JOSE RODRIGUEZ

This time of year, is the time of year we take the one day to remember, the soldiers who have served, those who came back home and those who didn't.

City archives has a lot of memories down there. Susanne, maybe you can tell us a little bit about them.

SUSANNE CLARK

I like to say that the archives holds the memory of The City, and a lot of the stories of the city as perceived by the City of Calgary. And so, we hold a lot of official records.

So, we have a lot of letters written by citizens to the city and the mayor or, oftentimes a lot of the decision making was happening with the board of commissioners.

And it's one of those circumstances where you get to hear the voices and the stories of the people, and it gives you a real sense of the time and place in which all of these stories are taking place. And it can provide a vital perspective on sometimes why decisions were made the way they were. And what the people were feeling and what was really important to them at the time.

And so, at The City, we have a number of records that cross over both great wars. And then the continuing relationship with the military units in Calgary over the years, even to present day.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

And that's I think it's an important thing to remember is that we often think of Remembrance Day as the Great War or the Second World War.

We have men and women serving right now, and their wounds are real. Sometimes when they come back home, and their service is very much appreciated. But getting back to those historical ones, what can you tell us about what life was like in Calgary during the Great War, during the First World War?

SUSANNE CLARK

So particularly in the First World War, when you're reading through the correspondence that we have to either the city clerk or the board of commissioners or the mayor, you get a sense of small-town community and people's feelings and interactions with government were very different than they are today.

You would write to the mayor and say, hey, my family member moved out there. I don't know where they are. And so, what we often times see in the correspondence was see correspondence from family members. So, in the archives we have a letter from a family member writing to the city trying to track down their brother’s solicitor.

Before he went to war, he visited with his family in England, and he made his sister his beneficiary. And so, he's the sister is actually writing to the city trying to track down the solicitor. Her because her unfortunately her brother did pass in the war. And so, you have the city then responding and helping the family of the soldiers.

Other actions that the city took to look after the soldiers while they were gone is, for there were quite a few soldiers that enlisted that were city employees. And so, the city over time has, made place for them to come home. And so, they would track the positions that the soldiers had so that when they were finished at the war, they could come home and find employment.

And if for some reason they couldn't do the job they did before, they would find another place and a role for them, if they could, within the city. And so, there's quite a bit of correspondence between, soldiers saying, hey, I'm coming home. But there is also, quite a bit of correspondence between the city departments making sure that they had a space and a place for the soldier to return home to see.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

That's so fascinating, because in a lot of people don't know, we work out of the Calgary public building, which is across from Olympic Plaza. And downstairs we have elevators. And those elevators were actually operated by a person until just a couple of years ago. And the idea behind those elevators was that this was for returning amputees. If I'm not mistaken.

So, there is this sort of appetite within the nation to ensure that we took care of the people who were taking care of us. Is that what you're seeing?

SUSANNE CLARK

Yes, exactly. And other interesting things that I don't think you would see today. As I say, you get a time for the space and the place, the correspondence and the communication going out to current city employees at the time, suggesting and recommending that they donate a day's wage each month towards I think it was the Patriotic War Fund. And this was to support the widows and the children and the families that were left behind because oftentimes the soldier was the breadwinner in support of the family. And so, with them gone and not earning a living, they needed a lot of support.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Wow. So that's the First World War. What were, you know, when the war is ended, that the cities sort of welcomed back our soldiers? What was that like?

SUSANNE CLARK

There was a lot of celebration, of course, them coming home, the First World War, it was quite interesting because when they came home, this will feel close to home.

Of course, there was the Spanish flu, also came home with them. And so that sort of tempered the return from the soldiers. But later on, there was a lot of activity to have honor rolls to honor the soldiers that had not come home. And, then we also have in, Central Park, the war memorials were, being erected to honor the soldiers that had fallen, and those that that served at the war.

So, a lot of activity was going on at that point. And then we also found the growth of the Legion network. And Calgary had one of the first Legion's. We have an exhibit on our website that, talks a little bit about some of the, supports that were in place for returning soldiers.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Well, and then obviously, if you take a look at McKnight. We obviously named some of our streets after these soldiers as well.

So, I guess, The City felt an incredible debt I think, to the men and women who were serving to keep us all free, any other interesting findings you have in archives that you want to share?

SUSANNE CLARK

What we always find kind of interesting is the archives doesn't just have the correspondence, the advertisements, all those sort of paper records. We also have some wonderful photographs. Well, not too many from the front, and showing soldiers, but they really show the city at the time. I know for a fact I have a photograph of what we believe as a military funeral. We're not sure who the funeral is for, but you have all the soldiers marching in formation for this funeral and I think that's around 1919, 1920s in the early, probably after the First World War. And we also have, as I mentioned, the continuing relationship with the city. There has been the Freedom of The City Parade, for many years in the city going back through time. And we as part of the ceremony and the Freedom of The City, there would be an exchange of a gift.

And so, the archives have all of these gifts that were given to the city from our regimental bodies. And some of them are quite beautiful. There is a beautiful silver, tray from the, 75th anniversary for the PPCLI.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.

SUSANNE CLARK

Yes. Thank you.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

For Those of you who don't speak acronym.

SUSANNE CLARK

And then we also have some of the regimental colors as well. And we have a beautiful, it looks it's a statue of a World War One soldier. Off the top of my head, I can't remember exactly which regiment that is from. But it's quite beautiful. And there's a wide variety of materials that have come their way to the archives. So, it's an interesting place to be because you never know what you're going to find.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

So now you probably got some pretty cool things in there. What are some of the cool things that are in there? I know I saw I saw some LRT trains. They were about this big.

