Calgary & Southern Alberta

Social and Cultural Developments

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Big Band War Rally, 1945
Courtesy of the Glenbow Museum

The Canadian Pacific Railway influenced more than Calgary’s economic development. Spatially, the company laid out the city’s residential districts. Beginning in 1909, the company began Calgary’s suburban expansion when it offered subdivisions of its land for sale through Toole Peete and Company. In certain subdivisions, the CPR established and enforced specific building requirements. The company, for example, envisaged Bridgeland as a working class community because it lay close to the Calgary’s eastern manufacturing district and to the ethnic communities in Riverside. In Mount Royal, stringent building restrictions ensured that the subdivision would evolve as the city’s first exclusive area.

While the CPR influenced Calgary’s physical and social landscape, women, religious organisations, and local initiative influenced the city’s cultural growth. By 1893, Calgary boasted a sizeable organised school system that included nine teachers, 459 elementary school pupils and thirty high school students. In response to the Liberal provincial government’s decision to locate Alberta’s university in Edmonton, in September 1912 a group of prominent Calgarians launched a private university called Calgary College. Henry Marshall Tory, president of the University of Alberta, however, believed that the province would benefit from one strong post-secondary institution and opposed the school’s existence. The College closed in 1915 because the government would not permit it to grant degrees. In 1916, however, the Liberal Party decided to establish the Provincial Institute of Technology in Calgary. Primarily intended to provide returning World War I veterans with vocational training, the Institute expanded to include art, aviation, and communications programmes.

University of Alberta's Athabasca Hall ca.1911 Courtesy of the University of Alberta

During the World War I era, a number of interrelated reform movments such as social gospel, prohibition, and the suffrage movement joined forces. Proponents of the social gospel believed that society's ills could be eradicated through moral reform and government legislation. Largely a Protestant movement – Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists constituted a large segment of Calgary's population--social gospelers sought to impose their vision of society on the city. The reform movements were part of a larger North American reaction against urbanisation and immigration. Those involved in prohibition and suffrage campaigns believed that anti-drink laws and the woman's vote could influence the eradication of prostitution and alchohol abuse from society.

Chart: Major Religious Affiliations of Calgary's Population: 1901-1961

Arts and education also flourished in Calgary in the first decades of the twentieth century. During World War I, Mount Royal College offered a first year of university credit that could be transferred to the University of Alberta. Aside from the Herald, city residents enjoyed the Norwester, the Albertan and, in particular, Bob Edwards' eccentric and scathing newspaper The Eye-Opener published "now and then" between 1904 and 1942.

Two notable British conductors dominated Calgary’s music scene: while P. L. Newcombe organised the Apollo choir, Clifford Higgin served as the organist at Knox Presbyterian Church and he supported the Alberta Festival Association, an organisation that hosted musical competitions. In addition, Higgin founded the Calgary Music Competition Festival that evolved into the present-day Calgary Kiwanis Musical Festival. In the first decade of the twentieth century, furthermore, the establishment of the Calgary Women’s Music Festival influenced the development of an avid chamber music audience in the city. The organisation, dominated by Mrs. H. H. Sharples, convened in community halls until it moved to the Palliser Hotel. Sharples’ encouragement of British performers resulted in the establishment, in 1910, of the Mount Royal Conservatory of Music and Speech Arts. In addition, local singers became involved in musical theatre performed at Hull’s Opera House and later at Sherman’s.

Inside the historic Memorial Park Library
Courtesy of the Calgary Public Library

Female initiative likewise contributed to the establishment of Calgary’s first library. Located across from Haultain school, the Calgary Public or Carnegie Library grew out of the vision of Mrs. Annie Davidson and the Calgary Women’s Literary Club. The institute’s first librarian, Alexandre Calhoun, initiated an appreciation for the fine arts in the city.

Further impetus for the development of the fine arts occurred in 1926 when Lars Haukaness, a Norwegian artist, arrived in the city. Haukaness immediately began to teach evening art classes to members of the Calgary Art Club. Haukaness’ evening class evolved into the Alberta College of Art under the auspices of the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art. When Haukaness died in 1929, A. C. Leighton, an English artist, became the head of the fledgling school. Leighton initiated the formation of the Alberta Society of Artists in 1931. In 1933 he started a summer art school at Kananaskis. That school evolved into an established segment of the Banff School of Fine Arts which continues at present.

Glenbow: Modern / Western Canadian Art

Alberta literature found its beginnings in Alberta in the persons of Nellie McClung and Robert Stead. Stead, a publicist for the CPR and journalist for the Albertan, arrived in Alberta from Manitoba in 1912. He published prairie adventure novels like The Bail Jumper, The Homesteaders, and The Cowpuncher during World War I. Through his novels, Stead expressed his vision of the West as a democratic frontier that would give birth to a superior race.