A walk in the park: Fort Calgary Park aka The Confluence?
Recently I received the following unsolicited email about a Calgarian’s walk around Fort Calgary Park or as it is now known The Confluence Historic Site and Parkland. I thought it would be fun to share the email with readers as it is interesting walkabout (with some controversial commentary) in one of Calgary’s more storied sites.
The Confluence formerly Fort Calgary Park is located on the eastern edge of downtown Calgary.
Dear Richard,
I, too, am an 'every day tourist', because, 'every day' I take a walk around the perimeter of Fort Calgary Park (yes, I'm still calling it that) and I see the sights that a 'tourist' would see on this very special site!
Please, join me in a talk, as I walk, in an anti-clockwise direction starting at 9th Avenue and 6th Street SE.
I don't know what the south-west corner of the park is formally called, but I think I heard it referred to as '1875 Square' one time. I call the structures, 'red sentinels'. They highlight quotes about the park from Blackfoot Chief Crowfoot, NWMP Commissioner Colonel James Macleod, and others. They light up at night as vertical sign-posts and they complement the benches that horizontally line the western edge of the park running north from 9th Avenue to 7th Avenue SE. The benches, too, light up at night in bright red...reminding visitors of the NWMP (now RCMP) red serge dress uniforms - a Canadian icon.
The 1875 Square and west-side fringe of Fort Calgary is one of my favourite aspects of the park and not a bad place to watch the fireworks each night during the Calgary Stampede. You might guess that I live close by.
What's missing?
There is a sandstone obelisk that used to have a bronze plaque on it. I believe it commemorated an anniversary of Fort Calgary. It has been removed, or, my guess, pried off and stolen. Bronze plaques have become targets of thieves who sell them for their valuable copper content.
It would be nice to see the plaque replaced in a more secure medium. Emails, phone calls and in-person visits to the Fort Calgary museum office have not been fruitful to this point.
That is not the only missing bronze plaque. A short walk east along 9th Avenue brings one to a parking lot entrance/exit over which stands a cairn made of river-stone rocks. It once featured the plaque announcing the park is a Federal, Provincial and Municipal Historic Site. It has been missing for quite a time now.
A further walk east and one comes to the main entrance and exit to the parking lot with a sign that says you are visiting "The Confluence Historic Site & Parkland". News to me. Did Calgarians get a voice and a choice in that dramatic change? I am confused.
At one time the entrance sign to Fort Calgary was, appropriately, red, then for some reason it was light blue for a short while. What was with that?
Since the Spring of 2024, the Park is now re-named and the sign is green. There are new flags...one over the entrance sign, two by the museum doors and one inside the outline of the original fort walls...in green or maroon.
I find it strange that .there is not one Canadian Maple Leaf, Alberta Coat of Arms or City of Calgary flag in the entire parkland area. What is one to make of that? Is it even legal?
The flag that flew inside the south-east corner of the artistic rendering of the original NWMP fort outline...I believe it's called "Marking"...was a 'Union Jack'. It recalled the original flag of Canada from before Confederation in 1867 to the time the Mounties marched west in 1874 and on for a lot longer than that. That's a historic reference and what I thought a museum was mandated to display. Our Red Maple Leaf flag was not officially adopted until 1965.
The installation of an artistic representation of the original fort stockade is quite creative. The uprights which, in part, follow the entire fort outline are meant to be seen as both logs along the walls and policemen standing at attention while in group formation. Parts of the cement block outline at ground level feature red lights which come on at night in conjunction with the red sentinels and the park benches.
I was going to say the lights 'would' come on because they didn't for a long time, but It appears the installation has been fixed. Yahoo!
At the beginning, of Global’s News Weather segment, with Paul Dunphy, would show a shot of the red-lit fort outline as a background and it was a picture to behold. Presumably caught from the roof of a nearby hi-rise, for a hobby historian like myself it should be as iconic as the Peace Bridge, the Saddledome or the Calgary Tower as a feature for photographers to capture the city's essence.
After years of lights not working, the 'artistic' display has recently been fixed. Bravo! I encourage all the local television media to take note.
Returning to the museum itself, there is a passageway along the west side of the replica "1888 NWMP Barracks" which includes wall mounted historic information panels. I will not spoil the experience for visitors by sharing all the information but I will say that the panels 'almost' run in chronological order.
Almost? Well, I found it odd that the first panel was about David Thompson, the first white man of European heritage to see the Bow River Valley, in 1800. The second panel is about the Nitsitapi, the Real People, as members of the Blackfoot Confederacy call themselves. Chief Crowfoot, the first to sign Treaty #7 among his people, is introduced.
My first question is why not feature the thousands of years that Indigenous nomads visited the area, first, and then tell the story of 'contact' with explorers and fur traders from afar? Secondly, David Thompson already spent a winter in the area in 1787-88 with a Peigan band, and Peter Fidler passed by further east of here in 1792, on his way to the Old Man River headwaters.
