MacDonald Bridge Calgary ~70 Years Apart

Close to seventy years separates the images used in this BIGDoer.com Then & Now. The theme, one of our favourites and by the numbers equally a hit with our readers, is Calgary Transit or public transit in general. The location is the historic century plus old MacDonald Bridge (or MacDonald Avenue Bridge) connecting the communities of Ramsay and Victoria Park. This puts us just east of Calgary’s downtown core and we’ve come with an old photo in hopes of shooting something similar.

That’s even though a lot of time has passed and that we’ll have to substitute a bus for a streetcar.

The Then image comes from this author’s collection and had no accompanying information. Of course, we recognize the location and this left us only needing to know the “when” component. No biggie and using detective skills the date can be roughly determined. It had to have been captured sometime after 1946 – the car is post War – but before 1948, when this particular streetcar was retired from service.

This Then & Now is a reworked piece from 2016, using original photos but with updated information.

Calgary’s streetcar system dated from 1909 and for much of its existence known as the Calgary Municipal Railway. Today the agency is called Calgary Transit although streetcars are now a distant memory. This one is on the #8 “Burns Ave – Sunnyside” run, which bounced between the communities of Ramsay and Sunnyside by way of downtown. In the old photo it’s about halfway into its outbound Ramsay journey and is crossing the Elbow River on an easterly heading.

When the old photo was captured, the streetcar system had but a few years left and would be done by 1950. Some lines were replaced by trolley buses and others by motor bus. The latter happened to this route.

Many streetcar systems across the country shut down in the post War period, incidentally. Most were outdated and worn out with rebuilding too costly an option to undertake. That’s the case in Calgary. They were also seen as antiquated and buses the modern way to move people about.

Number #8 (second car to carry this number, formerly #78) dates from 1913 and one of the earlier streetcars built for the fledgling system. It came from maker Ottawa Car Company of (guess what), Ottawa Ontario and they were in business from 1890s-1940s. This firm supplied a fair number of streetcars used in Calgary and elsewhere in Canada.

The bus in the now photo, #7739, is a 2001 product of New Flyer Industries of Winnipeg Manitoba. It’s a D40LF, and at the time of the photo (2016 recall) the most common model on the CTS roster. There’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them, dating from the period 1993-2008. New Flyer, founded in 1930s, is a prolific producer and their buses in use by transit systems all over North America.

The one’s on the #24 or Ogden run, a long route that heads south from downtown and passes through its namesake community along the way. Ogden was formerly served by streetcar on the D-Ogden run, but back then used a different route and didn’t cross MacDonald Bridge.

The structure dates from 1911 and built by the Algoma Steel Bridge Company of Winnipeg Manitoba. It and the bus were born of the same town! An arm of the giant steel firm Algoma in Ontario, their bridge department didn’t remain in business for long. Nor were many bridges produced. Still, until a few years ago, there were four Algoma Steel Bridges in Calgary, but that number has since dropped to two. There’s MacDonald Bridge seen here and Bowness Bridge, but the latter’s now for pedestrian use only.

MacDonald Bridge is the only common element tying the two eras together and appears little changed over time. MacDonald Avenue is the road here and which gives the bridge its name. There’s not a lot of traffic on this road today and this no doubt accounts for its longevity. It’s an ancient one by city standards. Here in Calgary it’s old things be damned (or so it seems) and the gentrification monster always on the rampage.

The auto seen behind on the bridge appears to be a 1946-1948 era Plymouth and these were quite common at the time.

There’s little to see in the background in the ’40s image. In the now photo, the Victoria Park transit garage can be seen back of MacDonald Bridge and interestingly, it’s where #7739 is based out of today. Not sure about eight years ago but it’s possible. This bus and all others in the 77xx series are operating on borrowed time and many already retired.

Also seen today are towers in the East Village neighbourhood and lots more were built since we captured our photo.

The grade for MacDonald Avenue today appears a bit different than in the ’40s and as a result our shooting position is a bit off from the old one. Not by much, but today the road angles up steeper right after leaving the bridge, than before.

Many of our Then photos come from readers. If you have a vintage image or postcard (paper or in electronic form) showing a street scene of old you think would make a good candidate for one of these reports, send it our way. We’ll revisit the location to shoot an image close in composition and then write about what’s seen for display on this website.

Photos must be your copyright or in the public domain and credit will be given. We’re happy help you along and answer any questions.

No specialized rephotography camera features nor software were used to capture or line up our Now image. That would hardly be fun or satisfying. It’s all done on site and correlated with what’s seen in the viewfinder against a hard copy of the original photo kept on hand. That’s it.

Look at the old photo, look through the camera, adjust, do it again, adjust, and so on until happy. Grid lines added to the image and those in camera help further. The procedure is hardly elegant but seems to work for us, even with the inclusion of a moving target like the bus.

While the results by this method are never spot on and the experience sometimes frustrating, it works good. One can’t help but think that many of the “ghosting” and those “hold up an old image and line it up so it matches up with the scene today” photos seen all over the internet were done by rephotography. The result are often too good and suspect.

We do minimal post. There might be some minor scaling, sometimes keystone adjustments and nothing more. One must challenge themselves and earn their dinner.

So ends another (hopefully) informative piece and we’ll be back with more Then & Nows in no time. Stay tuned and have a great day!

Know more: (new tab): MacDonald Bridge Calgary Alberta.

They’re saying…

“The strange ability to make even the ordinary seem interesting.” Avenue Magazine.

More like this…
Calgary Transit Elbow Drive 40 Years Apart and our most popular post ever!
Edmonton Transit: 95th Street.
Calgary Then & Now: Ogden Bus Loop.

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Date of adventure: 1946-48 (original) and 2016 (Team BIGDoer).
Location: Calgary, Alberta.
Article references and thanks: City of Calgary, Calgary Transit and the Book: Stampede City Streetcars.

MacDonald Bridge in Calgary some seventy years apart.

Built by Algoma Steel Bridge in 1911.

Streetcars or buses, the structure seems timeless.