Al’s final stop on his Calgary trip is to Heritage Park Historical Village. It’s one of Calgary’s premier tourist attractions, originally opened in 1964 with a mission to connect visitors with the history of Western Canada. Al visits with Dominic Terry, a spokesperson at the park. Dominic talks about the park’s origins and how it has evolved in the past 60 years bringing history lessons to life through immersive storytelling and fun attractions for everyone. This is the story of Heritage Park.
Al’s final stop on his Calgary trip is to Heritage Park Historical Village. It’s one of Calgary’s premier tourist attractions, originally opened in 1964 with a mission to connect visitors with the history of Western Canada.
Al visits with Dominic Terry, a spokesperson at the park. Dominic talks about the park’s origins and how it has evolved in the past 60 years bringing history lessons to life through immersive storytelling and fun attractions for everyone.
This is the story of Heritage Park.
You can learn more about Heritage Park at heritagepark.ca.
Allan: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. I'm Al Grego, and this is a Yes, We Are Open podcast.
Today I'm in southwest Calgary, one of the city's most picturesque and dynamic quadrants. Known for its scenic views of the Rocky Mountains, many parks, golf courses, trails, and the Elbow River, Southwest Calgary is a prime location for both residential living and outdoor activities, such as skiing, golf, cycling, walking, and running, while enjoying the natural beauty of the area.
It's also home to some of Calgary's top educational institutions and recreational facilities, including Mount Royal University. And the Glenmore Reservoir. It's one of the more [00:01:00] sought after places to live and visit in Calgary. I park Bigfoot at the Glenmore Reservoir, which is fed by the Elbow River and controlled by the Glenmore Dam.
The reservoir is the primary source of Calgary's drinking water. I walk north from the reservoir across some train tracks. It's another unseasonably warm and sunny March day in Calgary. It's been like this all week during my visit. I walk along a path past a large parking lot to my right. To my left is a building that looks like an old fashioned train station.
There's a sign on the front that reads Railway Cafe. Past this building is a large public square with shops lining the north side. Beyond the square is a large building with a sign that reads Gasoline Alley, but I'm not headed there, yet. Instead, I walk past this square to a building on the northeast corner with a clock tower.
In this building are the offices of this week's subject, Heritage Park Historical Village.[00:02:00]
Hi,
Receptionist: it's you again.
Allan: It's me again.
Receptionist: Is the podcast on?
Allan: Yes. What? Is, uh, Dominic in? Oh!
Receptionist: Oh! There he is!
Dominic: I'm waiting, in the wings. Where do you want to go?
Allan: Wherever you want to take me.
Dominic: Let's go over to Gasoline Alley.
Allan: Perfect. That's Dominic Terry. He's a strategic communications manager at Heritage Park, and my tour guide today.
Dominic: What a day.
Allan: Oh, it's gorgeous.
Dominic: Holy moly.
Allan: Yeah. It's the off season, so the park isn't open, but I'm going to get a personal tour. First stop, Gasoline Alley. This is going to be a walking interview. Talk about Heritage Park. When did it open?
Dominic: So Heritage Park opened on July the 1st, 1964.
Allan: Okay.
Dominic: So in the early 60s, late 50s, this track of land, this 65 [00:03:00] acre track of land that the village sits on now was designated as parkland. It surrounded the reservoir, the Calgary Reservoir, all of our drinking water is right next to the park. And then in 1961, there was a group called the Woods Foundation, it's now called Woods Homes, came to the city.
And they started to form the idea of a children's pioneer park. Something that would tell the story of the things that have happened in Calgary since, you know, 1875, when Calgary was the germ of an idea of Calgary. And then 1883, of course, the railway came through and overnight, Calgary changed. So in 1961, the idea was brought forth of a children's pioneer park.
The city and the woods foundation put up 175, 000, which was a lot of money back in the day, and then went to Calgarians and got about another 000 to build it in 1963 in November, construction started, and then six, seven months later, the park opened its doors for the first time on that day, there were 20 buildings on site [00:04:00] and the railroad track that you see today, 10, 000 people visited the first day to put that in perspective.
