Shaun Hunter is the 2020 Historian in Residence

A highlight of my term as Historian in Residence was talking to an online class of Grade 5 students about maps of Calgary and the stories they tell. At the end of my talk, I shared a sneak peek screenshot of my literary map: a Google map crowded with colourful pins. Here I present the final exhibit: A Literary Map of Calgary.

(To explore the map in full screen, click on the square frame icon in the top right corner.)

Each pin, I explained to the Grade 5s, tells the story of a literary connection with a specific site in the city. Taken together, the pins tell a bigger, lesser-known story: that Calgary is a literary landscape.

The more than 500 pins on this digital literary map of Calgary show that writers have lived in, visited, and been inspired by this place. The map tells the story of a vibrant, diverse, decades-old literary landscape. A city that is much more than its stereotypes.

My extended, almost year-long pandemic term during partial lockdowns did not allow me much time to mooch around the Library’s local history collection, or hunker down in the resident’s office. But the residency did give me a chance to immerse myself in mapmaking. I had time to comb through my own research files for Calgary through the Eyes of Writers, and tunnel into digital local history archives.

In the beginning, I set out to plot sites from the Inventory of Evaluated Historic Resources. Of the 869 places on that list, I found dozens with literary connections. On the map you will see those sites marked with an asterisk.

Weeks into the project, I realized that the Inventory sites only tell part of the story. As the pandemic crawled on, I widened my lens to include sites beyond the Inventory – places you can still see, and others that now exist only in our memories or on the page. Those “ghost” sites are marked with grey pins on the map.

What will you see on this digital literary map of Calgary? Here are a few teasers:

• The place where a young hospital seamstress penned a poem about the Great War that would travel the world and launch her decades-long career

• The restaurant where Calgary writers held a farewell dinner for Nellie McClung in 1932

• The Kensington bistro where Leonard Cohen met up with one of his “sisters of mercy”

• The home of the Calgary author who lined his office with salvaged rosewood from the Palliser Hotel

• The public library where a Giller Prize-winning novelist fed her early appetite for story

I’ve cast a wide net. You’ll find novels and comic books, and everything in between. Writers’ homes and gathering places where literary history was made. Spots where famous writers have touched down. Festival venues, storied bookstores, and magazine and book publishers’ headquarters. Historic and contemporary places that have caught writers’ attention. Literary markers and trivia hiding in the city’s streets and avenues.

Navigation tips

A few suggestions as you set out to explore the map of our storied city:

• Click on individual pins. Start in the city’s historic centre where the sites are most dense, or work your way around the edges.

• Scroll through the legend sidebar. Toggle the checkmark beside the map’s section headings to select a theme of interest.

• Use the map’s search tool at the top of the legend to follow the trail of a specific place or writer.

• Focus on sites listed in the Inventory (marked with an asterisk in the map legend), and click on the links to see the site listing.

• Follow your curiosity and track down the literary works mentioned, most of which are available through the Calgary Public Library catalogue.

However you choose to experience the map – from the comfort of your home, or with feet on the ground – I welcome you on an adventure through the city’s unexpected literary geography.

This map is a work-in-progress: there are still many more literary connections to be charted. I hope it will serve as a resource for urban travellers, readers and local historians, and that it will spark more literary placemaking in the city.

Following my map presentation to Grade 5s, their virtual classroom crackled with students’ questions. Where had writers touched down in their neighbourhoods? What stories had been written about the places where they live?

The students’ excitement reminded me of a quote by John Robert Colombo: “There is something surprising about seeing a site that been written about; it is rather like meeting a celebrity.” There is also something wonderful about knowing that writers were here – are here – capturing the specific details and texture of our city on the page.

A few words of thanks. I’m grateful to the Historian in Residence program for allowing me to put this map into the world and to add to Calgary’s rich story. Thanks to the experts who helped me pin down the details: Carolyn Ryder and Christine Hayes at the Calgary Public Library; Alison Wagner at the University of Calgary’s Special Collections; and Karly Sawatzky at SAIT. And a hat tip to everyone in the local history and literary communities who sent clues my way and helped me get the facts right. Any errors are mine (or thanks to gremlins in the Google map software).

Shaun Hunter served as the 2020 Heritage Calgary/Calgary Public Library Historian in Residence. She is the author of Calgary through the Eyes of Writers (2018) and shares her passion for the city’s literary history on guided walks, presentations, and on her website www.shaunhunter.ca. In 2019, Shaun helped bring Project Bookmark Canada’s national literary trail to Calgary with a permanent plaque featuring a poem set in the East Village neighbourhood. In 2020, she co-curated “Storied City: Early Calgary through the Eyes of Writers,” an exhibit at the city’s historic Lougheed House.    

Shaun’s digital literary map of Calgary will be featured in an online exhibit at the Calgary Public Library from Feb 8 to March 1, 2021. The Historian in Residence is presented in partnership with Calgary Public Library.