The Calgary Public Building Elevators
Guest Post by Harry Sanders
Looking east through the lobby of the new Calgary Public Building toward the elevator lobby, 1931. Glenbow Library and Archives, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary, CU1211915
In 2022–23, the City of Calgary converted the two passenger elevators in the lobby of the historic Calgary Public Building from manual to automatic control. The project was completed 92 years after the elevators, along with their two companions in the building, had begun service. Their manual operation spanned the years when the building housed federal government offices (from 1931 to 1979) and municipal government offices (since 1979). Long before their automation, the lobby elevators had become the last in Alberta with manual controls.
When the building was constructed in 1930–31, the Otis-Fensom Company installed four elevators—the two accessible from the lobby, a freight elevator behind the adjacent stairwell, and a third passenger elevator at the building’s southwest corner.
Looking southeast toward the new Calgary Public Building, 1931. Note the outside entrance to the elevator lobby at the far left of the building and the elevator machine rooms atop the roofline at the far left and far right corners. The machine room to the left serviced the lobby elevators and freight elevator. The building’s principal façades are clad in Tyndall stone. W.J. Oliver, photographer. Glenbow Library and Archives, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary, CU1128066
From the start, the federal Department of Public Works hired war veterans, many of them amputees, to operate the elevators. One of the first, if not the very first, was Lancashire-born Thomas Clarke, Jr. (1892–1982), who settled in Calgary in 1912, served with the 50th Battalion in the First World War, and lost a leg at the Somme. Clarke retired after the Second World War as the elevators’ chief operator.
Clarke’s contemporary and co-worker Jordan Crowe (1891–1963) hailed from Cobalt, Ontario, and he served overseas with the 174th Battalion. Crowe moved to Calgary in 1919 and operated the elevators from about 1933 to 1943.
Percy J. Hopkins (1899–1978) was younger, but he served in the same war and operated the elevators at the same time. Born in Oxfordshire, he moved with his family to a farm at Leslieville, Alberta. At 16, Hopkins lied about his age and fought with the 10th Battalion. Just days after surviving the Battle of Vimy Ridge, he was hit by shrapnel and lost his right leg. Hopkins operated the elevators from 1933 until the 1960s.
Born as Maxim Semionovich Korneychuk in what is now Ukraine, Max Karney came to Calgary in 1914. After serving in the First World War, he worked at Bowness Park until he was laid off during the Great Depression. Karney operated the elevators from about 1947 until 1959. This photograph was taken circa 1940. Courtesy of Janet Jones.
Other early operators included London-born Ernest Silverman (1895–1951), who lost a leg fighting with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, and Max Karney (1894–1963), who served with the 31st and 137th battalions and was hospitalized after enduring a poison gas attack.
In time, Second World War veterans took over the elevators from their First World War counterparts. For decades, the operators included Walter Fernie (1922–1988), Clarence E. Butler (1923–1993), and Richard Phillip (1920–1989), all of whom had been injured during their military service. Art Cox, another longtime operator, joined them in the mid-1960s.
Swiss-born Dick Philipp moved to Canada at an early age and grew up in Alberta’s Kingman-Tofield area. He was wounded in Sicily during the Second World War. Public Building employees referred to Philipp’s elevator as “Dick’s office.” This photograph was taken in 1978. Glenbow Library and Archives, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary, CU115199960. Photo by Marla Strong.
Clarence Butler of Kamsach, Saskatchewan landed in Normandy on D-Day with the Regina Rifle Regiment. Some time later, he was tasked with clearing mines. One of them exploded, taking his right arm and the hearing in his right ear. At the Public Building, Butler usually operated the freight elevator, and he used the hook on his prosthetic arm to open and close the cage door. In 1979, Butler transferred to the Harry Hays Building information kiosk. This photograph was taken circa 1973. Courtesy of Karen Edgington
Public Building elevator operators, presumably in their break room, circa 1970. L–R: Clarence Butler; Dick Philipp; Wally Fernie. Courtesy of Karen Edgington.
The City acquired the Public Building in 1979 for use as a municipal office complex, and federal government offices moved to the new Harry Hays Building in Chinatown. The City engaged the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires, an employment firm for Canadian and Commonwealth military veterans, to provide security service and operate the elevators.