This wasn't even in Calgary kind of at the time. I mean, it was on the outskirts of the city, right? Anderson road, which is about two main roads kind of South of here. There was nothing South of that. It was a farmer's field. There was 310, 000 people in Calgary and we saw 10, 000 of them that day. From that time to 60 years now on July the 1st, we'll celebrate our 60th anniversary.
It expanded quite rapidly after that. By 1970, there were a number of buildings, things had been moved around to make better use of the area. And that kind of thinking continued right up until, I guess, Famous Five House was built for our 50th anniversary in 2014. So that's the last structure that was built on the park, except for the one that doesn't look like any other building on the park.
And that's called Innovation Crossing. [00:05:00] And that is a building that kind of tells the story of the energy industry from hundreds and hundreds and even thousands of years ago when indigenous people were here burning wood and cow dung and however they kept themselves warm. Right up until, you know, we're talking about natural gas and thermal and the building is kind of a special thing.
It heats and cools itself. It has a section when it gets too warm in there, the blinds on the big windows on the backside automatically close and cools it down and then when it gets to an optimal temperature again, it raises the blinds and Let's place warm up again. Very cool.
We have 183 historical structures on the park, the largest collection of historical buildings in Canada, possibly in North America. They house 55, 000 artifacts in an open air living history museum. So it's an actual museum. The only difference is from a regular museum like the Glenbow or the natural history museum in Vancouver, or, you know, the museum of [00:06:00] civilization, all the interpreters that are in the museum are costumed.
So we act out as if you're walking back into a 1910 prairie town Like you just stepped off a steam engine, which you can actually step off a steam engine here at the, at the park. Different parts of the park take in different time periods. The settlement where we have our indigenous area and the fort and the Livingston house, that time period is like the 1860s.
So super old, you know, Southern Alberta, Calgary based. But then in the prairie town is 1910 and the midway is the 1930s. One of the cool things about, uh, Living History Museum is a lot of the time the costuming is done here. So we do our own costuming. We have about 17,000 pieces of costume in our costume shop.
So everybody from volunteers that help us out here, we have a cadra of someone with 600 volunteers that help us throughout the year to the 500 interpreters and retail people that come to the park to work in the summertime. They're all costumed by our costume shop.
Allan: Does the city run the park, or who runs it?
Dominic: So the park is run by the people that work at the [00:07:00] park. We have a CEO and a board of directors. It's a non profit charity, so we have a foundation board as well. And we have the society board, which is the day to day running, interpretation, direction of the park. And then we have the foundation that holds our charity status.
The city does give us an operating grant, and we lease this space from them. Great.
Allan: The first stop in my tour is the aforementioned Gasoline Alley. This place would be heaven for car buffs.
Dominic: So Gasoline Alley was part of the original expansion of the park in 2009. The collection is a 10 million collection of old cars and trucks, but also what we call Petroliana. So the gas pumps that you'll see all around.
Came from one man's collection. His name was Ron Carey. He was a big heavy hitter in the petroleum industry. Of course, Calgary and Alberta is a Petro state, right? We rely on the oil and gas industry for the prosperity that this place has. So this was a big expansion. It's one of our biggest areas that we can host events.[00:08:00]
People married in the park. A lot of the time happens right here. All of this moves out of the way. About 45 minutes. We can have this set for 400 people.
Allan: We spent some time in gasoline alley, admiring the cars on exhibit before moving on. Then we exit out the back and make our way up the promenade to the entrance to the actual park. As we walk up to the entrance, I notice numbers carved in the concrete path that we're walking. They look like dates. I noticed some dates as we're walking along. Is this us going back in time?
Dominic: This is us walking right back in time.
Allan: That's so cool.
Dominic: We're going to celebrate the 95th anniversary this year of the Persons case, and that's a big reason that this building was here.
