

Calgary served as an RCAF air base during the Second World War Lincoln Park air base was built. It housed the Number 3 Service Flying Training School and the Number 10 Repair Depot. One of the hangars currently houses the Calgary Farmers Market. Also during the war, Calgary’s municipal airport was leased to the RCAF. It was not returned to the city until 1949.

The history of flight in Calgary is as interesting as the rest of our rogue history. If you are interested in finding out more about flight in Calgary, join us during our Heritage Weekend, November 5, 6 and 7. We are hosting two aviation related programs. On Friday November 5 at 7:00 in the John Dutton Theatre at the Central Library, Stephane Guevremont, from the University of Calgary, will be talking about Calgary’s Forgotten Heroes: 403 Squadron. Another program for aviation buffs, From Triumph to Tragedy, F is for Freddie recounts the electrifying story of the Mosquito bomber that flew more missions than any other in WW2 with Richard De Boer. It is also in the John Dutton Theatre, on Saturday November 6 at 11:00. You can register for these or any of our other Heritage Weekend programs online at www.calgarypubliclibrary.com (click on Programs and then search either the name of the program or “heritage weekend” to see all of the programs). You can also register in person at your local branch or by telephone at 403-260-2620

RCAF Photo 79, over Calgary, circa 1940s

Postcards from the Past, PC 1871

Preliminary Town Planning Scheme

From the Mawson Report

Did you know that the Calgary Public Library's Community History and Family Heritage Room has a collection of over 300 maps relating to Calgary, Alberta and Canada?

We no longer have to think about paper maps as often as we once did. Now we can program coordinates into a GPS, and a friendly voice will help us reach our destination. (And as a bonus, you never have to try to fold a GPS to make it fit in the glove compartment!) Or you can go to Google Maps, enter an address, and instantly get driving instructions. You can even use Google Street View to zoom right in on a building or street for a better look, without ever leaving your chair.

But paper maps still have stories to tell. Several of the maps in our collection are beautifully illustrated, and elegantly lettered by hand. Others are surrounded by vintage advertising for local businesses and attractions, and indicate the locations of buildings that are no longer standing. If you would like to find the location of an Alberta homestead, a railway, an old Calgary street or neighbourhood, or an Alberta town no longer in existence, our map collection may be able to help. This collection is also useful if you would like compare Calgary in different time frames to see how our city has grown, or if you are writing a historical story and want to establish the setting. (Where would your characters catch the train, and which towns would it pass?)

Some of the maps in our collection are of the earliest representations of Canada. Several explorers lead various expeditions to the wilds of this uncharted territory, creating maps as they travelled. I am always impressed by the bravery and fortitude of these trail-blazing individuals, men like John Palliser and Peter Pond, and by the assistance and wisdom of their First Nations guides. Some of these maps are now known to be quite inaccurate, but their creators didn't have the benefit of an aerial view to see if they were right! (Palliser Expedition - Map CAN 5) (Peter Pond - Map CAN 22)

We have many maps of Calgary in our collection, representing the city from her earliest days to the present. The earliest map for Calgary is a reproduction of an 1883 land map, and it shows the homesteads of some of Calgary's earliest pioneers, men like James Barwis, Louis Roussel, Felix McHugh, James Walker, Napoleon Mayett, and Baptiste Anouse (Map CALG 40). The most current map in our collection is a Calgary Transit route map for 2009-2010 (Map CALG 124). We have several maps of Calgary showing the former names of neighbourhoods, and of areas that were annexed and named but then not developed until MANY years later. (This city has always been in flux, with many boom-and-bust cycles over the years.) Do you know where the neighbourhoods of Grand Trunk, Harlem, Strathdoune, Claralta, Kitsilano, Balaclava Heights or Spring Garden were? Harrison & Ponton's Map of the City of Calgary for 1913 (Map CALG 7) shows all of these neighborhoods. (I am guessing that Balaclava Heights was named after one of the international cities with that moniker, and not for the headgear, but with Calgary's winters, who knows?)

