Published in the July-September 2020 issue of Westword Magazine
Writing About History in My Backyard
by Tim Johnston
I write occasionally for Calgary’s Kerby News, a monthly newspaper aimed mainly at people in the age 55 plus demographic. To date, there have been 22 feature stories, about three per year since I retired from my other life. Not that prolific, I suppose, but by finding and writing about people, places and events that stir my curiosity I hope I do a service to the publication and its readers.
Some of my stories emerged from trips taken in and around Calgary looking for things to photograph. Others were generated because of personal interests such as aviation and railroads. A few are a combination of both, like one that will appear in an upcoming issue of the News. I wrote about a little stretch of railroad in Calgary now used to reach a couple of manufacturing plants in the city’s southeast. The story came about following an afternoon of photographing two old Canadian National locomotives as they spotted cars. Watching the engines work got me wondering why so many bridges and structures existed just to deliver a couple of boxcars. Records at Calgary City Archives revealed that this small piece of railroad once ran all the way to the Lindsay Park neighborhood where the Canadian Northern Railway, one of the merged companies that formed the Canadian National Railway, built its rail yard. A final bridge took the rails just across the Elbow River to the passenger terminal. Today, the rail yard is home to the Repsol Sports Centre. The old passenger terminal is full of life, pulsing to the steps of the dancers of the Alberta Ballet Company.
On a drive through the foothills southwest of Calgary, three long steel posts with enormous horns on the ends caught my eye. These were the few that remained of Calgary’s thirteen cold-war-era civil defense air raid sirens, devises meant to warn Calgarians of impending Armageddon. Rocketry had made the sirens obsolete. Following up, I learned that Calgary had been at the forefront of civil defense planning in Canada and had in place an extensive scheme to ensure the survival of much of its population should the sirens ever go on full wail and stay that way.
Photography was also the impetus for a story about a tourist railroad located at Mossleigh, Alberta. Approaching the village, I passed by the Aspen Crossing Garden Centre and was immediately attracted by the railway passenger cars. Stopping with the intention of photographing some of the equipment, I ventured to the owner that I sometimes wrote articles for a Calgary newspaper and would he mind telling me how his railroad came to be. My question resulted in an afternoon of riding on the old Alco diesel locomotive as it marshaled cars for the next day’s tours as well as a Christmas-themed story for the Kerby News.
Sometimes, stories find me. I wrote a feature on a retired civil engineer who had restored and flown a Fokker Super Universal, one of Canada’s iconic early bush planes. We had arranged to meet at his Indus airfield hangar so that I could deliver a batch of papers containing his story. He had just landed his 1950 Fleet Canuck and signaled me to join him in the cabin. Flying south over the Bow River, we began circling a farm on which was situated a large, squat structure. “That building is a piece of history,” my pilot said, “and you ought to write something about it.” Armed with an idea and the name of the farm’s owner, I began researching the world’s last known Bessonneau hangar. Built in England during World War I, the portable hangar had gone to France to house British fighter and bomber aircraft. At war’s end it was shipped to Morley, Alberta where it housed vintage aircraft used for forestry patrols along the foothills. Over the next 50 years, the hangar moved three more times, ending finally on the farm where I had viewed it from the air.
Canada’s wartime history has always been of interest, especially anything to do with aviation. Several years ago, National Archives sent microfilm copies of the daily diaries of each of the 110 schools that made up the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. As I followed the records on an old microfilm reader, I realized that there were stories that could be written based on the diaries.
One such story told of a Royal Air Force school that was built for Great Britain in 1940 just above the confluence of the Bow and Highwood Rivers. The school’s diary, written by very well educated English officers, was a joy to read. As well as information from the diaries, as a boy I had known the commanding officer and his family when they moved to Lethbridge from London, England after the war. He became chief instructor at the flying club. His daughter Susan, then all of seven, well and truly first won my young heart.
