Historian in Residence: Mapping Calgary’s Literary Landscape
Shaun Hunter is the 2020 Historian in Residence
Agatha Christie on board RMS Kildonan Castle leaving Southampton, January 1922. Courtesy of the Christie Archive.
Mapping Calgary’s Literary Landscape
Where was Rudyard Kipling standing in 1907 when he called Calgary the “wonder city of Canada”? Which hotel welcomed Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on their 1920s tours through town? Which Calgary settings have found their way into novels and poems through the decades?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been spending my days plotting the answers to these and other questions on a digital literary map of Calgary.
I’ve had the idea in mind for a while. Now, as Heritage Calgary and the Calgary Public Library’s Historian in Residence, I have a chance to dig into the project. With libraries closed and programming on hold, I’ve become a mapmaker full time.
Rudyard Kipling. Elliott and Fry Collection/Bassano Studios.
Many people are surprised to learn that Calgary has a literary landscape. I was, too. Growing up in Calgary in the 1960s and 70s, I had never seen my hometown on the page. A few years ago, I set out to find the city in prose and poetry. That reading project turned into the book Calgary through the Eyes of Writers – 160 literary excerpts by 146 writers across the city’s history.
Since my book was published in 2018, I have continued to find Calgary locales depicted on the page, landmarks in the city’s literary history, and trivia. Lots of trivia.
During my residency, I will be focusing on mapping sites in the City of Calgary’s Inventory of Evaluated Historic Resources – a trove of more than 800 buildings and places identified as having heritage value by Heritage Calgary. By my count, more than 100 have literary connections.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Paris, 1925. Hulton Deutsch/Getty.