Calgary districts such as Sunnyside, Bowness, Montgomery, Forest Lawn and Midnapore were once independent towns and villages, separate from Calgary. In earlier maps, there is often a gap between the city and these areas. One map (map CALG 10) shows Bowness in 1959, before it was annexed by the City of Calgary in 1964. Sunnyside was annexed in 1910, Midnapore and Forest Lawn were annexed in 1961, and Montgomery became part of the city in 1964. The hamlet of Shepard, east of the city, was annexed in 2007. Calgary continues to grow.

If you would like to see what’s UNDER Calgary, have a look at the Calgary Geoscape (map CALG 137). This map includes fascinating information on Calgary’s geography and geology, and has notes on this area’s aquifers, sandstone sources, petroleum resources, and glacial erratics.

If you are doing more current research on Calgary, we have a book containing aerial views of the city in 1995. (Call number Local History O/S 917. 12338 CAL 1995). We also have address and atlas books for Calgary for 1992, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2007.

The Calgary Public Library's collection of historical maps is located in the Community Heritage and Family History Room on the 4th floor of the Central Library. We have several recent additions to our map collection, so if it has been awhile since you've had a look, come see what's new!

CNR Station Decorated for Queen's Visit, July 1959

Alison Jackson Photograph Collection, AJ 34-04

I was delighted to read that the City of Calgary won honourable mention for the Prince of Wales Prize for Municipal Heritage Leadership at the Heritage Canada Foundation conference in St. John's on Saturday October 2. According to the Heritage Canada Foundation: For the second time since the inception of the Prince of Wales Prize, the jury made a unanimous decision to award an Honourable Mention to the City of Calgary, where efforts to develop policies and plans that favour the conservation of the city's built heritage have been ongoing for 30 years. This is quite an honour for a city as young as Calgary and that, in decades past, has had lovers of old buildings tearing their hair out. We have come a long way.

The City was nominated by the Calgary Heritage Initiative to acknowledge the progress has been made including the passage and ongoing implementation of the Calgary Heritage Strategy. Congratulations in particular to the City of Calgary's heritage staff, and to City Council for its growing support of heritage. Keep up the good work!

And if you’re interested in just how this honour was achieved, come down to the Central Library for our program Heritage Matters: Historic Preservation the Cowboy Way. On Friday October 22 at 5:30 pm, the City of Calgary’s Senior Heritage Planner, Darryl Cariou, will give a talk about heritage preservation in Calgary including some of the successes, some of the failures and some of the ongoing and unique challenges facing those involved in the business of evaluating and protecting Calgary’s built heritage. You can register for the program online at calgarypubliclibrary.com (click on programs), in person at your local branch or by telephone at 403-260-2620.

Paget Hall, 1965

Alison Jackson Photograph Collection AJ 1045

Mother Fulham's House, 612 6 Avenue Sw, circa 1960

Alison Jackson Photograph Collection, AJ 0132

I have just returned from a relaxing visit to my sister’s farm on Vancouver Island. She has a lovely little spread in the Cowichan Valley. In fact, the surroundings are so beautiful that people are buying up the agricultural land for residential use. Right at the bottom of her field, where she keeps the hens and is planning to keep her pig, a neighbour is erecting a palatial three storey home that will have magnificent views of the livestock. I think I see trouble brewing.

