Sidewalk stamp from the King Edward Hotel. The stamp is gone, but the King Eddie remains in its new incarnation as part of the National Music Centre (Photo: Courtesy of the Calgary Public Library Community Heritage and Family History Collection)
"I felt like I was seated in the centre of a landscape watching an open train filled with characters travel through time and space around me."
This is how Calgary author Cheryl Foggo described Writing the East Village, a literary history cabaret I organized last month along with Lisa Murphy-Lamb at Loft 112. A standing-room crowd of readers, writers and East Village residents gathered to explore one of Calgary's oldest and most storied neighbourhoods.
The evening started out with a view of the pristine landscape at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers in 1875, and ended with a song written last year in a collaboration between Kris Demeanor and residents of the Calgary Drop-In Centre.
In case you missed the cabaret, I've posted a list of the works featured that night – and a couple of photographs of what was a magical evening of story and history.
And thanks to our fabulous guest authors and readers: Kris Demeanor, Zoey Duncan, Cheryl Foggo, Gina Freeman, Steve Gin, Rosemary Griebel, Jill Hartman, Lisa Murphy-Lamb, Roberta Rees, William Taylor, Aritha van Herk and John Veldhoen.
(Photo: Blair Carbert)
(Photo: Blair Carbert)