'It was the birth of Calgary': How Stephen Avenue tells the story of the city

Calgary Herald

30-07-2025

With the City of Calgary's Stephen Avenue revitalization project now underway, Historic Calgary Week's deep dive into the history of the area was nothing if not timely.
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Marcel Hebert — a member of the Southern Alberta Pioneers and their Descendants history committee — brought his audience this week along through the development of Stephen Avenue in a presentation entitled Stephen Avenue Comes Alive.
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The journey started in 1883, when Calgary was a town of fewer than 500 people, and the Canadian Pacific Railway had just arrived.
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'It was the birth of Calgary,' Hebert said. The railway station was constructed in what was then called Section 15, now downtown Calgary. Nearby lots went up for sale, and Stephen Avenue was born — at the time, just a row of small shacks. The street was named after George Stephen, the president of the CPR.
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'Without the taxpayers that elected the prime minister that settled on Canadian Pacific Railway to unite Canada, I don't know if (Calgary) would have existed, but it wouldn't be the (population) that we are today,' Hebert said.
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'That was the whole story of Calgary — and Stephen Avenue doesn't tell all of it, but it tells you a lot.'
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Hebert's presentation touched on the journey through the next 50 years, as the row of small shacks became the grand sandstone facades that we see today. Notably, very few of the current buildings are actually the originals. Many have been torn down and rebuilt, or were burned down in the fires that Stephen Avenue has seen throughout its history. Most, however, were modeled after the originals as a means of preserving the history of the buildings.
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Hebert also dove into the history of each building between Centre Street and 1st Street S.W., and featured archival images and a 3D model of the street. It took him about a year to compile, pulling most of his information from the Calgary Herald's archives and the Glenbow Library and Archives.
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Hebert isn't a historian by trade — the presentation was a passion project, which he showcased for the first time at last year's Historic Calgary Week. His interest in Stephen Avenue lies in the fact that it's been a hub of Calgary for almost 150 years.
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'To me, it's the centre of Calgary,' he said. 'Ninth Avenue is where the centre was, but all those buildings are gone.'