It’s been 25 years since an implosion brought down the Calgary General Hospital and felled that cornerstone of Calgary’s north. I’ve mentioned before what The General meant to my family – my dad spent his entire career there and all four of us kids got our first jobs there. But thousands of people got their first jobs there, or had their children there, or parted with loved ones there. Many of those people are now working to build a suitable memorial for this massive structure from which the early culture of Calgary was generated.
So many stories from my own family and countless others were enveloped there. I remember being slightly frightened when we passed the imposing Nurses Residence when I was a little girl, on those rare times we got to visit Dad at work. It was an imposing Victorian looking tower to me, and for decades it housed young women who were learning to save our lives. I never found the hospital itself to be intimidating, despite its grand scale. I was always excited to be welcomed into the inner sanctum of the admin offices, where Dad’s secretary would open her desk drawer and snap off a vanilla cream wafer for each of us.
Those were the years of huge family Christmas parties in an auditorium, where each staff person’s children were called onstage one by one to get a candy cane and a wrapped gift from Santa (which parents had discreetly smuggled in beforehand). Mom would sew matching clothes for us – dresses for us three girls and a tie to match for my brother. She even bought a new dress for herself and I thought she was the most beautiful person in the world. It was a heady day to attend The General Hospital Christmas Party!
Each of us kids were born there. Dad would simply drop mom off at Labour & Delivery, visit her on his breaks, and then drive her and the new baby home after work a few days later. I was last and it seemed like such a matter of course by then, they likely just set another place at the table and carried on.
But my family’s experience was only from the last half of the century – the last half of the building’s life. For fifty years before that, shops and houses sprouted up around The General (including my parent’s first house). My neighbour now in Red Deer had a grandfather who built a block of shops at a nearby corner. Retail on the bottom and apartments above, like many immigrants did in the early part of last century. And that building is still standing.
So when we heard The General was to come down, my sister and I made a strange sort of pilgrimage to the site. My daughter was a toddler, so we pushed her in a stroller as we made our way through the abandoned halls of the building. It was a few weeks before the implosion so it was all emptied out, but it was strangely unlocked and unguarded. We simply walked through the doors and took the elevator to the places that held ghosts for us.
Dad’s office was on the main floor – he had passed away10 years before, so it was a solemn last glance through those doors. Sister had worked below – her first job being in an equipment sterilization dept. I worked on the fourth floor as a Unit Clerk, saving for my backpacking trip that I mentioned in last week’s column. Apparently a security team had been stunned by sudden activity in the darkened building, as they stood watching the elevator lights roaming from one floor to the next.
They finally caught up with us on the Pediatric Ward, where I had to have a crumpled cardboard drinking straw removed from my nose when I was two (that’s a whole other story). “What are you doing here?” they bellowed, seeming confused at the sight of two everyday women pushing a kid in a stroller. “This building is locked down. It’s dangerous here.”
“Oh, we just came to say goodbye,” we said and pushed the elevator button for the last trip down.
Sandy Bexon is stepping into retirement after over 35 years as a communications professional, reporter and writer. She lives in Red Deer.
