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)
