Calgary’s first historian laureate hopes to inspire residents to embrace city’s past: Appointment a sign of Calgary’s emergence as a maturing city, Harry Sanders says
By Annalise Klingbeil, Calgary Herald June 20, 2012
The city’s first historian laureate thinks Calgary does an all right job at preserving and remembering its history.
“It’s a younger city, so I think there is maybe an attitude that there’s less history or it’s less important history,” Harry Sanders said.
While major cities such as London, Rome and Shanghai have lengthy histories, Calgary does not.
“In those cities, they have many blocks of 130 years. We have only one,” Sanders said. “That doesn’t make it any less worth knowing.”
As historian laureate, Sanders will be an ambassador for the Calgary Heritage Authority and serve as Calgary’s public historian. He will attend local events and draw attention to the olden days through social media.
The history buff’s first official event as historian laureate took place outside on Stephen Avenue Walk, where a crowd assembled to hear him speak about the city’s past, on Wednesday.
If the gathering had occurred a century earlier, 8th Avenue would have been lined with small shops, real estate offices, horses drawing wagons and warehouses to the west.
“If you wanted to buy a home in Bowness — one of those distant suburbs to which the streetcar was going outside the city limits — you could have gone into John Hextall’s real estate office right there,” Sanders informed the crowd.
“If you wanted to see the richest and flashiest real estate mogul in town, you would have gone to what is now Fashion Central to see Freddie Lowes.”
Having a historian laureate is a sign of a mature city, said Sanders, sporting a green “laurel wreath” in honour of the ancient origins of his appointment.
The self-described antiquarian has authored several local history books, has a history degree from the University of Calgary and has worked at Heritage Park Historical Village and in the archive departments of the Glenbow Museum, the City of Calgary and the Jewish Historical Society.
“I just like old things and stories from the past, they mean something to me,” Sanders said. “If something is local, it means more. I can feel part of it.”
Sanders said while you can’t force history on people who aren’t interested in it, he hopes through his role as historian laureate that Calgarians will embrace the city’s past.
“I hope that through innovative ways, through humour, public speaking, through little tidbits about disparate things in our city, something will stick, they’ll enjoy it, they’ll think about it.”
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