2. Books
Libraries
Calgary had several public libraries and many bookstores when were growing up. However families differed in how much they used them. Some visited often and borrowed books each week to take them home and read them and return them. In my family we did not. However I later met people who loved books and for my own kids I did take them to library storytimes and library movies. A library is a key resource of a community and I had just not realized it.
Our schools also had libraries.
1914 -first public library in Calgary at 2 street SW, the Carnegie branch
1950 – Glengarry Library
1953 – bookmobile went around to communities
1954 – Alexander Calhoun Branch – south Calgary
1959 – Louise Riley Library in Briar Hill NW
Then in the 60s we got more
1960 – Chinook Library
1962 – When Forest Lawn is annexed we have access to its library
1963 – W. R. Castell library is built downtown. It is six storeys tall (we are 14) and even has an auditorium for public lectures
1964 – when Bowness is annexed we have access to its library
1964 – Westbook library
1965 – Georgina Thomson library in Collingwood
1966 – Southwood library
At libraries there were a lot of atlases, encyclopedias and reference books. There was in the 50s no way to look up something online of course, not at a home computer and not on your smart phone. You had to physically go to find a book.
Books were filed in the Dewey Decimal system if nonfiction and then there was a fiction section. In Viscount Bennett high school the library was huge, and fiction books were carefully vetted before being put on the shelves to make sure they were appropriate for young people. An Alberta Censor board set up in 1954 removed many magazines and crime comics from store shelves and they were not of course in school libraries either. Some books that were approved in a few schools were objected to in other provinces. The reasons were worries about sexism, negative messaging about dystopias, or anti religious messaging.
In 1951 many places banned The Catcher in the Rye. In 1952 one province banned Charlotte’s Web and in 1953 one jurisdiction banned Fahrenheit 451. Lolita was banned for obscenity in 1955 and Peyton Place was banned in 1956. This followed earlier practice even in the 1920s of banning Lady Chatterley’s Lover and A Farewell to Arms.
The nonfiction section was what I visited mostly because of school assignments. The filing system was usually catalogues, little cards per book placed in filing cabinets by number.
The way to borrow a book was to take a card from the envelope glued inside the back cover and sign your name, date and home room number. You would promise to return it in a certain period. There were often late fines.Some books like reference books could not be borrowed at all.
In 2026 most of those policies have changed, The way to sign out a book is with computer scan of a bar code on the book. You scan your library card with your member barcode. However there still are books that do not ‘circulate’ – particularly ones in the local history section. You have to come to the library and read them there.
Books we read
Most parents read stories to their kids in the 1950s. Some of the popular ones were
1950 – The lion, the witch and the wardrobe
1957 – The Cat in the Hat
1958 – A bear called Paddington
We had lots of comics
From 1938 there were Superman comics and from the 1940s there was Archie.Many newspapers had comic strips
1951 – Dennis the Menace
1956 – The Flash
1956 – Li’l Jinx
1956 – Little Zelda
We also had in the 50s Alley Oop, Buck Rogers, Fritz the Cat though my cohort was not reading many of these yet
By the 1960s we may have felt too mature for some books, but liked the rhyme or art.
1960s – Green Eggs and Ham
1963 – Where the wild things are
Comics cost 10 cents each. Some of our 1960s comics were:
1961 – the Fantastic Four
1962 – Amazing Spider man
1963 – The Avengers
1963 – the X men, Iron Man
1968 – Captain America
1968 – The Incredible Hulk
Some of us were even reading young adult novels
1961 – Island of the Blue Dolphins
1963 – A wrinkle in time
1964 – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
1964 – Harriet the Spy
1964 – The giving tree
1966 – The Black Cauldron
1967 – The Outsiders
Newspapers
Calgary had had daily newspapers for decades.
The Calgary Herald had been published since 1883. The four page weekly of that era was now a daily on weekdays. Its head office was 7th avenue and 1st street, where it had been since 1913. It was not only the production plant but the reporter and editor offices, in a 10 storey building.
Other newspapers changed names and owners from earlier generations. The Calgary Tribune of 1889 had become the Albertan in 1906 and in 1943 was published by G. Max Bell. So when our cohort was growing up the two competing papers were the Herald ( published in the evening) and the Albertan( published in the morning)
There were some colorful, funny even sarcastic writers of earlier times. Bob Edwards, had published the Calgary Eye-opener. The Calgary Sun did not come on scene until 1980(we were in our 30s)The Herald was delivered every morning to homes by preteens and teens, usually boys, nicknamed paperboys. A truck dropped off the bundles at various locations around the city and the young staff then picked them up, folded them and went around to their assigned homes with them, sometimes on bicycle. The Herald was delivered in the afternoon after school, the Albertan in the morning, before school. The paperboys often had canvas or leather bags for the papers and in the winter were known to pull the load on sleds.
This delivery system lasted for decades and some of us became part of it, and so did our children. In the 1990s I helped my preteen daughter deliver the Herald, which by that time was delivered in the morning. Cars picked up the papers at the drop off and then went up and down the streets of much bigger routes, in the dark, stopping briefly at each house for the delivery person to run across the lawn. It was exhilarating and kind of magical.
Some in my cohort grew up to join that journalism route. My husband was a child in the north end of Calgary in the 50s, went to school and university here, got degrees in arts and became a reporter at the Herald. Journalism gave an amazing window into how the city and the province operated.
Magazines
We also had magazines. In our home a few arrived regularly and if you did not get them there, you could see them at libraries and in waiting rooms of doctor’s offices and hair salons.
1950s- our parents were reading Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Readers’ Digest, McCalls
1950s – Saturday Evening Post was available and we had Life, Look , Macleans and Chatelaine.
1957 – Mad Magazine appeared
1960s- we also had Vogue, Time, Newsweek, The Star Weekly, The New Yorker Magazine and for us teens Miss Chatelaine (1964) and Seventeen.
Bookstores
Bookstores were popular. You could get new books or used.
1926 – Jaffe’s Books operated with huge collections of used books, on 8th avenue east
1950s – Osborne books operated on 8 th avenue downtown
1956 – Evelyn DeMille’s offered technical books downtown
1960s- Hillhurst Bookstore operated on Kensington Road
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