SUSANNE CLARK

Yes. We actually did an exhibit in partnership with Calgary Transit and Green Line, where we sort of had the past, the present and the future. And, we had the trains on display.

We have lots of weird objects that have made their way into the city as various gifts. And so sometimes they may be gifts from, military during Freedom of The City events. Sometimes they may be, visiting dignitaries. So many different weird ways that we get gifts to the archives. Correction, usually it's there to The City, to Calgarians, or they’re to the mayor.

Some of the more unusual ones is, we have a fish bonking stick. I'm not sure where that one came from. And then we have some very beautiful gifts we have from visiting dignitaries. I believe they were from China of a beautiful golden dragon. It's absolutely gorgeous.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

And do you find this time of year, are you finding people coming to you interested in some of the war history battle history of Calgary?

SUSANNE CLARK

We tend not to see too, too much of that, unless people know that their family member worked at The City, then we might see them come in and engage with those questions. The more generic military questions we actually tend to find, probably being redirected to the military archives that we have in town.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

And yeah, maybe we can name some of those. I mean, there's the Military Museum, right? The Museum of the Regiments?

SUSANNE CLARK

Yes, the regiment is also at the same place, same location.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

We have the Hangar Museum.

SUSANNE CLARK

That we do. I'm not sure how much they have in the way of actual military records. Okay, we can investigate that for you. But then we also then we see a lot of personal records. May also be at the Glenbow, the Taylor Western Family Research Centre.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

So, if I'm in Calgary and or a Canadian, or maybe I live anywhere in the world, and I know that I had some relatives who, were in Calgary at the time, would the archives potentially be a place for me to try to find some information about some of those relatives?

SUSANNE CLARK

Sometimes. So, the records management system and for how records come to the archives looked very different the further back we go in time. And so, what ends up happening is sometimes the records that we have that are quite old in age are quite hit and miss what we may or may not have made its way to the archives.

The more current the records are, the more reliable it is that we won't be able to track records down. If the family member was a business owner, we may be able to track down business licenses. If people owned property and we know what the address is for the property, you may be able to find information on that.

But remember, the majority of the records at the City of Calgary archives are really tied to the business of The City. And so, this would have been around property planning and development. It would have been around our roads, maintenance, lots of letters about the roads. People used to complain about potholes in the early 1900s as well.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

I can't imagine how big they were back then too.

SUSANNE CLARK

Right? Yes, a little bit bigger. Exactly. And so that core business of the city is the bulk of the records that we have at the archives. But every so often we find gems hidden in the records which really tell you the story of the people at the time.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Is the city archives are open to just regular Calgarians? Can somebody just come in and research something?

SUSANNE CLARK

So, the City of Calgary archives, we just in the last year or so launched our online research portal. So if you go to Calgary, okay, slash archives, you can actually search online from your home and see what kind of records we have in the archives. Now people always ask, are the actual records themselves online?

Well, probably not, but it will give you the map to where you can find the information. Now, we won't lie. Looking for information in archives is a very different experience than a library. Because the in a library, the book usually has all that information.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Do they Dewey Decimal System is that still thing?

SUSANNE CLARK

In libraries? Yes, it is still the foundation is good.

But in in archives, you don't have that. You have to know with this this piece of information I'm looking for, would they have written to the mayor what they would have written to this city clerk? How would they access the city service to find the information I'm looking for? Because all of those records are based on who created them.

And so, for example, a few years back, we were looking at the portrait of the Queen in the Council chambers, and we were trying to determine how did this portrait that was done from a Montreal artist end up at the City of Calgary. And we ended up having to go through the correspondence of the city clerks and, and buried in those records, we did find that information. So often times, when you are looking for information at the archives, you may have to work your way through because they wouldn't organize the records by subject. It was 1919, A - E correspondence out of town kind of thing. So, it's literally page by page. A lot of reading to find and track down what you need.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Now is it dusty in there because everything's sold? No cobwebs?

SUSANNE CLARK

No. It is pristine and clean. That's just not good for old records. That's right. It's also in the summertime. It is nice and cool and it's not humid because the number one thing we can do to preserve those records is preserve and create a stable environment for them to live in. And so, when you go into the stacks of the archives where we store all the records, it's beautiful. It's nice and cool.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Remembrance Day, getting back to the reason we're having the conversation, to somber time, a lot of those stories, as time passes, are sort of in the vault of history, as more and more of our older veterans pass away.

How important is it for you in archives to keep our military service as part of what it is that you collect?

SUSANNE CLARK

Our tagline at the archives is that we preserve the past to inform the future. And it is important that we don't forget the people that have gone before us, the reasons that we would fight for something, what was important, what were the values that were important for us?

And even with the passage of time, a lot of those things don't change that much. And I think it's interesting to see in some ways we are very different, but in other ways we've grown and it's important for us to learn from our past experience. And so, preserving those records of the past is so important because otherwise those voices are lost in time, and we wouldn't know how people struggled.

And sometimes it's reassuring to know things like housing, things like social services and supports were just as important hundreds of years ago as they are today, that people struggled. And so, I think it's important to know where we came from. And I think it helps us frame our paths forward.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Suzanne, thank you for taking the time, and punctuating the importance of the men and women who served, those who came home and those who didn't. Thank you for joining us today.

As always, we value your feedback. So please reach out to us at calgaryconversations@calgary.ca and tell us what topics you'd like covered and questions you'd like answered.

Until next time, be kind to yourselves. Be kind to each other. And if you see someone without a smile today, give them years. Take care.