This little episode of "Green Acres" did, however, bring to mind a character from Calgary’s past, Mother Fulham, who kept pigs and a cow in the city, approximately where the Tim Horton’s is across the street from the courthouse. She drove her horse and democrat from hotel to hotel collecting garbage for her pigs. We have a picture of her house in the Alison Jackson Photograph collection (see above). She is also one of Calgary’s mavericks, as celebrated in our One Book One Calgary selection, Mavericks: an Incorrigible History of Alberta. Caroline “Mother” Fulham was an interesting character, her garbage-picking aside. It was said that she was the only woman who would drink in the male-only enclaves of the city and she did enjoy her drink. Sometimes too much, and it was this that landed her in the courts. She was also in the courts on the other side of the matter when her “prize” cow Nellie was killed by a CPR train. Bob Edwards loved Mother Fulham stories and was only too glad to publish them in the “Eye Opener”. The story of Nellie the cow and Sir William Van Horne was particularly relished. It seems that when Nellie was killed, Mother Fulham pursued compensation with her usual vigor, but got nowhere. When she heard that the president of the railway was in town, she appeared at his railway car and presented her case. Van Horne is reported to have said, “Your cow should not have been on the tracks, you know, we have signs forbidding entrance to the right-of -way”. To which Mother Fulham replied, “Ye poor damn fool. What makes ya think my pore ole cow could read?” (from Eye Opener Bob by Grant MacEwan.)

So, Mother Fulham’s problems had very little to do with the fact that she kept livestock in the city. That was not uncommon. It was logical, I suppose, when you consider that the horse was a major means of transport. Heck, the building in which I am sitting right now, the Central Library, was once the site (or very close to it) of the Elk Livery stable. People were actually able to keep chickens in Calgary until 1953, when the bylaw governing poultry in the city limits was changed. That bylaw has been in the news recently as supporters of the urban chicken movement have been challenging the bylaw. One of the ex-candidates for mayor was a proponent of the backyard chicken coop. I, myself, find chickens charming. I’m just not sure how I would feel with a piggery next door.

If you would like to read more about Mother Fulham, she is discussed in several books we have in our collections. Use her proper name "Caroline Fulham" as your search term in the catalogue to read more about this maverick Calgarian.

New Settlers, Their First House, Western Canada

Postcards from the Past, PC 1649

For Calgary’s first “One Book One Calgary” http://calgarypubliclibrary.com/onebookonecalgary/ event we have selected the book Mavericks: an Incorrigible History of Alberta by Aritha Van Herk. We are planning a plethora of programs relating to the themes of the book, among them my own offering, “Maverick Hunters” in which I will try to assist family historians who are tracing their own “maverick”. This exercise has led me to ask myself what exactly do I mean by maverick? What qualities make up “maverick-osity”?

Alberta has long been perceived as a place where the maverick can flourish. Take, for example, this quotation from Irene Parlby:

I do not think I should be very wide of the mark, if I said that the older parts of Canada have for years regarded Alberta as a rather peculiar place, favorable to the breeding of extreme radicals, and peculiar political phenomena, and let it go at that. One wonders if it ever occurs to them that there are always causes and conditions which breed these things.

From the earliest settlement, the place that would become Alberta was a challenging landscape. Winters could be harsh and summer hot and dry. To even contemplate coming here, one had to have a sense of adventure and an ability to look past the hardships and see the possibilities in the future. This is the spirit we still embrace. Albertans still work hard, still ride the booms and busts that are so characteristics of our economy and still look forward to the future and the possibilities it holds. So maybe this is what we need to keep in mind as we populate our family trees with our black sheep, our mavericks, maybe even our heroes. We can look in the places we always look but then we need to look in the places we haven’t thought of yet. That’s what I’m hoping to help you with when I present “Maverick Hunters.” If you’re interested, have a look at our program guide, paper or online at our registration site http://calgarypubliclibrary.com/programs.aspx. A hint of what I’ve learned? Once we’ve fought our battles we escape to the milder climes beyond the Rockies

Nellie McClung House, 803 15th Avenue SW

Alison Jackson Photography Collection, AJ 0359

Because I am a genealogist I have an interest in the creation of records of people. Things like birth and marriage records, census records and, appropriately enough during this mayoral election, lists of eligible voters. When I speak to young people and people just getting started in genealogy, I have to remind them that we can’t look for everyone in the voters’ lists. As strange as it may seem now, at one time in our history not everyone was entitled to vote. In earlier times, being a citizen, as we understand it now, was not enough to qualify you as a voter. Sometimes you had to be a landowner, of a particular race, or of a particular gender. Changes in law that brought us to where we are now, where every citizen has a right to a voice in the choice of government, were often hard won. Often it took a way of thinking that was outside of accepted beliefs. This was the case with women’s suffrage. It sometimes astonishes people to find out that women weren’t granted the absolute right to vote in Canada until 1940, when Quebec finally granted women the right to vote in provincial elections.

