Commemorating Calgary: Monuments and Memory in Southern Alberta

Source: Richard J. Jephson, Plan of the City of Calgary, Jephson and Wheeler, 1891. University of Calgary, Digital Historic Maps.

An Introduction to Commemorating Calgary

The purpose of this blog is to document the ways in which people in the southern Alberta have remembered and memorialized events, people, and ideas. Who has been honored and why? How have sites of commemoration changed since they were established? What can we learn about the past as well as the present by paying attention to sites of public memory?

These blog posts, supplemented by photographs, maps, videos, and interactive elements, attempt to answer those questions. Each post traces the origins of a particular monument or site of commemoration and how each place has been used and interpreted. Many places described here are major city landmarks, such as Signal Hill in the Calgary’s southwest or the South African war memorial in Central Memorial Park in the Beltline district. Other monuments are modest. The John Ware Cairn, located on private property near Millarville, is small and neglected. The Famous Five Monument at Calgary Olympic Plaza has become so naturalized in its setting that many residents pay little attention to it, let alone the people and the event memorialized by those bronze statues.

Above: This 1960 map shows the location of Sarcee Camp along the banks of the Elbow River and Cairn Hill, today known as Signal Hill. The geoglyphs on the southern slope of Signal Hill are located near the words "Underground Reservoir." The geoglyphs are significant landmarks, constituting a site of public memory for Calgarians. Source: Calgary Military Town Plan, Edition 1, ASE 315, 1960. University of Calgary, Digital Historic Maps.

The creation of sites of public memory is an important activity for communities, involving a commitment of time and resources. For example, in 1931 the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia erected a statue of Edward Cornwallis (1713-1776), who served as the first Governor of Nova Scotia (1749-1752). Funds for the statue came from the Canadian National Railway, which had an interest in promoting tourism to the city. By highlighting the city’s colonial origins, tourists might travel to Halifax and linger, spending valuable tourist dollars.

Civic leaders in the United States also created monuments to leaders, pioneers, and war dead. Some of the most iconic of these include the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, although new sites such as the National September 11 Memorial and Museum have attracted tens of millions of visitors. In the American South, groups constructed monuments to the Confederacy, emphasizing a vision of a region united in white supremacy and opposition to federal authority. Even as they were created, however, monuments were the source of conflict. In Richmond, Virginia, a chorus of African American voices protested monuments to Confederate leaders, claiming that the statues celebrated treason and slavery. Promoters countered that the monuments simply commemorated the personal valour and honour of those leaders. The monuments went up, occupying important real estate in these cities and serving as silent, ever-present reminders of the Lost Cause and Jim Crow racial hierarchy.

Above: Calgary renamed the second Langevin Bridge, constructed in 1910, as Reconciliation Bridge in 2017. The renaming was inspired by the recommendations of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report of 2015. This 1911 postcard image shows the original Langevin Bridge, constructed in 1890, in the foreground and the second Langevin bridge just behind it. Source: Glenbow Museum, LIB-20-15. Used with permission.

In recent years, public memory in North America has come under scrutiny. Many Canadians have questioned why oppressors are celebrated and the victims neglected, especially since the Canadian government’s apology to First Nations people for residential school policy, the 2008 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and the activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In Calgary, Alberta, city leaders chose to rename the Langevin Bridge as the Reconciliation Bridge in an attempt to move beyond the celebration of colonizers. In Halifax, people noted that Edward Cornwallis was more than simply the first Governor of Nova Scotia. In 1749, he also offered a bounty for the scalps of Indigenous people. Mi’kmaq people and their allies protested the public commemoration of Cornwallis and the city removed the statue in 2018.

In the United States, renewed attention to the issue of racialized police violence resulted in questions about the legitimacy of Confederate monuments in public places. In New Orleans, Louisiana, city leaders removed Confederate monuments. By contrast, in Richmond, Virginia municipal leaders maintained the city’s monuments and erected new ones, including a monument to President Abraham Lincoln (2003) and the Richmond Slavery Reconciliation Memorial (2017). In Charlottesville, Virginia the city planned to rename Robert E. Lee Park as Emancipation Park and remove a monument of General Robert E. Lee. Subsequently, white supremacists held a protest rally in the city and attacked counter protesters, resulting in the death of Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer by one of those white supremacists. Events in Charlottesville, Richmond, and Halifax are reminders that public memory, even of distant events, remains relevant and contested.

Above: The 1914 unveiling of the South African War Memorial in Calgary's Central Park, now Central Memorial Park,. For many contemporary Calgarians, memory of Boer War and Canadian contingent that fought in South Africa is tenuous. Source: Glenbow Museum. Used with permission.

This blog is the term project for Mount Royal University students enrolled in History 4405 Special Topics in Public History. Students worked in teams to research and write the essays, locate images and videos, as well as create maps and other interactives used on the blog.

The roster of all contributors is listed below, with contributors to each section identified with their post. Comments and questions relating to this blog should be directed to Joe Anderson, jlanderson@mtroyal.ca.

Contributors

Kuot Akec

Tanya Balasundaram

Michelle Bannister

MC

Kipp Cifra

Tracy Clearsky

Yichen Liu

Connor McIntyre

Jordan Manning

Michael Peace

Mateus Pereira

Shannon Pruden

Jessica Purvis

Jillian Rieger

Caprice Robinson

David Sanders

Hannah Tascona

Nadia van Asselt

Joe Anderson, Instructor

For Further Reading

Stéphanie A. H. Bélanger and Renée Dickason, War Memories: Commemorations, Reflections, and Writings on War. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017.

Seth C. Bruggeman, editor, Born in the U.S.A.: Birth, Commemoration, and American Public Memory. University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.

Adrienne L. Burk, Speaking for a Long Time: Public Space and Social Memory in Vancouver. UBC Press, 2011.

Karen L. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture. University Press of Florida, 2003.

Erika Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America. University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Alan Gordon, Making Public Pasts: The Contested Terrain of Montreal’s Public Memories, 1891-1930. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001.

Cecelia Morgan, Commemorating Canada: History, Heritage, and Memory, 1850s-1990s. University of Toronto Press, 2016.

Martha Norkunas, Monuments and Memory: History and Representation in Lowell, Massachusetts. Smithsonian, 2002.

Kirk Savage, Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., The National Mall, the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape. University of California Press, 2011.

Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth Century America. Princeton University Press, 1999.

Paul A. Schackel, Memory in Black and White: Race, Commemoration, and the Postbellum Landscape. AltaMira Press, 2003.

Dell Upton, What Can and Can't Be Said: Race, Uplift, and Monument Building in the Contemporary South, Yale University Press, 2015.

Jonathan Vance, Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War. UBC Press, 2001.

Acknowledgement

We are grateful for the assistance of Anna Nuhn, John Cheeseman, Alana Gaulin, and Mount Royal University's Department of Humanities Innovation Fund.