Allan: The building Dominic's referring to is the first building we approach along the promenade on our right. It's a large house called the famous Five Centre of Canadian Women.
Dominic: The Famous Five in Alberta, led by Nellie McClung and Henrietta Muir Edwards, were five women who, women were not allowed to vote.
Allan: Right.
Dominic: They weren't even regarded as people within the constitution, and these five women thought that it was a bad thing. And it [00:09:00] was. And they petitioned the Privy Council in England to allow women the right, and they were granted. And so 95 years ago, uh, I believe it's in October, we'll celebrate with the Famous Five Foundation, which is a big Foundation here in the city because most of the women were from Alberta.
Allan: Right.
Dominic: So it was an important time in our history and that part of history is a little bit hard as well Because they were big eugenics proponents.
Allan: Right.
Dominic: But we always you know, I I podcast as well here and we've talked about eugenics and you know, history is dirty, right? It's not all bells and whistles and look at all the great things people could hold views in that time that were fairly normal that we know now that are just You know, not great.
Allan: Great people were people too.
Dominic: They were people too.
Allan: And product of the time, right?
Dominic: Of course.
Allan: The steam engine that you have here, talk about that a bit, like restored and brought here or how did, how did that work?
Dominic: Yeah. So our steam engines, 2023 and 2024 were built in the United States. After the war, they were used [00:10:00] as like shunting engines that push things around different steam yards and that kind of thing.
They were sold to a. Uh, a guy in Vancouver who used them for a little while on a trunk railroad or his own kind of area that he had and then sold to the park here, uh, in 1967, those came. So a couple of years after the track is original, it's 1. 6 miles around the park and travels to every area around the park and serves three stations, Mindipoor Station and Shepherd Station.
Mindipoor and Shepherd were both communities that were swallowed up by Calgary. The other station that's on the park here is called Lagan Station. And anybody who knows their Western Canadian history will know that Lagan was the stop that if you wanted to go to Lake Louise many moons ago, you would have got off at Lagan Station. The CPR owned that station, of course, and it was offered to the park for a dollar.
Allan: I know that the [00:11:00] film and television industry all over Canada is growing and and I've actually had some interesting talks about how it's grown here in Alberta especially. Have you ever had any interest from productions to come in and and shoot like period pieces in your park?
Dominic: Heritage Park has a long history in the film industry.
Allan: Yeah, okay.
Dominic: The assassination of Jesse James. Oh. The first scene of that movie when you see Brad Pitt and he's kind of leaned back on a chair. And there's a snooker parlor? That's our snooker parlor. That's Baron's snooker parlor. The Last of Us. There's a part in the first season, and I haven't seen the show so I'm not 100%, but Pedro Pascal goes to see his brother and they go to a bar. That's our saloon at the Wainwright Hotel. So a long history. There's a lot of Hallmark movies and that sort of stuff that's filmed out around here as a town center, that kind of thing. There's talks of a big budget film here in the fall. A lot of that goes to the government seeing that there's a massive film industry here in Calgary and the tax credit that's in place for the film industry has really put this place on blast for sure.
Allan: [00:12:00] What would you say is the heyday of Heritage park, your busiest time?
Dominic: Jeez, I guess 2014 would have been our 50th anniversary with a new building that kind of gave people a reason to come back. We would have probably been around 14, 15, 000 memberships for that season, which is pretty much a high water mark for where we are now. But back in the day, I mean, when this place opened first and through the 70s and 80s. There was a nostalgic kind of thinking still, right? Before we got into the 90s and kind of, there was cultural revolution, and music started to really take on a different idea. I think that people started to, not necessarily forget about their history, but started to look at things differently.
And I think that we're probably coming into another heyday of Heritage Park. In that We're starting to tell stories that were never told here. So it's almost a second life, you know, [00:13:00] of taking on those stories, the indigenous stories, black history stories of people that were here, like John Ware, the first black cowboy.
