Tag Archives: Elevator

Industry- Agriculture, The Woollen Mill and The Roadside Town

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Map of Land Uses in Midnapore Townsite, from The Midnapore I Design Brief 1975 by The City of Calgary Planning Department

What makes a place?

I realize it’s such a broad question, but it’s something I find myself wondering all the time. Out of countless places on earth, why does someone pick here to live? What motivates us to move from one place to another? And why do some areas become thriving to the point of becoming monsters, while others struggle or even wither away? There is no simple answer to these questions, but a good way to approach this is to look at industry- we live in areas that provide us with a means of survival. This explains much of the history surrounding Fish Creek and the Deep South communities. The industry has changed a great deal over time, through primary-resource based industry, to a service-based one, to a world where work and home lives are again becoming integrated. But it all comes back to finding a way to live. And it starts with the land.

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Landmarks- The Feed Elevator

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unifeed2004 The old Unifeed/ Shur-Gain elevator that stood by Macleod Trail in Millrise,  heavily damaged from both demolition and graffiti, circa 2004. It was demolished in July of that year. Photo gallery link. Photo credit: Joshua Soles

Wow, this photo. For some reason I thought of the building in late 2011, and it took me nearly two years, until late 2013, to actually find a decent picture of it (and, seeing as how this was posted back in 2004, the whole scenario makes me seriously reconsider my internet skills. Then again, you can only handle so many links to mechanics in India, before you give up Googling “midnapore elevator” completely).

In the meantime, my initial search for the elevator had led me to read about the Ogden Grain Elevator, which had been demolished just a week before. Reading the discussion about that building’s history, landmark status, and whether or not it could have been saved, led me down a path of urban studies and local history that continues to this day in the works presented here. Beyond that, I didn’t have a lot of interaction with the building. I remember seeing it on car rides home as a kid, along with the spinning SOUTHSIDE SELF STORAGE neon sign, just south of it and barely visible in the photo above. I remember the big white building, with the orange stripe, and the writing on it. When my older brother had a hamster, our dad suggested he get feed there. I also remember seeing it from the Midlake/Shawnessy Boulevard overpass, while walking to A&B Sound to buy Clash and 54-40 CDs back in 2004. It was only a short distance away from that “purple warehouse”, and in retrospect , I wish I had gone to take a closer look. Because a few months later, it was torn down.
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