The right of women to vote in the Prairie Provinces has much to do with a woman called Nellie McClung. She was a social activist who was concerned about many causes, among them, the right of women to have a voice in government. Through the work of Nellie and other women, Manitoba became the first province to grant women the right to vote in provincial elections and to hold run for provincial office, in January of 1916. Nellie and her family had moved to Edmonton by this time and she had continued her fight. Alberta granted women the vote shortly after Manitoba, in April, 1916.

We have come a long way since we had to fight for the right to vote. Now we need to make sure that we exercise that right.

The Community Heritage and Family History collection at the Central Library has an excellent collection of material relating to the history of the political environment in Alberta and many of Nellie McClung’s works.

We were very lucky this week to have a visit from our new writer-in-residence, Gail Bowen. Logically, since she is a fiction writer from western Canada, we pointed out our pride and joy, the fiction collection in the Local History room. This got us to thinking, do people even know we have a fiction collection in the Local History Room? So we thought we would write a few blog entries on the novels that we have collected over the years. The collection is unique; the novels we house here reflect Calgary and Southern Alberta in some way (set in Calgary or southern Alberta, for example). There are many different and interesting authors represented. Our librarian’s fave is Onoto Watanna, also known as Winnifred Eaton Babcock Reeve and when she told me her story I knew I had to share it.

Winnifred Eaton was born either in 1875 or 1879 (she wasn’t always candid about that particular detail) in Montreal to a Chinese mother and an American father. Her mother was either a missionary or a tightrope walker (again, kind of hazy on the details) but in any case Winnifred published a story at 13 (or 15 – again, hazy) and was bitten by the bug. She went to New York to pursue her writing career, but knew she needed a hook to get people to read her books. Her sister had already capitalized on her heritage by publishing stories about Chinese immigrants under the pen name Sui Sin Far. Winnifred, possibly wanting to avoid the prejudices directed against the Chinese at the time, reinvented herself as Japanese and embarked on a writing career that would lead her to Hollywood and, yes, Calgary Alberta.

Winnifred’s novel A Japanese Nightingale was very well received. Many editions were published and it was translated into a number of languages. She wrote at least a dozen Japanese themed novels and numerous short stories and became quite well known. Divorced from her first husband, she met and married Francis Reeve, a businessman, who persuaded Winnifred to start a new life with him in western Canada. They moved to BowView Ranch, near Morley. Winnifred loved the country but needed the buzz of “big city” life to enable her to write, so she took rooms in Calgary and, in 1923, turned her skills to writing about her new home. Her novel Cattle was not well received by her American readers, but was acclaimed in Canada as a great novel. When Frank’s farm started to fail, Winnifred headed to California to find work. She spent seven years in Hollywood as a screenwriter, specializing in adapting stories for the screen. Among her works was “Showboat”. Winnifred returned to Calgary in 1932 and moved into a home at 801 Royal Avenue in Mount Royal. She remained here until her death. Both she and her husband are buried in Queen’s Park Cemetery. Frank eventually regained his fortune and established a charitable foundation, the Francis F. Reeve Foundation, as a memorial to his wife. The Reeve Theatre at the University of Calgary is named in their honour. Winnifred’s papers are at the University of Calgary. The Local History Collection at the Calgary Public Library holds several of her novels, including a signed edition of Miss Nume of Japan. If you are interested in finding out more about this fascinating woman, her granddaughter has written a biography of her called a Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton and we have a file of clippings both by and about her in the Local History room.