For National Poetry Month, my latest look at local literary history for Read Alberta.
The Forgotten Story of Alberta's First Book Publisher
My latest article for Read Alberta on the province’s literary past.
Stories of Jewish Mewata
The NW corner of 9th Street and 6th Avenue SW, as the Dwight Block in 1912 and as Ravvin’s Furniture in the 1950s. Starting in the mid-1920s, the Ravvin family operated Mewata Confectionary on this site then Ravvin’s Furniture. In 2022, the lot was cleared to make way for a development by Attainable Homes Calgary.
The NW corner of 9th Street and 6th Avenue SW, as the Dwight Block in 1912 and as Ravvin’s Furniture in the 1950s. Starting in the mid-1920s, the Ravvin family operated Mewata Confectionary on this site then Ravvin’s Furniture. In 2022, the lot was cleared to make way for a development by Attainable Homes Calgary.
For the past year, I’ve had the great pleasure of working with Calgary-born, Montreal-based writer Norman Ravvin to create the walking tour “Stories of Jewish Mewata” for Historic Calgary Week.
Norman Ravvin
Norm's family has deep roots in Mewata, going back to the 1920s when his grandparents lived and ran Mewata Confectionary in the neighbourhood now known as Downtown West.
With precious little to go on, we went looking for traces of the area’s Jewish families who once called this place home.
If you missed the walk and you’re curious to know more, look for Norm’s forthcoming article in the September 2023 edition of the Jewish Historical Society of Southern Alberta’s Discovery newsletter. You might also check out his wonderful essay on old Mewata in his Hidden Canada: An Intimate Travelogue published in 2001 by Red Deer Press.
Norm and me setting the stage in BowForth Park (Photo: Nimira Dewji)
Below you’ll find links to a few interesting sites and a map of key spots in our talk, superimposed on an air photo of the area taken in 1961 — as Norm describes it “a very intact moment” in Mewata’s ever-changing history.
Thanks to Historic Calgary Week and to the Jewish Historical Society of Southern Alberta for helping us make “Stories of Jewish Mewata” happen.
Norman Ravvin’s author website
Norman Ravvin’s new book Who Gets In: An Immigration Story
Norman Ravvin in conversation with Aritha van Herk, 2023
City of Romance: The Literary World of 1920s Calgary
A digital literary map of Calgary
Building Community: A Tour of Historic Jewish Calgary
Lucien Lieberman’s “The Lieberman Saga”
Jack Switzer’s “Calgary’s Jews Star as Symphonic Conductors, Musicians, Patrons, Teachers”
Land of Promise: The Jewish Experience in Southern Alberta
Alan Lynas’s “Memories of a Young Boy Growing Up in West End”
“The Evolution of Mewata Park & West End" video of aerial views, 1924-2021
Norm’s grandparents’ 7th Avenue home reimagined in Bragg Creek
A view of several key sites discussed on our tour, superimposed on this 1961 air photo, part of the University of Calgary Library’s collection.
Winnifred Eaton Lived Here
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).
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)