Scoping out Winnifred’s house this spring in advance of the tour, hoping the current owner would respond to the letter I dropped in his mailbox. No luck (yet).
801 Royal Avenue SW is one of the many Calgary addresses the writer Winnifred Eaton Reeve called home, and for the longest period of time, from 1938 to 1954. The house was a key stop in the two Winnifred walking tours I led this month.
Fan girl moment: What a thrill to meet Winnifred’s granddaughter (and biographer) Diana Birchall. (Photo: Diana Birchall)
On the first walk, I toured a few of Winnifred’s descendants as well as Winnifred scholars in town for the “Onoto Watanna’s Cattle @ 100” conference held July 26 to July 29 at the University of Calgary and the Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre. On the second tour (for Historic Calgary Week), I guided a group of Calgarians curious about the city’s literary world and one of its fascinating personalities.
Below you’ll find links to further information mentioned during the tour and photos of two of the sites we visited.
Winnifred in California, 1924-27, during the years she worked as a pioneering Hollywood story editor. (Photo: University of Calgary)
Winnifred Eaton Reeve: A Chinese-Albertan Writer in the Era of Exclusion
A pandemic passage from Winnifred’s 1922 Alberta novel CATTLE
Invisible Publishing’s centenary edition of CATTLE
Diana Birchall’s 2001 biography of Winnifred
Winnifred’s digitized papers at the University of Calgary Libraries
The Reno, Nevada divorce colony
A profile of Winnifred in the South China Post
The University of Calgary’s Reeve Theatre
My book Calgary through the Eyes of Writers
My Calgary Atlas Project map — City of Romance: The Literary World of 1920s Calgary
My Storied City Literary Walking tour (2020)
Karen Gummo’s “Torment & Triumph in the 1920s”
Winnifred & her husband Frank Reeve at their 801 Royal Avenue SW home in the early 1950s (Photo: University of Calgary)
801 Royal Avenue circa 1920s — then home of James Wheeler Davidson (1872-1933), journalist, author, car enthusiast and Rotarian. In May 1921, Davidson joined Winnifred and sixty Calgary writers and editors to found a local branch of the Canadian Authors Association. (Photo: University of Calgary Libraries)
Winnifred and her husband Frank also lived at the Barnhart Apartments between 1932 and 1934 — in Suite 19 at 1121 6th Street SW (Photo: City of Calgary Inventory of Historic Resources)
No discussion of Winnifred in Calgary is complete without mention of “The Feud” with fellow writer and one-time protégée Laura Goodman Salverson. I’m grateful to storyteller Karen Gummo for popping up and into the tours in the person of Laura. More about her Feud story “Torment & Triumph” in the links above. (Photo: Marje Wing)