The Magpie Hotel
an excerpt

1905

The site of the housing development had not been entirely free of human habitation during its existence prior to annexation as Hillhurst, the very first suburb of the new city of Calgary in 1895. Native bands had long gathered there for its rich fishing, berry picking and shelter under the willows and cottonwood in the Bow River valley. Eagles, ospreys and other, smaller birds as well called it home prior to the original development. Later still cowboys and Mounties regularly passed through on their way to and from Fort Calgary before the railway went through on the south side of the river.
The owner of the land in the newly formed province of Alberta, the first of many land developers in the city, Mr. Riley, named it Hillhurst after his horse farm thousands of miles away in the Gatineau hills of Quebec. It was not a terrible name given the sloping edge of the river valley that bordered the new community to the north. The southern boundary was a medium sized river for the region, christened the Bow for the meandering path it followed from the Rockies, through the foothills and into the Palliser Triangle where it formed a tributary of the South Saskatchewan eventually making its way to Hudson’s Bay.
Bowness Road, the site of the development, branched off Kensington Road, the main thoroughfare, but also paralleled the river heading out to the community of the same name five miles away, a community that was at that time a separate town.
Initially little was built on the street other than a number of log homes, shanties really. In 1905 the community got a tremendous boost when the city’s second Presbyterian Church was built at the corner of Oxford Street and Bowness Road. It took its name from the community and was intended to be the centre of the community for its protestant residents. At the time the bridges of the river were either for the train or horse cart and the distances were greater than they seem today even with our ease of mobility. Mr. Riley himself was a staunch Presbyterian of the rich Montreal variety that had imagined and then financed a national railway that would both build a country and make him and his ilk even richer. A century later the Candian Pacific Railway, a company founded and based in Montreal, would move its head office to the very city it had such a large hand in founding.
The larger view of Calgary was a city which had just begun taking tiny steps toward the hundreds of acres and million souls it would eventually encompass. Sandstone was quarried and sent to the city to build the town hall, several schools and the magnificent hotel named for Palliser, the man who had judged this part of the continent too dry for habitation. The roughly hewn sandstone gave these buildings an air of permanence beyond their years. The remainder of the city was wooden, wood that came to the Eau Claire sawmill from the foothills. The mill, which had opened at a bend in the river just before the centre of town, had built a canal which formed a new island in the river. In the future this island, named for the Prince family who owned the mill, would be turned into a park which would host music festivals, open air performances of Shakespeare and many black squirrels, geese and ducks. Elms planted on Prince’s Island and along the river would eventually grow into tall haphazardly shapes sheltering the banks of the river for cyclists, runners and walkers.
In the five years after the building of the church, new solidly built homes sprang up on either side of the church. These houses had rudimentary concrete basements and were built with care and precision by small family building companies or in a couple of cases by the owners themselves. The houses on the east side of the church tended to be larger – two stories. They were built by the more prestigious members of the new community. There was a solicitor, a doctor and the church manse. On the east side of the church the houses were built in a more haphazardly fashion and even though they formed a perfectly straight row each one was unique. By 1910 all of the houses in question were complete. None of them were large – which over the years would make them more disposed to small families or those looking to live more cheaply for whatever the reason. These seven houses stood on the street for almost a century. They collected scuffs, scrapes, stories and knick knacks that traced the development of the city and the province from a cowboy territory to boom town. By the time of their demise the community was universally recognized as the most vibrant in the vast city.
Theirs is a story of ambition and failure, sad goodbyes and new beginnings.

THE BEGINNING

Norman Jacobson drove his full-ton Ford pickup with the new killercondos.com Orca logo on its side up the tree lined street reviewing what would soon be a construction site. It was already encircled by the metal fencing that at this point mainly served as a warning about the developer’s intention to get started on the project soon. The tree cutting crew would be coming tomorrow with their chainsaws.
Across the street from the row of houses children played in school playground on their lunch hour. Norman made a mental note of their presence and the direction he would need to make clear with the various crews that would be working on the site about their language, smoking and most importantly care to not run over or drop anything on any of the children. A visit to the principal with a token gift would also make things easier in the long run.
For the next eighteen months this project would be added to the shrinking list of similar projects where Norman acted as the foreman. This one would be special for a couple of reasons it would bring him back to a neighbourhood he remembered from his childhood and it would be his final project. At 62 Norman felt he had more than earned the idyllic retirement that awaited him in hot Arizona.
It was a cool day in early October, the last renters having just vacated the homes so that the wrecking ball would come through in the couple of weeks depending on their schedule. Norman slowed his truck in front of a house mid block and put the truck into park. He lit his cigarette and stared at the peeling mint green on the front porch of the house. It looked like it had been lived in pretty hard especially in the last few months. Broken beer bottles littered the front lawn and an old couch sat slowly falling apart on the porch. Much of the asphalt had come off of the shingles on the roof. He knew however that the structures of these houses were solid. In the old days houses like these would be picked up and moved out to homesteads or small towns outside of Calgary but that market was saturated. Nobody wanted these houses anymore regardless of their soundness.

A few months ago Norman and a couple of major investors in killercondos.com had come for a final walk through of the property before eviction notices were given. The developers had owned the houses for three years and had been renting them out to a people who were getting younger and less respectful of the property. The final responsible renter had moved out over a year ago so no grass had been cut on the street that year. The walk through happened the week of the annual Calgary Stampede and it appeared that the residents of two adjacent houses had essentially merged into one big party. Several bikini clad young women lounged surrounded by long haired muscled young men all drinking beer in the sun. There had been a number of noise complaints from the surrounding residents – mostly from the already developed condo complexes surrounding this remaining enclave of single family dwellings.

Norman tapped the ash from his cigarette out the opened window of the truck and thought of years his family lived in a house like this a few blocks away, long before the apartment buildings, the men with shopping carts in the alleys and the constant drone of traffic on the thoroughfare barely fifty feet away had come to dominate this inner city community. He had gone to the elementary school across the street when it had been first built after the war. Long before it had been converted into a specialty school with students bussed in from all over the city to take art and music classes. He remembered the strict nuns still in their habits in those days entirely willing and able to dole out a good smack to boys like him and his brother Henry who both frequently stepped out of line.
A magpie swooped into a nest in one of the elms that Harold hadn’t noticed before. Now he could see ribbon, electrical wire and other materials that had been pieced together to make a home. Just one more eviction on the street he thought - probably the last for a while. He didn’t worry too much about magpies, they were pretty tough.

The school bell sounded waking Norman from his reverie. The children started making their way back to the school some opting for one final slide on the shiny new playground killercondos.com had generously donated to the school during the zoning review process. Over the past few months, he was finding that some of his hard boiled toughness was seeping away from him. Maybe it was the dreams he had started having in the summer. The previous night he had dreamed a very vivid dream where he was much older and angrily swing his cane at people for some unknown reason.
Restarting the truck, Norman drove his truck around the corner into the alley running behind the houses to make sure the utility companies had properly disconnected the wires running to the houses. He jotted a few observations in his notebook and then opened his cellphone to call his assistant who would communicate the final ok to the demolition crew that killercondos.com had on contract for this job. He had to get to two other sites in opposite quadrants of the city that afternoon before dropping in on his 91 year old great-aunt now living in a hospice in Okotoks.
Taking one final look at these houses before demolition he wondered if the new four story complex would stand for a hundred years as well as these houses had.