As before, the elevator operators were all men. The earliest-known woman operator was Ingrid Hamel, a five-year veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces who began operating the elevators in 1991.
David Jacobs worked in the Land Department, and he often rode the elevators to municipal offices upstairs. “Every day, elevator operators and custodial staff were polishing all that brass,” he later recalled. “Besides the handrails, they had to lubricate all those hinges in that door mechanism. It had a unique odour of Brasso and oil grease and whatever.”[i]
The elevators were being brought up to then-current standards when Art Giesbrecht, a Manitoba-born Commissionaire, began operating them in 1994. “When I first started, you could stop it anywhere,” he recalled a decade later. “You could stop them three feet below or above and open the door. It was dangerous,” he said.[ii]
Public Building elevator operators with their uniforms and caps, n.d. Courtesy of Karen Edgington.
Operators had more discretion when the elevators were fully manual. “If a Parks and Recreation or Finance manager needed to be taken out quickly, the operator could take them right down, and nobody minded,” Giesbrecht recalled. He remembered a senior Parks official, a smoker, who worked on the top floor of what was already a no-smoking building. “He would say ‘drop me,’ and I would—without stopping for anybody. I’d go past all the floors, and when I went back to pick people up, they’d say, ‘Oh, you took Peter out for a cigarette, did you?’”[iii]
This was no longer possible after the 1994 upgrade was completed. “Now the elevator won’t allow you to pass a floor,” Giesbrecht said. “You can go where the light is on, but you can’t bypass it. You have to take it there, but it’s self-levelling when you get there.”[iv]
Wally Fernie grew up at Gull Lake, and he became a tank driver with Lord Strathcona’s Horse Regiment during the Second World War. After the war, Fernie lost his right arm below the elbow in a tank accident. He settled in Calgary in 1948 and worked as a Public Building elevator operator for three decades. When the building was sold in 1979, Fernie transferred to the new Harry Hays Building, where he worked at an information kiosk until he retired. This photograph was taken in 1976. Ian Christie, photographer. Glenbow Library and Archives, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary, CU112704941
Stan Seltenrich (1945–2016), The City’s supervisor of building operations, saw the advantage of manual elevators. “They allow for more consideration for the handicapped, there’s better aid to the public, and directories aren’t needed,” he said, adding that manual operation also provided security. “That’s because the operators get to know their riders and can recognize someone who doesn’t belong in the building, or is new to the building.”[v]
At a certain point, a private security firm took over from the Commissionaires. Finally, The City’s in-house Corporate Security assumed control of the elevators. One of its first operators was Faiq Raoof. Originally from Pakistan, Raoof joined Corporate Security in 2015 and by 2016 was operating the elevators full-time, which he did for over a year. “Faiq is a legend,” said Keith Farklauf, who came here from British Columbia and learned to operate the elevators by shadowing Raoof.[vi]
In 1976, Calgary Herald columnist Patrick Tivy, left, wrote a feature about the Calgary Public Building elevators and their operators. The operator in this photograph is almost certainly Art Cox. Ian Christie, photographer. Glenbow Library and Archives, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary, CU112704942
Farklauf and Bekalu Yihune, who came from Ethiopia in 2010 and joined Corporate Security in 2015, were among the elevators’ final full-time operators. They worked as a tag-team, with one elevator and its operator waiting for passengers in the lobby while the other was in motion.
The building became a Municipal Historic Resource in 1996, and its described character-defining elements include the elevators accessible from the lobby. But parts for the old elevators were getting hard to obtain, and eventually they had to be fabricated. Automation of the elevators began in 2022, and the province’s last manually operated elevator completed its service the following year.
Sources:
[i] David Jacobs, telephone interview by author, 12 April 2023.
[ii] Art Giesbrecht, telephone interview by author, 15 April 2004.
[iii] Giesbrecht interview.
[iv] Giesbrecht interview.
[v] Marie Fulton, “Going Up!” Calgary Sun, 19 June 1994, S2.
[vi] Keith Farklauf, personal interview, 13 April 2023.