Another story from the diaries concerned a Shetland pony that undoubtedly received more column inches of wartime newspaper coverage than any other Calgary “celebrity”. Donated by the Bill Herron family of Turner Valley oil fame, Midget was the main prize in the 1942 Calgary Herald Christmas Fund contest. For 25 cents, Lloyd Willigar, an enlisted airman at Calgary’s No. 2 Wireless School, purchased the winning ticket at the gala draw held at the Palace Theatre on Stephen Avenue. Reading the school’s diaries and Calgary’s newspapers of the day provided everything I needed to tell the story of Midget’s military life as mascot of the wireless school, the death of Willigar on a bombing mission over Germany and the after-war life of a little Calgary pony sent to Willigar’s mother in Parsborough, Nova Scotia by the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Curiosity and a genuine interest in what I see and with whom I speak are agents that motivate me to write my little accounts. And finding my stories published in a monthly newspaper found on a stand at my neighborhood Safeway store always brightens my day. Driving around Acme, Alberta a few years ago, I was impressed with an old building that, while once a bank, is now the shop of a gentleman who restores stringed instruments and manufactures bows. A knock on his front door allowed me access to the archetier’s unique world of specialized crafts and to write, “Take a Bow, Mr. Jackson”, as titled by my editor. To this day, I get notes on my website asking about buying or selling violins.
Curiosity led to a story about Calgary’s new light rail transit cars. Built in Sacramento, California the cars are shipped on special rail cars to Calgary. Okay, then what? And that question to Calgary Transit resulted in an invitation to watch car number 2442 be lifted from its California transporter and lowered gently to the steel rails of its new Calgary home.
Apart from unsolicited stories, the editor has given me assignments from time-to-time. I attended the opening of Studio Bell, home of Canada’s National Music Centre; visited the vast lands of the Calgary Stampede Ranch; hung out with volunteers at Calgary’s Heritage Park blacksmith shop; and listened to the life stories of a Calgary barber who has worked from his little shop for more than 55 years.
A fortuitous happening put me in touch with the Kerby News shortly after I retired and moved to Calgary. In a former life, I wrote the editor’s notebook for an organization’s quarterly magazine and quite enjoyed seeing my observations in print. Knowing that I have a new outlet for stories that I might write has been highly motivational and truly feeds my curiosity about things that I observe in life.
If my stories hit a note with readers and bring bits of local history to light, I guess that’s all for the good. And the remuneration is just fine – tear sheets, lots of tear sheets.
-30-
Writing About History in My Backyard
by Tim Johnston
I write occasionally for Calgary’s Kerby News, a monthly newspaper aimed mainly at people in the age 55 plus demographic. To date, there have been 22 feature stories, about three per year since I retired from my other life. Not that prolific, I suppose, but by finding and writing about people, places and events that stir my curiosity I hope I do a service to the publication and its readers.
Some of my stories emerged from trips taken in and around Calgary looking for things to photograph. Others were generated because of personal interests such as aviation and railroads. A few are a combination of both, like one that will appear in an upcoming issue of the News. I wrote about a little stretch of railroad in Calgary now used to reach a couple of manufacturing plants in the city’s southeast. The story came about following an afternoon of photographing two old Canadian National locomotives as they spotted cars. Watching the engines work got me wondering why so many bridges and structures existed just to deliver a couple of boxcars. Records at Calgary City Archives revealed that this small piece of railroad once ran all the way to the Lindsay Park neighborhood where the Canadian Northern Railway, one of the merged companies that formed the Canadian National Railway, built its rail yard. A final bridge took the rails just across the Elbow River to the passenger terminal. Today, the rail yard is home to the Repsol Sports Centre. The old passenger terminal is full of life, pulsing to the steps of the dancers of the Alberta Ballet Company.
On a drive through the foothills southwest of Calgary, three long steel posts with enormous horns on the ends caught my eye. These were the few that remained of Calgary’s thirteen cold-war-era civil defense air raid sirens, devises meant to warn Calgarians of impending Armageddon. Rocketry had made the sirens obsolete. Following up, I learned that Calgary had been at the forefront of civil defense planning in Canada and had in place an extensive scheme to ensure the survival of much of its population should the sirens ever go on full wail and stay that way.
Photography was also the impetus for a story about a tourist railroad located at Mossleigh, Alberta. Approaching the village, I passed by the Aspen Crossing Garden Centre and was immediately attracted by the railway passenger cars. Stopping with the intention of photographing some of the equipment, I ventured to the owner that I sometimes wrote articles for a Calgary newspaper and would he mind telling me how his railroad came to be. My question resulted in an afternoon of riding on the old Alco diesel locomotive as it marshaled cars for the next day’s tours as well as a Christmas-themed story for the Kerby News.
