| Contractor: Bennett and White Construction
Company Limited.
Original cost: $65,000
Original
owner:
Calgary Prophetic
Conference. William Aberhart, President and Dean.
Construction materials:
"The front of the
building, which faces on 8th Avenue, is
completed in art buff brick with a projected entrance
hall and massive oak doors. The main stairway leads into
a large vestibule from which entrance is given to the
executive offices and library and also into the main
auditorium and galleries."
Original interior
details:
The Calgary Herald of
September 1927 reported, " the main auditorium will
accommodate 1,200 people and has a very pleasing
appearance. One is at once struck with the beamed ceiling
and decorative panel effect of the walls and with the
rich grain of the woodwork, which was especially selected
for the building. The platform is arranged to accommodate
a choir of fifty people, with speaker’s platform and
pulpit in the front…Immediately above the platform
is the Baptistery, with dressing rooms at each side. For
the Bible Institute students, a very ingenious
arrangement has been designed, whereby four separate
classrooms accommodating 300 students can be made in few
minutes by pulling down roller partitions. The pews also
have writing desks attached to them. In the basement are
the assembly halls for the Sunday school departments with
accommodation for 500 pupils.
Historical highlights:
- William Aberhart,
high school principal and later Social Credit
Premier of Alberta (1935 – 1943) founded the
Calgary Bible Institute in 1918.
- Throughout 1918
Aberhart led evening meetings of the Bible
Institute at the Central Library. The following
year the group met at Westbourne Baptist Church
and from there moved to Paget Parish Hall
(Anglican Cathedral Church of the Redeemer). In
1920 Aberhart moved Sunday afternoon services to
the Lougheed Grand Theatre and finally in 1923 to
the Palace Theatre on 8th Avenue where
two years later he began a live Sunday afternoon
broadcast on CFCN radio called "Back to the
Bible Hour." During the same period Aberhart
was the acting pastor at Victoria Park’s
Westbourne Baptist Church where he also taught
evening bible study classes in the church
basement.
- According to
Aberhart biographer David R. Elliot, Aberhart
built the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute in
1927 because he needed a larger facility to house
the Bible school and the crowds, which were
attracted to his meetings. At the new facility on
8th Avenue Aberhart administered the
church and conducted the radio broadcasts while
being employed as the principal of Crescent
Heights High School. " In 1929 he founded
his own sect, the Bible Institute Baptist Church
after most of the Westbourne congregation had
split from him."
- Contributions for
the facility that was a combined temple and
"fundamental" Bible School, were sent
from all parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, British
Columbia and Montana. In May 1927, the local
newspaper reported that three subscriptions had
even been sent from Great Britain.
- The Calgary
Prophetic Bible Institute, " The Prairie
Monument to the Faith," opened on Sunday
October 2, 1927 with "Three Big
Meetings." The topic for the Inaugural
services at 11a.m. was "The Hobabs Among
God’s People or Hitting the Trail to
Glory." The afternoon meeting "For
Heretics and Skeptics" spoke to
"Scholarship and the Scriptures or Is it
Easy to Find Mistakes in the Bible?" The
topic of the 7:30 p.m. service, a "Gathering
of the Sincere and Honest Investigators" was
"The Man Who Shook in His Shoes or Why Do
the Devils Tremble?"
- In the fall of 1927
a nineteen-year-old Saskatchewan farm boy named
Ernest Manning enrolled along with 35 other
students at the Institute’s bible college.
For a brief time Manning (who later succeeded
Aberhart as Premier) lived in the basement suite
of Aberhart’s 5th Street S.W.
bungalow located on the lower cusp of
Calgary’s prestigious Mount Royal District.
- The school syllabus
stated that the Institute would " use every
legitimate Christian means to combat and resist
"Modernism, Higher Criticism, Skepticism and
Sectarianism in all its forms." Aberhart
wrote the texts for the classes, promoting his
own personal brand of "evangelical
fundamentalism."
- When
Aberhart’s Social Credit party won the
provincial election in 1935, Cyril Hutchinson
became the school’s principal. Following
Aberhart’s death in 1943, Ernest Manning
became president of the Institute. A falling-out
between Manning and Hutchinson resulted in
Hutchinson’s departure from the Institute in
1948 to found the Berean Bible Institute.(later
Foothills Christian College). By 1951 the
Institute building on 8th Avenue was
closed.
- In 1974, the
building which had been home to the Calgary
Prophetic Bible Institute was demolished to make
way for commercial development. Two years later
the Historical Society unveiled a plaque at the
Institute’s former site.
- The former site of
the Institute is currently occupied by the T.
Eaton Company store. Eaton’s commemorative
window display facing 8th Avenue
recognizes the historical significance of the
former location of William Aberhart’s
beloved Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute.
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