Good Cheer Brewing — The Calgary You Thought You Knew

Here are the works I spoke about in my talk “The Calgary You Thought You Knew” at Good Cheer Brewing during Historic Calgary Week. Thanks again to Good Cheer’s NathanVadeboncoeur for opening his brew pub to the city’s stories and his support of the local history community.

Happy Calgary reading!

David Thompson, The Travels, 1850 Version in The Writings of David Thompson, in The Writings of David Thompson, Volume 1 (2009)

Peter Fidler, Journal of a Journey Over Land from Buckingham House to the Rocky Mountains in 1792&3. Peter Fidler Fonds, Archives of Manitoba

Sir Cecil Denny, The Law Marches West (1939)

J. Ewing Ritchie, Pictures of Canadian Life (1886)

E. Pauline Johnson, “Calgary of the Plains,” Flint and Feather: The Complete Poems of E. Pauline Johnson (1922)

Rudyard Kipling, Letters to the Family (1908)

Isabel Paterson, The Shadow Riders (1916)

Isabel Paterson, The Magpie’s Nest (1917)

Agnes Ballantine, “A Woman’s Impressions of Calgary,” in The Colonizer, Nov. 1912

Katherine Hale, Canadian Cities of Romance (1922)

Robert E. Gard, Johnny Chinook: Tall Tales and True from the Canadian West (1945)

Fred Stenson, The Story of Calgary (1994)

Robert Kroetsch, Alberta (1968, 1993)

Barry Callaghan, “After the Fall: A Sadness at the Heart of Calgary,” Saturday Night, Nov. 1983; republished as “Calgary: Glory-Hole to the West,” in Callaghan’s Raise You Twenty: Essays and Encounters, 1964-2011 (2011)

Katherine Govier, Between Men (1987)

Norman Ravvin, Café des Westens (1991)

Aritha van Herk, Restlessness (1998)

Cheryl Foggo, Pourin’ Down Rain (1990, 2020)

Bruce Hunter, In the Bear’s House (2009, 2025)

Lori Hahnel, Love Minus Zero (2008)

Rosemary Griebel, Yes. (2011)

Chris Koentges, “The Plus-15 to Nowhere Somewhere,” Swerve, Dec. 28, 2007

Micheline Maylor, “Downtown,” in Calgary through the Eyes of Writers (2018)

Mapping the Literary Geography of 1920s Calgary

Here are the references I mentioned in my recent talk “Mapping the Literary Geography of 1920s Calgary: A City-Building Story” at the Calgary Atlas Project’s exhibit at the Lougheed House.

Early Calgary literature

A spirited 1913 publication by Calgary presswomen – Calgary: The Gateway to the Woman’s West (1913)

E. Pauline Johnson’s “Calgary of the Plains” (1913)

You can find more examples of Calgary’s literature through the decades in my book Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers

The 1920s

My look at the early days of Canadian Authors Association in Alberta and more about the 1928 CAA Convention in Calgary and Banff

My presentation about Calgary’s literary scene in 1924 during my term as Historian in Residence at the Calgary Public Library – “Scribblers & Scrabblers: The Writers in 1920s Calgary”

For a deeper look at the Canadian Authors Association, see Lyn Harrington’s Syllables of Recorded Time: The Story of the Canadian Authors Association, 1921-1981 (1981)

Visit Nellie McClung’s home, a 1920s Calgary cultural hub in Donald B. Smith’s article “1929: ‘Things Are Seldom What They Seem,’” in Alberta Formed, Alberta Transformed, Michael Payne, Donald Wetherell & Catherin Cavanaugh, eds. (U of A/U of C Press, 2006)

Winnifred Eaton Reeve (aka Onoto Watanna)

My article about Winnifred Eaton Reeve over at Read Alberta

Winnifred Eaton Reeve’s speech to the Canadian Clubs in 1923: “The Canadian Spirit in our Literature”

For more of her works as well as a biographical timeline, check the Winnifred Eaton Archive

To read Winnifred Eaton Reeve’s 1923 novel Cattle, check out this 2023 centenary edition

Here is a link to Winnifred Reeve’s colleague Katherine Hale’s Canadian Cities of Romance (1922)

Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance

For more about Long Lance, check out Donald B. Smith, Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance: The Glorious Imposter (1999)

Or read Long Lance’s book Long Lance: The Autobiography of a Blackfoot Indian Chief (1928)

You can see a snippet of Field Marshal Earl Haig’s 1925 Jubilee visit to Calgary on this video https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/46369/

More about Long Lance in Karina Vernon’s The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2020)

Other writers of 1920s Calgary

In 1926, members of Calgary’s The Coterie (Flos Jewell Williams, Nellie McClung, Laura Goodman Salverson and others) talked about the Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen’s debut collection Color (1925)

Laura Goodman Salverson writes of her 1923 arrival in Calgary in Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter (1939)

You can find Elaine Catley’s diaries in the Elaine Catley fonds at the University of Calgary and read more about Toronto editor Lorne Pierce in Sandra Campbell’s biography Both Hands: A Life of Lorne Pierce of Ryerson Press (2013)

You can learn more about poet Esther Shumiatcher, her playwright husband Peretz Hirschbein and the city’s Jewish community in Agnes Romer Segal’s “A Poet in Our Midst: Esther Shumiatcher and her Family Circle in Calgary Jewish Cultural Life,” Canadian Jewish Studies (vol. 34, 2022)

A fine biography of the city’s first chief librarian – Donna Lohnes & Barbara Nicholson, Alexander Calhoun (1987)

Et cetera

Here are a few writers of post-war Calgary who signalled the end of the “city of romance” era:

• George Woodcock, Ravens and Prophets (1952)

• George Bowering, Rocky Mountain Foot (1968)

• Barry Callaghan, “Calgary: Glory-Hole to the West,” Raise You Twenty: Essays and Encounters (2011)

• Jon Whyte, “The Place Where Nothing Happens, Calgary Magazine (May 1983)

CBC’s The Current Comes to Calgary

This past week, I had the great pleasure of taking The Current’s Matt Galloway & his team on a walking tour downtown. You can hear a snippet here.

Calgary, With Love

Great fun to be part of Linda Olsen’s podcast The Spotlight Hour — the Valentine’s Day edition, “Calgary, With Love.”

Check out the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.