National Air Photo Library

Spruce Cliff, Calgary 1951

Before Google's satellite, we had the National Air Photo Library.  It started after WWI with Royal Flying Corps pilots at loose ends in postwar society who were put to work photographing Canada from the air.  After WWII the program was boosted by returning RCAF pilots.  Photos were taken at a specific height at measured intervals with two cameras producing stereo images. 

The University of Calgary map library has a complete set – probably most university libraries do. There are volumes of maps with the flight paths charted on them, with thousands and thousands of photos in box files according to date and path.  You look at them through stereo lenses set on a little stand.  They are absolutely fascinating.  Sure, Google Earth can do it all, but these are a photographic record over a century, made every few years. There is of course, a website for the NAPL, but the paraphernalia is missing.

I've used these photos in research.  I love their glossy surface, I love the fact that it started as a make work project for young RCAF pilots, I love the stereoscope nature of the project: buildings leap up off the surface of the photo.  And you can take them out of the library and scan them yourself.  It's amazing.  They did the whole country. 

Spruce Cliff, Calgary 1953

The two photos here (click on them to enlarge) show the century-long process of Calgary moving into farmland, quarter-section by quarter-section.  The top left hand corner shows Spruce Cliff, an escarpment plateau over the Bow River, with the CPR main line at its foot.  It had been subdivided in the 1900s but almost all the lots reverted to the City during the depression through tax default.  A golf course had been made in the 1920s, but there hadn't been much development in Calgary from the 1920s to the late 1940s.  Then it exploded.  In 1951 you can see the edge of town, the golf course and a farm.  In 1953, the farm is a building site for Spruce Cliff Apartments, a Corbusian array of four-storey blocks that had roof nurseries and laundries and were, briefly, a very good place to live.  Spruce Cliff was a high-modern model that didn't take off here.  It still stands, but in a much altered state.  Which I won't show you.