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The birth rate of two generations back from us was huge. In Quebec some families had over a dozen children. Prairie couples often had large families to provide help on the farm . My father had four siblings and my mother had 7. But birth rates in the  Depression and the 1940s dropped. With the war lasting 6 years, many young men and young women did not marry or have children till it ended. When they returned from the war though, they did

 My cohort had a baby boom but still not the huge families of two generations earlier.  My parents had two only.  My husband’s parents had two.  A ‘large family’ might have four.

The influx of newcomers to Calgary from the prewar years and then of soldiers created a huge demand for housing in the 1950s. The two kids, little house with white picket fence ideal of the war songs was a dream many shared.  The history of Calgary housing reflected these new demands:

House styles

One of the oddities of housing seems to be that the first residences of adult offspring are not nearly as nice as the ones they just left in the parental home.  What they can afford often goes backward in status of social class for a while. 

 Calgary had some early settler homes in the early 1900s and then a few very rich people came and built mansions.  Sandstone was nearby and plentiful but most ordinary people could not afford it. Schools however often were made using it and some businesses and city hall used it. Calgary even got nicknamed the Sandstone city. The Lougheed House was built south of downtown in 1891. The A.E. Cross house dated from 1899 and as in Inglewood. The Deane House was from 1906 and was at 9Avenue and 6 street SE today.

 However the majority of newcomers in the 1912 housing boom came to two storey wooden houses with a wide wooden porch, the epitome of luxury at the time. There were smaller homes for workers. Bridgeland was full of both types of homes.

Our parents, post war, were part of a second housing boom. Government knew that the returning soldiers would need accommodation fast and at low cost so they set up housing programs here in Calgary. The ‘victory’ houses were tiny but sturdy little things, often one storey bungalows with a kitchen living room blend, two bedrooms, a bathroom and an unfinished basement. The one I grew up in did  not have a full ceiling basement, just a crawlspace.

Some of the victory homes were one and a half storey, for larger families or even tenants to share. My parents bought one before I was born, in south Calgary and it had a top storey attic and two small rooms, a main floor kitchen and bedrooms and a developed basement we rented out to students.

As the city expanded and people were encouraged to build on the outskirts, my husband’s parents built from scratch a little house in Parkdale.  People in 1952 who moved to Banff Trail area found the area quite wild prairie still, with pheasants and rabbits nearby. It is odd to think that all of those districts now are considered ’ inner city’.  

When I entered school we moved (I was  five) to Richmond Park, to another bungalow with big yard, no basement but three bedrooms.

When I went to grade 8 we moved again, this time to near Richmond Road and this was our largest house, a kind of long ranch style house with a kitchen, living room, and 3 bedrooms, one bathroom.

This does mean that housing wise my cohort had a range of houses we grew up in, but some common qualities. A dining room was rare. A ‘family ‘ room was an item that was only available in the larger homes if they had a basement.  The yards were large.  Many people did have vegetable gardens but not like huge farm crop ones our grandparents had had. We got used to a few things – bunkbeds shared with siblings, or twin beds. We got used to sharing one bathroom, however large the family . We got used to going outside ‘to play’ and coming home when the porch light was on, feeling pretty safe in the neighborhood. My husband who grew up in Parkdale which was on the outskirts of town in the 1950s, would regularly walk, unsupervised, quite a ways up to the hill by 29^th street forest today or even down along the Bow River nearby. It was a time where childhood was a little less supervised or hovered over though  the parent was  usually quite nearby.

House Costs

When I was little it never even occurred to me that my parents had to pay for our home. It was however the dream of many post war soldiers to own their own house, not just rent and Calgary was booming with construction. A friend of mine a few years ago recalled that in the 50s when she was growing up her parents made her feel that they had lots of money, not to worry and all was well. But after they died she found the documents of their monthly payments for the mortgage back then and it had been tight.  Parents in that era however rarely let their kids even know when money was scarce, so the kids were given a childhood without angst.

In 1950 average cost of a new build bungalow was about $10,000- $12,500. This may not sound like much to us today but given that average family income was about $22,000, the house was still a huge commitment. Feeding and clothing the family was already costly. Paying off the mortgage would take a huge slice of the salary and often 20 years.  Mortgages were usually short term and rates were 4-5%.

In 1955 the cost of a new residential lot was on average $1800. The cost of a new house was $10,000-$14.000.

Ten years later, in 1965, the suburbs were building up. A house in Bowness cost on average $9300. In other suburbs the average cost of a new house, 3 bedroom, full basement , 1200 square feet was $15,000- $18,000. Within the city proper the cost was now about $20,000. Larger homes, split levels might cost up to $30,000.

Mortgages usually required 10% downpayment in 1965, interest rates were about 6-7% and the mortgage term was usually 25-30 years.

In 2026 the average cost of a detached home in Calgary is $843,658. The average cost of a semi-detached is $711,779 and of a condo is $340,110.  This surge in value, during our lifetime, has been shocking. The value of the Parkdale house built in 1952 was $800,000 when it sold last year – an increase in value of 80 times.  What does it mean? It means that those who did own were sitting on a goldmine if they sold – but then they had to go somewhere else where the costs were also high. It meant also that those new to the market would have a real problem buying.

Yards

We grew up where the ‘green space ‘ around a building was huge. A house occupied maybe a third of the property and it also had a front yard, side yard and back yard. Some people put in sheds, playhouses, and many put in huge gardens. Few put in play equipment for kids because the city park had swings and teeter totters just a block or so away.

