Spruce Cliff Shopping Centre

Presenting a little out of the way strip mall dating back over sixty years and a place of your author’s youth. Some friends lived nearby, classmates from Scott and/or Manning schools and what’s seen here once frequented by our teen slacker collective. Here’s a place little changed over time and one lockdown evening it’s a pit-stop to take in Spruce Cliff Shopping Centre with a glorious sunset as our backdrop

The complex dates from the mid to late 1950s and is actually several separate buildings put in piecemeal, end to end, until one long block. Sitting off Spruce Drive west of downtown Calgary it takes its name from the the surrounding neighbourhood of Spruce Cliff. This community goes back to the early 1950s but it took a few years for things to really happen.

The shopping centre is not all that far from present day BIGDoer World Headquarters, yet we don’t pass it by often. It’s off any main routes we use. Footnote: In spite of vowing to get out of this part of the city when young, and never coming back (ever!), for the last twenty plus years it’s been home. How odd. How bloody odd.

Spruce Cliff Shopping Centre became a haunt of sorts and our “gang” were regular visitors to the local corner store (there’s still one here) and the long gone greasy spoon diner. Mmmm, fries and gravy shared among friends. No one had any money at the time so all food was communal, like it or not. We’d get kicked out once in a while, not because we were rowdy but drank far too much bottomless coffee. This was about 1979 to 1981.

The complex has been home to an assortment of businesses over the years, grocery stores, eateries and the Esso Service Station among them. There’s been beauty shops/barbers, deli and meat markets, bakeries and a whole gamut of others. Browsing old phone books gives a snapshot of what was any given year and while some business lasted a long time, others came and went quickly.

One notable firm (for outdoorsy types anyway) operated here, a publisher called Rocky Mountain Books. They produce some incredibly popular hiking guides, especially those penned by the Dafferns who are legends in the field. How coincidental the firm occupied a tiny insignificant strip mall once frequented by the person writing this and who now lives close by. At every turn, the area won’t let me go and that’s a head shaker.

I didn’t know nor care about hiking way back then, but stopped by to chat with Tony (as I recall) after we were bitten bug about twenty years ago. At some point a few years back we supplied them some hiking photos for use in a couple of their books, one by the Daffern’s and another from Andrew Nugara, but we’re not sure if they were ever used or not. RMB is no longer tenants here.

Around the time we were the local hang-abouts, the service station ceased to be. Well that’s for gas sales anyway and it then became an independent auto garage. It functions in this capacity even today with the old office housing a barber shop. In the past, the building was detached from the rest of the complex, but with a fairly modern addition is now connected up.

In spite of a lengthy white page’s search, we never could find the name of the diner we’ve reminisced about. Perhaps it’s wasn’t there that long but then again memories are fuzzy too. An earlier eatery here was called Spruce Cliff Coffee Bar but don’t know if there’s a connection. Either way the one I speak of would have been about where JJ’s Pub is present day.

From the early days and into about the mid-1970s, the complex was called Spruce Centre.

That blue piano? I’m sure there’s a story, but a search turned up nothing.

An old Vanguard Motorhome out in the parking lot grabs our attention. We’re into retro RVs like this, but of course regular readers of this website already knew that. Using a cutaway Chevrolet van chassis, this one is a 1970s model.

The parent of Vanguard (Neonex) also made popular Boler trailers and if you browse BIGDoer.com you’ll know we’re obsessed with these little egg-shaped beasts. Yes, we’re fixated (new tab): Boler! Anyway, there’s a family connection of sorts here so we’re happy.

This was another Covid-Caper, a piece shot during the first pandemic wave. With us having too much time on hands we were itching for stuff to document and regularly roamed about each evening. In the end we found our eye’s opened to what otherwise went unnoticed and that’s even for places in our own part of the city, so if something good came of this, here it is. Odd how we’re sometimes blind to it, then BOOM, we see something and wonder why it didn’t stand out for us before. Prior we never gave Spruce Cliff Shopping Centre a second glance but now it’s become a story. A short write up, but one none the less.

BTW, due to the big C, there was not a soul about on our visit.

*Didn’t hate the neighbourhoods here for any particular reason (well, despised school) so chalk it up to teen angst I guess. Just wanted to be somewhere else…anywhere else but here.

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If you feel like chatting or want more information on what you see here feel free to contact us!

Date of Adventure: June, 2020.
Location(s): Calgary Spruce Cliff.
Article references and thanks: City of Calgary, Old Phone Books @ Calgary Public Library and the Medicine Hat & District Genealogical Society.

Memories of Spruce Cliff Shopping Centre.

Vintage motorhomes are a thing.

The complex dates from the 1950s.