Expansive Discourses
Urban Sprawl in Calgary, 1945–1978
© 2009 Max Foran
Published by AU Press, Athabasca University
1200, 10011 – 109 Street
Edmonton, AB T5J 3S8
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Foran, Max
Expansive discourses: urban sprawl in Calgary, 1945-1978/Max Foran.
(The West unbound: social and cultural studies series)
Includes index.
Issued also in electronic format (ISBN 978-1-897425-14-5)
ISBN 978-1-897425-13-8
1. Cities and towns – Alberta – Calgary – Growth – History. 2. Real estate development – Alberta – Calgary – History. 3. Calgary (Atla.) – Politics and government. 4. City planning – Alberta – Calgary – History. 5. Calgary (Atla.) – History – 20th century. I. Title. II. Series: West unbound, social and cultural studies.
HT384.C32C35 2009a 371.1’41609712338 C2008-907444-0
The West Unbound: Social and Cultural Studies Series
ISSN 1915-8181 (print)
ISSN 1915-819X (electronic)
Cover design by Rod Michalchuk, General Idea
Book design by Infoscan Collette, Québec
Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis Book Printing
This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons License, see www.creativecommons.org. The text may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author.
Please contact AU Press, Athabasca University at aupress@athabascau.ca for permission beyond the usage outlined in the Creative Commons license.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Acknowledgements
Preface
Part One 1945–1962
Chapter 1. Setting the Stage
Chapter 2. Going It Alone, 1945–1954
Chapter 3. Establishing the Pattern, 1955–1962
Part Two 1963–1978
Chapter 4. Entering a New Era
Chapter 5. The Annexations Debates, 1972–1978
Chapter 6. City-Developer Relations, 1964–1978
Chapter 7. Land Use
Conclusion
Notes
Photo Credits
Index
First of all I would thank the wonderful people at the City of Calgary Archives. They were unfailingly helpful, taking pains to search out obscure sources and supporting me in every possible way. I am especially indebted to the late John McLeod, and to Ed Davis for setting the record straight on what happened in the early 1950s when the City records were not as detailed with respect to the two foundational privately developed subdivisions of Thorncliffe and Glendale. John died a few weeks after I spoke to him. He was a few short months away from his 100th birthday, and I will cherish my memories of our conversation that day. Less than a decade younger is Ed Davis of Haddin Davis and Brown, and the founding president of Kelwood. A man of amazing vitality and a razor-sharp memory, Ed was unfailingly helpful in talking to me and providing me with information on the corporation’s founding years. Thanks go too to Maurice Chornoboy, former Senior Vice President of Carma and General Manager of Qualico, and Dave Poppitt, Vice President of Melcor Developments, for their help and giving of their time to answer what must have seemed to them silly questions. I enjoyed talking to former Mayor Rodney Sykes, and appreciated his customary frankness. Finally I would like to acknowledge my debt to Les Cosman of Delray Engineering, Keith Construction, and later president of Genstar Development Company, for sharing his thoughts with me. A man of quiet dignity and consummate professionalism, he “opened my eyes” to a side of the land development industry that I wish more people could see.
This narrative represents an attempt to explain urban sprawl in Calgary in terms of stakeholder relationships, with the prime emphasis being on the City of Calgary and the various land developers. The focus is purely on residential development, with only minor attention being paid to commercial or industrial growth. Both deserve further academic attention, particularly the role played by the big regional shopping centres on sector planning and development.
This case study concentrates on Calgary. It makes no attempt to assign either singularity or congruence as compared with other Canadian cities, although it seems likely that similar patterns were followed elsewhere. Again the absence of related studies would seem to confirm a need for further study of what to me was a fascinating foray into the dynamics involving profit-motivated private enterprise on the one hand and the multi-faceted municipal public sector on the other.
Given their popular reputation, developers (and City Hall for that matter) loom as easy targets for polemical treatment. However, I was not interested in identifying “good guys and bad guys,” mainly because, in my opinion, legitimate historical inquiry is not about according blame. To assign unscrupulousness and notoriety to all developers is as unfair and ludicrous as to ascribe inefficiency and corruption universally to the City officials with whom they had to deal. What the discussion tries to show is how shared philosophies about the roles of the private and public domains played themselves out against different constraints. To the developers, proper practice lay in meeting the demands of the market and optimizing profits by building houses as quickly and efficiently as possible, and by doing all in their power to sway civic policy makers to the same end. To the City, the demands of the same market needed to be set against wider considerations that dealt with planning conformity and constraints, and infrastructure costs and feasibility. The dialogue between the two sought to achieve a utilitarian balance with respect to the same desired end. This study tries to explain the complexity of their debates from a historical perspective; why each party acted as it did; where each can be criticized; and what might have been.
Finally, a note about sources. The bulk of the research was conducted in the City of Calgary Archives and its fine collection of papers from the various City departments. The reader will note that oral accounts figure very sparsely in this narrative. Except for a few developers whom I consulted mostly for their insights and for practical questions, and former mayor Rod Sykes, whose extensive papers are housed in the University of Calgary Archives, I avoided the oral route. The reason had nothing to do with credibility but more about the fallibility of memory and my reluctance to accord finality to unverifiable statements made about events and sensitive issues that occurred more than 30 years ago. Thus I have chosen to let the written record speak for itself.
Max Foran
Priddis
December 2007