Calgary has a few trees native to the area but many homes needed more shade.    The four types that were already here were poplar, white spruce, Douglas fir and aspen.  A person might be able to grow others if they planted and tended them carefully. Some planted oak, elm, linden, blue spruce, Scots Pine, and lilac. 

The river valley already had trees, and some of the Douglas Firs near Edworthy Park today were there already. In the 1950s that forest had been there hundreds of years already. However in other ‘bald prairie ‘ areas there were huge tree planting campaigns by city arborists . William Read was a key city arborist. Many of in elementary school were given tree saplings on arbor day, to  plant back at home.

The city itself also had tree planting drives of poplar, green ash and caragana and ash trees in 1911, 1922 and 1933. So the barren prairie was not so barren when my cohort was born, but it was still quite windswept in the suburbs and on the hills.

Gardens

Most homes in Calgary had little gardens.  The products that grew well here were ones needing a short growing season only-  peas, radishes, carrots, beets, potatoes, spinach, zucchini and lettuce.  It was harder to grow tomatoes, peppers or squash.

Fruit trees could be planted and some grew well. Apples, crabapples in particular, were popular. A few people were able to get crops of raspberries, Saskatoon berries, plums, strawberries. This was not an area where you could grow bananas or oranges or pineapples.   One dreamer had suggested planting palm trees outside city hall. They did not survive.

Garden centres, nurseries

1953 – Jensen family buys Sunnyside Garden Centre which in 1918 was in Sunnyside but not relocates to Bowness. It operates for 100 years

1956 – Nicholas Hanna operates Hanna Seeds for garden supplies

Rooms

The rooms of the house were not the Elizabethan ones of a small kitchen, larger dining room and then a living room. Most of us grew up in houses with a kitchen you ate in, and a living room only.

Routines

Our parents from small towns or farms had seen a lot of changes in household management. There were 3 meals a day at my house, with sometimes on weekends an evening snack. We did not regularly have snacks but I have fond memories of popcorn balls while we watched TV.

Spring cleaning was a major routine. Clothes washing was done in ringer washers. We had a clothesline outside that my mother would stand at and put our garments onto a dangling line using wooden pins.
My sister and I had to help with setting the table and often with doing the dishes. We used dish soap and towels. There were no automatic dishwashers of course and to this day I actually prefer doing my dishes by hand.  A dishwasher in theory saves time and water but I never quite believed it.

A double sink was a luxury.  We moved to a new home when I was in grade 8 and it  had a double sink. We thought we had died and gone to heaven.

In our homes the floors were often wood. I remember my mother pouring liquid varnish on it occasionally and us having to polish it, by hand or later with a machine.  It was work but the result was beautiful . Water was not advised because it could warp the wood. The saying was “Water on wood, unh unhn no good”.
But that was work and later styles replaced the wooden floors with throw rugs. In the 1960s some homes had area rugs of swirl or floral pattern, sometimes geometric shapes and often in bright colors like orange, gold, brown, green.  New synthetic fabrics made it possible to have more washable carpets. Imported rugs from India and Morocco were available and the deep pile of shag carpets was a new fad some felt added luxury.

However, fast forward, many of us discovered in the 1970s that shag carpeting was not great if you had little kids. Small items like bits of candy could get stuck in there for some time.  Wood floors came back but with a lot less depth and lower quality. Hardwood has moved in and out of favor but the styles of the 2020s of vinyl plank and water resistant laminate provided an amazing compromise. It looks like wood but is very washable.

Kitchens

My grandmothers had wood and coal stoves, iceboxes to keep things cool, and kept vegetables in a storage area under the house to keep them cool. My grandmothers were expert at canning, making pickles, storing up summer bounty for winter use.

But each generation makes improvements. My parents ‘modernized ‘ this.

The kitchen of the 1950s was in its own way cutting edge. Chrome around the chairs, Formica countertops were all the rage. There was a surge in excitement for colors.  Kitchen tiles in block patterns often were black and white or even pink and green .

We had china dishes for special occasions but mostly we used Melmac, the invention of a plastic product that did not break.  A turkey platter was china of course as were serving dishes at big family dinners but day to day we had the drinking cups, bowls and tumblers of the newer technology. The pots and pans were aluminum but by the 1950s nonstick coatings were added, often Teflon. It felt so high tech and easy. We had the real silver cultery, the ‘good ‘ silver, for special occasions and then the stainless steel for day to day.  Those velvet lined wooden boxes of cherished silver were like family heirlooms.  When I was little we had to use silver polish on them every once in a while to keep them shiny . Fast forward to 2020s and those silver cutlery collections can barely be given away, even at garage sales.

Mostly we used paper bags until plastic bags became more available.  Sten Thulin of Sweden had invented the polyethylene shopping bag in 1965 and plastic was seen as the most amazing invention ever.   It did not need folding, did not get damaged when wet, did not leak. Unlike metal it also did not rust and it did not even harm the environment because it did not use up trees.

Milk was sold in glass bottles. There was often a deposit charged which you get back when you returned the bottle for another use.  Soup was in metal tins. Other items might be sold in greaseproof paper or wax coated cardboard.  Cellophane became available to wrap processed foods and keep them fresh. The thing about plastic also was that you could see what was in there.
Eggs were sold in cardboard trays.

Fruit was shipped either in wooden crates or fiberboard boxes. Produce like strawberries were available in little woven baskets.. Butchers put the meat and fish on greaseproof paper and then an outer layer of white butcher paper.

Later with TV dinners, aluminum trays were sometimes used to freeze the food in compartments.