Retired nurse Deb Lee said the Calgary General Hospital’s story is so intertwined with the city’s growth and evolution that it should be honoured with more than a brick wall.

Lee is one of the forces behind the Calgary General Hospital commemorative plaza project, a vision of the Bridgeland-Riverside Community Association to remember the area through a redevelopment and improvement of the adjacent Murdoch Park in the northeast Calgary community.

The Calgary General Hospital, which operated in the heart of Bridgeland from 1910 until its controlled-yet-dramatic implosion in 1998, was more than just a health centre, Lee said. Kids would use the lower level of the hospital as a cut-through to the nearby outdoor swimming pool, only to come back through and grab a snack at the tuck shop, say hi to an aunt, and then go home for dinner.  

Families would also go to the hospital cafeteria after hitting church on Sunday. In the post-WWII years, many people immigrated to Calgary of German, Ukrainian, Russian, and Italian descent, and they joined with other European families already settled in the area, Lee said.

“I mean, it was also a busy health care center, but there was a tremendous sense of community within the hospital and between the hospital and the community,” she said.

“People have said, when we did our presentations, people are telling us about their experiences of the General. ‘I’ve never worked in a place … where I had a greater sense of belonging or connection.’ The doctors would talk to the housekeeping staff, and the rehab department had a baseball team that played baseball over in the baseball diamonds just south of the hospital, and they’d go for a beer at the pub at the community hall.”

Passion driven by a desire to preserve General’s story

Lee said that she moved to Calgary in 1982 and then located in Bridgeland in 1997, just before the hospital closed.  Then it was blown up the following year, so she’s mostly known a Bridgeland without the hospital.

When she retired in 2012, she began hosting walking tours around the community, and she realized how the former Calgary General Hospital dominated the area for decades. Yet many people who joined her on the tours had no idea a hospital had existed in the area.

It was when the highly successful Bridges residential project began at the site that she began to think of how the site should be commemorated. There is a General Avenue Plaza near the site of the former hospital, and there’s a brick wall that’s made of bricks from the former health centre.

Lee listed several milestones in the hospital’s storied history: A municipal hospital owned by the city, dealing with the polio epidemic, typhoid fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, a cardiac rehab program, a cutting-edge mental health program and more.

“There was so many creative, amazing things that happened. So many 1000s of babies were born here, and then for it to be basically becoming forgotten, because there was only a wall that even marked that it was here,” Lee said.

“The other thing that happens when you get older is you come to realize how important the ongoing story is; that we’re only where we are now because of what happened before and the people who contributed, and the decisions that were made by city council or the province, or the actions of individuals, the philanthropy  – all those kind of things.”

The Calgary General commemorative project

The group has been raising awareness and trying to drive fundraising for the project since 2023. They received a grant from a landscape architect to develop a conceptual design for the project that helped move it forward.

They see it as enhancing the current Murdoch Park landscape.

“We’re adding enhancements that allow us to tell the story of the General Hospital and to create a setting that is welcoming and kind of a gathering place, in a way that the General Hospital was a gathering place,” Lee said.

They’ve also had some consulting done on the project that has given them ideas on how to tell the story in a digitally accessible, interactive way, rather than your traditional commemorative plaques.

A survey has been created for Calgarians to have their say on the project, from how it should be remembered to whether the City of Calgary should participate in the project. (Survey ends on Jan. 25).

To date, they haven’t got much traction with the City on the project, but she said that’s likely due to their group not doing a good enough job of convincing the powers that be that it’s an endeavour worth supporting.

Ward 9 Coun. Harrison Clark, who serves as the area councillor, said he’s had recent conversations with the community about the project and sees value in the commemoration. During the recent municipal election campaign, he met Bridgeland residents who worked at the hospital or had parents who did.

“Their whole career arc revolved around that hospital. The economy and the community culture really came up around that hospital,” he said.

He thinks it would be a valuable part of history to remember.

“We’re talking about something that was just here not that long ago, and the impacts that it had not that long ago,” he said.  

“It’s important that we sort of infuse that into the now, into the culture of now, and into the culture of that we hope to sort of build for tomorrow.”

Clark said that with a recent $5 million infusion into Heritage Calgary, it opens up possibilities for projects like these.

Lee said the next step is to secure a grant that will allow them to hire a researcher to flesh out the parts of the story and how they can most effectively be told.

“We have to know that story. If we don’t, there’s a real absence, a real gap. There’s a loss,” she said.

“I did not want the story of the General to be forgotten and lost because it was too important a place.”

Visit their website for more information and to donate to the project.