Sometimes, stories find me. I wrote a feature on a retired civil engineer who had restored and flown a Fokker Super Universal, one of Canada’s iconic early bush planes. We had arranged to meet at his Indus airfield hangar so that I could deliver a batch of papers containing his story. He had just landed his 1950 Fleet Canuck and signaled me to join him in the cabin. Flying south over the Bow River, we began circling a farm on which was situated a large, squat structure. “That building is a piece of history,” my pilot said, “and you ought to write something about it.” Armed with an idea and the name of the farm’s owner, I began researching the world’s last known Bessonneau hangar. Built in England during World War I, the portable hangar had gone to France to house British fighter and bomber aircraft. At war’s end it was shipped to Morley, Alberta where it housed vintage aircraft used for forestry patrols along the foothills. Over the next 50 years, the hangar moved three more times, ending finally on the farm where I had viewed it from the air.
Canada’s wartime history has always been of interest, especially anything to do with aviation. Several years ago, National Archives sent microfilm copies of the daily diaries of each of the 110 schools that made up the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. As I followed the records on an old microfilm reader, I realized that there were stories that could be written based on the diaries.
One such story told of a Royal Air Force school that was built for Great Britain in 1940 just above the confluence of the Bow and Highwood Rivers. The school’s diary, written by very well educated English officers, was a joy to read. As well as information from the diaries, as a boy I had known the commanding officer and his family when they moved to Lethbridge from London, England after the war. He became chief instructor at the flying club. His daughter Susan, then all of seven, well and truly first won my young heart.
Another story from the diaries concerned a Shetland pony that undoubtedly received more column inches of wartime newspaper coverage than any other Calgary “celebrity”. Donated by the Bill Herron family of Turner Valley oil fame, Midget was the main prize in the 1942 Calgary Herald Christmas Fund contest. For 25 cents, Lloyd Willigar, an enlisted airman at Calgary’s No. 2 Wireless School, purchased the winning ticket at the gala draw held at the Palace Theatre on Stephen Avenue. Reading the school’s diaries and Calgary’s newspapers of the day provided everything I needed to tell the story of Midget’s military life as mascot of the wireless school, the death of Willigar on a bombing mission over Germany and the after-war life of a little Calgary pony sent to Willigar’s mother in Parsborough, Nova Scotia by the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Curiosity and a genuine interest in what I see and with whom I speak are agents that motivate me to write my little accounts. And finding my stories published in a monthly newspaper found on a stand at my neighborhood Safeway store always brightens my day. Driving around Acme, Alberta a few years ago, I was impressed with an old building that, while once a bank, is now the shop of a gentleman who restores stringed instruments and manufactures bows. A knock on his front door allowed me access to the archetier’s unique world of specialized crafts and to write, “Take a Bow, Mr. Jackson”, as titled by my editor. To this day, I get notes on my website asking about buying or selling violins.
Curiosity led to a story about Calgary’s new light rail transit cars. Built in Sacramento, California the cars are shipped on special rail cars to Calgary. Okay, then what? And that question to Calgary Transit resulted in an invitation to watch car number 2442 be lifted from its California transporter and lowered gently to the steel rails of its new Calgary home.
Apart from unsolicited stories, the editor has given me assignments from time-to-time. I attended the opening of Studio Bell, home of Canada’s National Music Centre; visited the vast lands of the Calgary Stampede Ranch; hung out with volunteers at Calgary’s Heritage Park blacksmith shop; and listened to the life stories of a Calgary barber who has worked from his little shop for more than 55 years.
A fortuitous happening put me in touch with the Kerby News shortly after I retired and moved to Calgary. In a former life, I wrote the editor’s notebook for an organization’s quarterly magazine and quite enjoyed seeing my observations in print. Knowing that I have a new outlet for stories that I might write has been highly motivational and truly feeds my curiosity about things that I observe in life.
If my stories hit a note with readers and bring bits of local history to light, I guess that’s all for the good. And the remuneration is just fine – tear sheets, lots of tear sheets.
-30-