Aren't those exploratory visits also consequential parts of our local history?
Back along 9th Avenue heading east towards the relatively new Inglewood Bridge there is a beautiful life-sized bronze sculpture of a bison, "Buffy the Buffalo". Not an interpretive panel in sight. What an opportunity to tell the story of an iconic species and the special historic relationship it has had with the Indigenous peoples of the prairies and parkland of Western Canada.
I continue my walk across the Inglewood Bridge, spanning the Elbow River, to access the Deane House. This is not it's original location. NWMP Superintendent Richard Deane built this house for he and his wife on the south west corner of the park, where the "1875 Square" now sits.
Today it houses a very popular restaurant, as one can see from the variety of activities held there.
Adjacent to the Deane House is the Hunt House, an old Hudson's Bay Company post and the oldest building sitting on its original site in Calgary. It's apparently named after its last resident. As an 1875 cabin that has been preserved, it's not much different than the restored Metis Cabin that was relocated along side of it. Both have information panels to educate visitors to this part of the park.
Back on the pathway that crosses the Elbow River pedestrian bridge one is now walking west and the downtown towers are in view.
There is a Fort Calgary garden area fenced off, of which I know very little. This despite passing it daily in my travels. Another opportunity to educate with appropriate panels?
CBC: Fort Calgary Garden Plowed Over To Make Way For Redesign
Live Wire: Old Fort Calgary Garden Will Spring To Life Again
There are a series of information plaques in an area overlooking the actual confluence of the Elbow and Bow Rivers. The installations are aged and are in need of repair or replacement. Tourists are alerted to the fact that at one time after the Fort area was sold to private interests there were railway track berms and the area was a busy railroad hub, full of industrial activity. If not for the foresite of visionary City leaders the whole area may not have been preserved for posterity. The information panels tell this story rather well.
Looking north where the Elbow River joins the Bow River; this is the confluence.
Speaking of railroads, of historical interest is the CPR Mainline that runs east-west just south of 9th Avenue and goes back to the construction of the nation-building rail line in 1883. The 'Last Spike', driven in November of 1885 at Craigellachie, BC, completed the coast to coast connection that unified our country. Calgary remains a critical centre of railway operations. It is fitting the tracks are so close to the spot that history records as the origins of our city, Fort Calgary.
Rumour has it the City of Calgary will be designating an area within the park boundaries, near the confluence, for Indigenous ceremonies and rituals. I favour the idea of a permanent installation of symbols, like a tipi, or tipis, that both identify Indigenous culture and teach about the traditional lifestyle of the ancient peoples of these lands...Blackfoot (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), Tsuut'ina, and the Stoney Nakoda bands...Bearspaw, Chiniki and Goodstoney
Continuing a walk along the Bow in a westward direction includes passing by red sitting blocks which also light up at night. A nice touch that ties in the perimeter pathway with the color and lighting of other parts of the park. So why not maintain red signage at the entry way?
I always include a walk across the George C. King bridge, also known as the St. Patrick's Island bridge, to Memorial Drive and back. In so doing I am recreating the direction in which F-Troop of the North West Mounted Police approached the site where they intended to build Fort Calgary in 1875. George Clift King, the second mayor of the town of Calgary, was the first NWMP Constable to step on the future site of Calgary after crossing the Bow from north to south.
The north west corner of the park area is a busy community resource. There is a gazebo overlooking a retention pond, a dog park, a community garden, a children's playground and just recently the City has installed public washrooms and a pickleball court.
Arriving full circle around the Fort Calgary Park perimeter, one is confronted with three access points to the vast area from 6th, 7th and 8th Avenues along 6th Street SE. The problem? There is no signage at these entry points.
To illustrate, I once ran into some visitors to our City while standing on 6th Street at 8th Avenue SE. They asked me, "Where is Fort Calgary?" We were in view of the "1888 NWMP Barracks" and I pointed them in that direction. Why no signage?
My Final Thoughts!
May we rename the historic site "Fort Calgary at the Confluence"? To deny this is the birthplace of our City is not the truth and will harm the progress towards Reconciliation.
In a memorial sent to the Canadian Government by Blackfoot Chiefs in 1876, a year before the signing of Treaty #7, they complained of Cree and Metis hunters usurping the traditional Blackfoot hunting grounds. They also complained about white settlers taking some of the better sites in their territory without compensation.
What they did not complain about and mentioned specifically as a situation they favoured, was the presence of the Mounties and the Missionaries among them. I believe that is sufficient evidence for keeping the name "Fort Calgary" associated with the National, Provincial, and Municipal Historic Site.
Signed,
DL ( Concerned Calgary Citizen)