On Hiatus & Heritage Park Connection

{We are taking a break and not staffing the history desk for the next couple of months, but look for new Calgary Gay History Project research in late May. —Kevin}

Thanks to everyone who came out for the presentation Our Past Matters – A History of Calgary’s 2SLGBTQ+ Community at Heritage Park last week. Our goal was to find a queer history connection to Heritage Park, and we did!

The “Sandstone House” on the grounds of Heritage Park is a replica of a house built in 1891 for James Bruce Smith (1849–1906), a lawyer from Lindsay, Ontario, who was a founder of the Calgary Bar Association in 1890 and who became the city solicitor in 1899. In 1901, he was charged with gross indecency due to his affair with Walter Joesph McHugh. History professor, Jarett Henderson, explores this story in detail: here.

The house was located at 1011–4 Avenue West (later changed to SW), where the Avatamsaka Monastery exists today (and if you have a long memory, you might recall Calgary’s original Mountain Equipment Coop store).

Heritage Park published a biography of the storied house for Alberta History Magazine’s Winter 2023 issue explaining the house was famous for being rented to Colonel James Macleod (who named Calgary and facilitated Treaty 7) and his family in 1894. It was where he was living when he died of kidney disease. The famous Calgarian’s body lay in state inside the house for several days; it was there that his funeral procession began.

Special thanks to researcher Jason Brooks, who brought the connection to our attention.

Happy Spring, everyone!

{KA}