Ogden Road Calgary 1950 & 2016

Presenting two photos captured some sixty sixty years apart and from the same location in Calgary. Each shows a passing Calgary Transit vehicle, and while the modes of transport seen in the comparison have changed, there’s an otherwise timeless quality to the scene. The location is the community of Ogden, along Ogden Road to be precise, and it’s in the southeast quadrant of the city.

The railway bridge is a constant between the two eras, but that building (concentred to a refinery) is no longer there. This is a BIGDoer.com Then and Now where we take an old image, try to duplicate it as best we can and then we babble on about the results. It’s a fun challenge, but also allows us to see changes to this city, or in odd cases the lack there of, and better understand it all.

This is a repost of an article from 2016 lost to a recent database crash, but with updates and a rewrite. Hundreds of posts vanished in the melee and rather than simply restore from backups, we’ll give any that are still relevant a much needed do-over like this. Some might get new photos and some might not, but the copy will be new or minimally redone. The rest of those posts we’ll toss in the bin and forget about.

The original photo comes from a collector of streetcar and transit memorabilia, Harold Rowe of Moncton New Brunswick. Wow, as it turns out we have readers from all the way across the country. Thanks a million for sharing it with us Harold and we’re in your debt! No information other than a date accompanied the photo, so the person who captured it is lost to time.

A number of the “Then” photos used on this website come from people just like him or you. If you have an old picture showing a street scene similar to the one used here and it’s your copyright (contact us if unsure) or in the public domain, why not send it our way. We’ll put it to good use and give you a shout out too.

The old photo dates from 1950 and shows a Calgary Transit streetcar heading north up Ogden Road. It’s on its way to downtown, but minutes earlier had just left the southern terminus at the CPR’s expansive Ogden Shops. That building to the right is on the east frontage of Imperial Oil’s huge Ogden refinery. Much of the area the streetcar would pass through was industrial (still is) and this sort of gritty scene would be pretty typical for that run.

The streetcar, #42, dates from 1912 and only months after being photographed it was retired. That’s concurrent with the whole streetcar system closing and later that year all of it would be history. Motor buses would soon take over the “Ogden” run and they’re still here today.

Preston Car & Coach in Ontario built the streetcar and this firm supplied a fair number of these to Calgary in the 1910s.

The bus seen in the more recent photo (#7775) dates from 2001 and is a New Flyer (Winnipeg Manitoba) DLF40. At the time of the Now photo (2016 recall) this model was the most common bus on the Calgary Transit roster, but the numbers have since thinned. CTS had hundreds and hundreds, built in the years 1993-2008. This model proved quite popular with transit systems all over Canada and the US. New Flyer is a long time producer, but the last decade Calgary Transit has exclusively purchased from a competitor (Nova).

This particular bus was last noted in about 2022 and presumed retired.

We’re along route “#24 Ogden” here and it follows much the same path as the streetcar in years past. Only it continues on further south today. The run dates back to 1912 and that’s the year Calgary annexed Ogden. The streetcars were mostly for employees of the CPR Shops and other industrial concerns in the area.

The Imperial Oil Refinery, which the streetcar would soon pass on its journey along Ogden Road, was a sprawling complex. It dated back to the the mid-1920s but closed some fifty years later. Ogden had a small population at the time and in 1950, really out in the sticks. Most workers at the various industries commuted from elsewhere in Calgary and Ogden Road was the main way in at the time.

Today the land the refinery once sat upon is overgrown and too contaminated to do much with. It’s a park of sorts, but rather wild and untamed.

In the 1970s one neighbourhood, Lynnview Ridge, was built atop refinery lands at the southwest end, but that didn’t work out well. That’s a bit of an understatement. People were forced out amid fears of health problems stemming from all that nasty stuff in the ground. It’s now a green space and you can see it here: Lynnview Ridge Revisited.

The railway bridge belongs to Canadian National Railways and dates back to the early 1910s. A predecessor firm, Canadian Northern Railway, built the line and it once went all the way into downtown Calgary. Since cut back, it now ends at an industrial park a couple clicks west of this bridge. The only movements are switch runs serving the few industries left that still using rail transport.

In the old photo, it would have been a much busier line with frequent freight and passenger trains using the track. Steam powered too, up until the 1940s/1950s period. Business was brisk back then and old aerial photos show lots of spurs and sidings along the line. The CNR used to have a spur into the Imperial Oil plant and that complex shipped out a lot of product.

Not seen, but just to the left of the shooting position, is the CPR’s busy east/west mainline and they also once served the plant. There’s lots of train stuff in the area and so it’s a regular haunt for us.

The only visual element connecting the two eras is that train bridge. Railway infrastructure is always sort of timeless and the structure looks much as it did today. It almost appears the alignment of the road differs somewhat from them to now.

Calgary Transit, originally the Calgary Electric Railway, later the Calgary Municipal Railway, later still the Calgary Transit System dates back to 1909. Where as streetcars dominated in the early days, now it’s buses and light rail.

The CTS serves a population of well over a million and rosters over thirteen hundred vehicles of various types. There are about a hundred and fifty different routes, so it’s a big system. Compared to many other metropolitan centres it’s sometimes underutilized, but Calgary is rather car-centric.

We hope you enjoyed this post and stay tuned for more Then and Nows. We love doing them and even if it meant looking silly while standing along Ogden Road for the better part of an hour to get it right, so be it. Only two buses came in that time, incidentally.

Know more (new tab): Calgary Alberta Streetcars.

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Random awesomeness…
Grain Elevators of Consort Alberta.
The Lonely Laing House (1910s).
Downtown Castor Alberta (Cosmopolitan Hotel).

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Date of adventure: 1950 & April 2016.
Location: Along Ogden Road in Calgary Alberta.
Article references and thanks: Harold Rowe, City of Calgary Transit, City of Calgary, the Book – Stampede City Streetcars and the Canadian Public Transit Discussion Board Calgary Roster wiki page.

Ogden Road Calgary, 1950 and 2016.