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Introduction

Calgary has long been known as a typical boom/bust town: its mayors have been boosters and caretakers, it grows in spurts and then lies fallow, it explodes and crashes. But, as a city, Calgary is never dismayed by its slow periods; it plans, always plans for its next glorious future. Because growth is not steady, many of these plans aren’t implemented in their entirety — fragments are built, and partial plans are rushed into production before the next downturn, which always comes sooner than anyone predicts. By the next boom, these plans are out-of-date relics of a previous era.

In these superseded plans are visions for Calgary that tell much about the social history of this place, its ambitions, its particularly maverick behaviour, and its opacity to the rest of Canada. The projects in this book are ones that were particularly prescient and contain ideas still in play today. What is surprising about many is how long ago these ideas were formed.

Calgary started as a fort in 1875, became a CPR service depot in 1883, and by time the 1901–13 wheat boom crashed, Calgary had established itself as a centre for settlement.

Here are three telling images to start this book of Calgary visions. The Dominion Survey Map of 1884 documents homestead plots and the new railway; this is what was actually, measurably, here. The next is an 1885 photograph of what Calgary looked like. The bottom image is a declarative CPR plan of downtown Calgary in 1884 drawn up to attract both investors and commercial development by implying there was more building already in progress than there actually was.

This book also describes Calgary in various contexts larger than the city itself, which is sometimes self-absorbed to the point that things such as recessions, international political events, and federal and provincial changes are taken personally. For many architects whose

Figure 0-1. Surveyed by Charles Eugene Larue, July 3, 1883, and approved March 8, 1884, this is the actual Dominion Lands Office survey based on the Dominion Grid of townships and ranges. Township 24: six miles by six miles, divided into 36,640-acre sections. The marshy spot between sections 35 and 36 is in Albert Park today; the marsh straddling the corners of sections 2, 3, 10, and 11 is where Mawson planned his artisans’ village and where Manchester stands today. The lighter squares are cleared land, a condition of the Homestead Act, and the tiny black dots nearby are houses. The CPR line doesn’t go much farther than today’s downtown core.

Glenbow Archives NA-3487-9.

Figure 0-2. This 1885 photograph shows Calgary as a string of hostelries, hotels, small houses and storefronts, and a couple of churches, all facing south to the CPR tracks. Calgary has become such a green city; here, there is not a tree in sight. As none of these buildings are indicated on the Dominion Survey done in July 1883, and the plots only registered in January 1884, these buildings were all built in a year.

Glenbow Archives NA-4035-77.

Figure 0-3. This 1884 CPR Land Department map is signed by A.W. McVittie, surveyor, and states, “This Plan is correct and is prepared under the provisions of the North West Territories Registration of Titles Ordinance. Winnipeg, January 1st 1884.” The avenues are named after CPR financiers, presidents, and executives: Smith (11th Avenue), Stephen for 8th, McIntyre for 7th. Atlantic and Pacific Avenues flank the tracks, tying Calgary into a national landscape.

Glenbow Archives G3504-C151-1884-C212.

particular projects were not built, the circumstances are as vivid today as they were thirty years ago. It is time to step back and look at some of these unbuilt projects as significant declarations of the intent to build a responsive and thoughtful city. A factor in Calgary’s development has been its relatively transient population. Many Canadians have spent a few years in Calgary, especially during its boom times, and then moved on. Too, the young average age of Calgarians indicates that not everyone stays after they retire — the Okanagan and Vancouver Island beckon. So, while the population steadily increases, there are not a lot of people, or families, who have seen the city through all its phases. People are transferred to Calgary, or come to Calgary on spec, single or with young families, and take the city much as they find it. Its past is not their past, and they share Calgary’s present but not necessarily its future.

A Laurie Anderson quotation on the hoardings outside the Performing Arts Centre when it was undergoing renovation in 2012 said something along the lines of the more we tell our stories, the more they are no longer ours, meaning that we release our stories into the world. It can also mean that stories told and retold — as is often the case in Calgary, which has a well-trodden narrative — cease to be our own real experiences. The stories here revolve around a number of quite untold architectural and planning proposals, and several over-told plans that perhaps need to be told slant. Hopefully, this book will join the shelf of previous books about the shape of Calgary that collectively make sense of this city.