We like to tell what we call history adjacent stories. They may not have happened right here at the park, and we may not have a building that tells the exact story of that kind of thing. You know, the Vulcan Ice Cream Parlor is right here, this white building. It was in Vulcan, which is south of the city, about an hour and a half.
There were a lot of black people in that building. It stands to reason that they would have got ice cream at the Vulcan ice cream parlor at one point in time or another. So it gives us license to tell those stories. We don't step away from stories of people like Peter Prince, you know, the general manager of the Eau Claire lumberyard in downtown Calgary.
But I think that a lot of people think that when we start to tell those stories that we would start to forget the pioneer colonial history. That stuff is on blast here, right? People can come and get that kind of story at any time. But we have to dig out the stories of the people. Places like Shepard station, where a lot of the black community, when they were immigrating here, they would have come [00:14:00] through that train station. Their families would have come and met them there.
Allan: So your background is in journalism.
Dominic: Yeah. So I went to broadcasting school in Halifax, small little private school and knew I wanted to do news and came out. And when the green brand 680 news in Toronto started to really expand across the country, I was fortunate to get a job at news 95, seven in Halifax. Did everything, you know, how you're in the business and you just get a chance to put your hands on everything. And that was me. Moved to Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Took a job as a afternoon news anchor. Again, two person newsroom, super small. Got to do everything. Got to cover student councils and.
Allan: Hyper local, yeah.
Dominic: Hyper local news. And then we moved to Calgary and I spent 15 years in the media here.
Allan: When did you start here then?
Dominic: Two years ago, in February.
Allan: Okay.
Dominic: Yep.
Allan: How do you like it?
Dominic: It's great. I did a lot of Canadian political history in university. So my background is really Canadian politics and political science and history. So this was a natural fit [00:15:00] for me, you know, to come here and a lot of my job is media relations. And I come from that. I just took the pitches and now I give the pitches, right? So it's been a good journey so far for sure.
Allan: Up next, Heritage Park has been not just telling, but showing the history of Western Canada for almost 60 years. But recent events show that perhaps there were stories that weren't being told that were just as important. What were those stories? Stay tuned to find out.
You're listening to Yes We Are Open. Heritage Park Historical Village in Calgary is celebrating its 60th year of operation this coming Canada Day. As we've learned this season, if you're in the tourism industry, you're at the mercy of many outside influences. In the case [00:16:00] of Heritage Park, some of those influences came like ghosts from the past, changing the way they told their stories. How did they adjust? Let's find out.
So what would you say would be the biggest struggle that, uh, you've encountered here maybe at Heritage Park?
Dominic: So when I came to Heritage Park, we were coming out of the pandemic. We were almost out. And that time before I got here, they had to figure out how to do different things because nobody could go into the exhibit. So the interpreters would stand outside the exhibit and try to interpret them from outside. Mm-Hmm. time ticketing came about as not having too many people, despite the fact that it was an open air museum. Yeah. They just didn't want to have so many people packed in. So certainly that was a thing
with the reckoning, kind of the Kamloops discovery a couple of years ago at the residential schools and um, and indigenous issues coming right to the forefront. Canada. I think that that was a major turning point for us [00:17:00] of how do we tell the stories without losing what Heritage Park has always been, right?
And the funny thing is, is that we really didn't have to do anything. Those stories exist. You just got to dig for them. So the attraction of a new audience with new stories was, you know, you're not changing who you are, but you're changing the stories that you tell, and that's going to attract a new audience.
And sometimes when you attract a new audience, they're younger, they don't have kids. That's not our core. Kind of audience. We, you know, young families with children and older people. That's kind of our core So when you attract those younger audiences, they expect something And when they don't see it, they tell you about it.
And so we have been very acutely focused on We know what we do. Yeah, and we do it well But we need to add on these pieces that people want to see when they come here People want to see themselves represented at heritage park because they were here a long time ago We just didn't tell the stories for a long time.[00:18:00]
Allan: What sorts of activities did you do to bring those people back after the lockdown and after the, the discovery?
