Where the Future
Comes From

Calgary was essentially founded on the East Village site. The original downtown had everything: schools, blacksmiths, cops, cowboys and brothels.

Research material for the following story was graciously contributed by Harry Sanders; it was part of a Historical Resources Overview Report prepared by Lifeways of Canada for the City of Calgary in 2004.

It’s ironic that the place where Calgary began should be the place where its future will unfold, but even more so when you realize that the redevelopment of East Village will bring back to the area many of the very uses, activities and life it had at its foundings, when the city was young.

The area we call East Village was known officially and rather unglamorously as ”Section 15, Township 24, Range 1, West of the fifth meridian“. It was part of the 25 million acre grant of land awarded the Canadian Pacific Railway for connecting Canada, but it was the Northwest Mounted Police who put the land to its first use – as pastureland for the force’s horses.

At the same time, from 1875-1884, a settler community arose in the vicinity of Fort Calgary and in present-day Inglewood, so it wasn’t until the CPR reached the unincorporated settlement at Calgary in 1883 and built a station that things began to happen in East Village. The Railway’s real estate subsidiary, the Canada North-West Land Company, subdivided Section 15 and started selling lots in January, 1884. Sales in East Village were brisk.

By the start of Calgary’s pre-First World War boom, around 1906, East Village was an established and bustling community with a mix of residential, commercial, service, institutional and industrial district – not entirely different from what it will soon be again.

Residents of the area included working-class men and families as well as a number of wealthy or notable citizens including these luminaries: Louis H. Doll, pioneer jeweler; William L. Bernard, lawyer and registrar of vital statistics; David Suitor, industrialist; Thomas Arthur Presswood (”Tappy“) Frost, alderman; Dr. William Egbert, future Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta; and Stanley L. Jones, lawyer. Certainly, people sharing these professions will inhabit the streets of East Village once more.

Over the years, neighbourhoods and buildings ”learn“, adapting to changing uses and technologies: so it was that blacksmith shops gave way to iron foundries; livery stables were replaced by service stations and auto dealerships; single-family brick house sand frame cottages became apartments or ”flophouses“.

The pattern that will be avoided this time around will be EV’s slow spiral into dereliction, which became official in 1941 when the city medical officer of health declared it part of ”Skid Row“. East Village became the site of what is now politely called ‘undesirable activity‘ but was then referred to in police blotters as bootlegging, prostitution and murder.

The fashion for urban renewal schemes in the ‘60s spelled the end of the old East Village, much as it did for historical districts across North America. After the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965, East Village was named Churchill Park (a swimming pool and a high school got the moniker as well). Studies by the Urban Renewal Department suggested the creation of ‘superblocks‘ to differentiate residential, institutional/residential and service/commercial zones. This planning resulted in the construction of EV’s longstanding residential high rises for seniors, but funding for the scheme was withdrawn in 1969 and the towers were left to languish on the landscape.

Area merchants took matters into their own hands circa 1971 when they formed the East Village Association and approached the city for improvements, including banners, planters, park benches and a Saturday street closure for a farmers‘ market.

Certainly, they had the right idea. Now, with a master plan, political will and funding in place, the improvements will really happen.