Getting on the Map: The Emergence of Calgary, Post-Confederation

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R.G. Brook, "Chief Crowfoot and Family (1884)"

Courtesy Glenbow Museum Archives NA-1104-1.

Opening Reception: Friday, February 10, 2017 at 5:30 - 7:30pm, official remarks at 6:15 pm RSVP

This exhibit uses a combination of reproductions and originals of early maps, photographs and artwork about Southern Alberta to tell the fascinating story of the Calgary frontier as it was in the 1870s and 1880s, more than 30 years before Alberta joined Canada.

On the 150^th anniversary of Confederation, this exhibit connects the dots between the formal creation of Canada in 1867 and the establishment, eight years later, of a small police outpost known as Fort Calgary. Dozens of artifacts, images, books and other visual culture about the Calgary area in the 1870s and 1880s reveal a frontier changing from settler colonialism, the whiskey trade, Treaty 7, the CPR and the NWMP.

This exhibit explores the view that Calgary emerged not only from Confederation and unification, but also due to Canadian settler-colonialism, as part of a concerted effort to develop and exploit the resources of the territories. For the West, the most significant consequence of Confederation was a change in colonizing power from Britain to the newly formed Dominion of Canada.

The visuals in the exhibit reveal a Eurocentric perspective of an emerging frontier town when this land and its people experienced the impact of settlers; the whiskey trade and the NWMP sent to combat it; the relinquishment of Indigenous lands; the near extinction of the buffalo; and the signing of Treaty 7.

The exhibit features pieces from Lougheed House Collection; the Local History Collection of the Calgary Public Library; Fort Calgary and Calgary’s Loch Gallery. Reproductions of rare maps and sketches of early Calgary are from University of Calgary Library Map Collection and Glenbow Museum.