Dominic: I think one of the things that we did was we started our podcast. Mm-Hmm. when I came here first. Okay. And it was literally, we are not going to tell you about Peter Prince and the Thorpes and the people who you would've heard about. You know, on the regular basis, we're going to tell you more about, you know, black history of people on the park and history adjacent stories. Like we talked about Harnam Singh Hari, one of the the great hog farmers here, you know, Heritage Drive runs right outside the park. And from there up to Chinook Center, which is probably 90 blocks or so. That was a hog farm owned by a Punjabi man. And it's history adjacent. It's not here at the park. But it's right next to us, right? So those are the kinds of stories that we dug out and we made a tremendous amount of relationships with people who could tell us those stories.[00:19:00]
And our next real big move now is we've always told indigenous stories here, and there's always been a place for that, but there's so much to talk about. Like if you've never heard about the Prairie Chicken Dance, which is a Blackfoot traditional dance. It's not the da na na na na na, not that dance, right? Because that's what I thought when I heard it too.
Allan: The weddings, yeah, yeah.
Dominic: Right, exactly. It's an amazing story, you know, of ingenuity. And it's just a really cool story about how they came up with this traditional dance. So in the last couple of years for National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21st, we've partnered with the University of Calgary.
They have a greater ability to be able to tell that, you know, from their education point of view. And we've brought them here to the park. This will be the second year that we'll do our Campfire Stories programming, but that'll be augmented. By some of the stuff that goes on in the park that day. Uh, and this'll be our third year of Truth and Reconciliation, really leaning into those two days and trying our best to partner with indigenous groups, not only [00:20:00] partner with them, but create the trust. I think that is severely lacking because you see places that kind of wave at it a bit, you know, and I'm not saying that they're coming at it from a disingenuous point of view, but...
Allan: ...they may not be equipped.
Dominic: They may not be equipped. Exactly. They may not have the time to come. Kind of do it the right way. And I think that they're, like I say, they're not coming at it from a disingenuous point of view, but can certainly engage a little better.
We're actually on the road on TRC this year. To set a world record for the largest round dance ever. Yeah. So we have an indigenous engagement advisor here. We have a indigenous programming specialist, so they inform the way that we go. And we certainly want to have fun with the audience that come to see us and that's just one of those things that we've thought about and have engaged with Guinness now to start working towards. [00:21:00] I think that when you're a tourist organization that, you know, you're up and down and when you have places like Banff, Lake Louise, when you have the mountains right next to you, people tend to come here for Stampede and then head to the mountains, right?
So we are constantly working with our travel trade group to bring people here and working with places like Calgary Attractions. on the board of Calgary Attractions, the group of 12 attractions in the city that are not stampede. You know, it is the greatest outdoor show on earth. It's fantastic. We're just trying to, you know, hive off just a little bit of that every now and then.
So as a tourist attraction, yeah, it's hard. It can be hard.
Allan: Well, I want to tell you, the reason I came here yesterday was because I did a search for things to see in Calgary and Heritage Park came up first. So well done.
Dominic: There's a lot of work that goes into showing up first on Google search, right? It's so. On the back end and Google is changing those algorithms every month. They don't let you get out in [00:22:00] front of them. That's for sure.
Allan: Well, I mean, and I think you can list that as a struggle for sure.
Coming up after the break, we find out what the future holds for Heritage Park Historical Village.
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Allan: Welcome back to Yes, We Were Open. It sounds like the new direction for Heritage Park Historical Village is opening them up to all sorts of new stories, and in turn, new patrons. But what about the future? How does a place that is all about the past look to the future? Let's find out.[00:23:00]
The future of Heritage Park, I mean, what are the plans? Are there plans for expansion? What does the future look like?
Dominic: So we are in the final stages of putting together our 20 year plan for Heritage Park. We feel like in our 60th year that this is a good time to release it and show people kind of what's going to happen here in the next little while. We are kind of stuck to the land that we're on.
So, I mean,
Allan: it's a big piece. You've got lots of room.
Dominic: There's room to move things around.
Allan: Uh huh.
Dominic: There are plans. They do hinge on a lot of storytelling for sure, but I would say that in the next six months, we're going to be releasing that plan to the public. And we definitely went about it in a very thoughtful way.
There's been a long history of plans that have been released in Calgary and the surrounding communities of those. Hang on, we didn't know anything about this, right? So, we were very diligent about talking to the people that surround us here in Eagle Ridge and making sure that our community, the board, the city, all those people understand where we're going and that we're not going to [00:24:00] lose the essence of what Heritage Park is, but I would imagine in 20 years this place is going to look pretty different than it looks right now.
Allan: Now as we stand here today, it's March 14th. Right now you're closed for the season. When will you open?
Dominic: So we open on May long weekend. And then we'll be open every day until Labor Day weekend. And then we open on the weekends until Thanksgiving. There's things going on at the park all year round. We had this germ of an idea at the end of last year that, you know, we have this big hotel that's on the park, the Wainwright Hotel, and we have the ability to bring in other groups to do things. So, what if we had a murder mystery here?
Allan: Oh, wow.
Dominic: So, it's just crazy. We can't stop. We keep opening up new dates. They keep selling Calgary's best ghost tour in the city. I mean, you cannot beat the ghost tour here. It's an hour and a half. We have special interpreters that go around and tell these stories they've been telling them for years. We have. Ghoul's night out around the end of October for the little ones. Once upon a Christmas, we do all kinds of programming in gasoline alley throughout the year. So [00:25:00] there's always something to do at Heritage Park.
I just feel like there is so much room for us to grow as being one of just a jewel of this place. People love it. They come here. You see people who are so happy when they get here. You know, our birthday is on July 1st, this year. We'll have probably a thousand people lined up at the gate that morning, ready to come in, ready to have a great time, go to the Midway, ride the Moy on the train and get an ice cream.
There's so much room to grow here as we continue to diversify the stories. And as we continue to help people see themselves represented at the park, it's just going to attract a new audience for us. And that keeps us going.
Allan: Dominic is heritage park open?
Dominic: Yes, we are open.
Allan: Perfect.
That's [00:26:00] the story of Heritage Park Historical Village. Representation and adaptability. That's the lesson this week. I know Heritage Park isn't exactly a small business like the others I've featured, but I thought they were an interesting story worth telling, and we can still learn from their experience.
They realized the need for different stories to be told that better represented everyone involved in the building of this country, and they adapted. They sought those other stories and built relationships with those who were best equipped to tell the stories.
Now, in any business, it's important to get varying points of view. We all know that. This helps identify blind spots that might be limiting to your customer base. In this case, opening up to different stories has helped Heritage Park open up to more potential visitors.
Now, I'm not a history expert, so I'll use Dominic's words here. History is dirty. And it's important to learn all parts of it, and that's why it's important for a place like Heritage Park to show all parts of it as well, so that we may have a better [00:27:00] understanding of how we as a country came to be, and who the people responsible for building it were.
This is my last story from Alberta this season. The last few will be back in Ontario, but I had a great time visiting Calgary, Banff, and Canmore. I can't wait to return with my family one day and when I do, Heritage Park will definitely be a stop for us.
Yes, We Are Open is a Moneris podcast production. I'd like to thank Dominic for taking the time to share the story of Heritage Park. You can learn more about Heritage Park Historical village at heritagepark.ca. Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, Pinterest, and LinkedIn @HeritageParkYYC.
Please support this podcast by writing us a review on Apple podcasts or rate us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're a Canadian small business owner or know of one with an interesting story of perseverance to tell, I'd love to help tell it. You can contact me at podcast@moneris.Com.
Tune in next week for another story of struggle [00:28:00] and survival on the Yes, We Are Open podcast. I'm Al Grego. Thank you for listening.