So what do you have to do to have a school named after you? One might assume that you’d have to be famous, and likely be royalty or high in government.  The province of Alberta after all was named in tribute to Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, daughter of Queen Victoria.  She had Canadian links because she married the Marquis of Lorne, who became Governor General of this country and he lived in Alberta in 1882.

There  are such school names in Calgary- Victoria, King George, King Edward, Queen Elizabeth but we’re not all about royalty. One might assume that other schools would be named after famous residents, pillars of the community and that is also a pattern. But there are schools in Calgary named after quite ordinary folk too, some teachers, some school board members,  even several rebels who bucked the system and at least one who could not read or write.

Alberta is a pioneer place and if you strike out to try something new, you are likely a risk-taker, somewhat of an innovator, pushing the envelope. This spirit of not just adventure but of bucking the system is alive and well in Cowtown and makes for an interesting dynamic.  The eastern provinces have a stereotype that Albertans are red-necked gun toting cowboys in pick-up trucks.  That image is not fully correct. Most Albertans now are urban, the downtown office tower dress code is as New York as New York.  We are not red-neck either.  One might assume that there is an anti-gay, anti- abortion, anti- tone of conservatism if you don’t talk to us but if you do you would likely find that Calgary is actually an extremely open community. All Alberta is open. The mayor of Edmonton now is Jewish. The mayor of Calgary is Muslim.  The premier is a woman. We who the country expected least to open our doors, often open them the fastest.

One former Prime Minister won re-election in Calgary by courting and getting the support of gay voters. It was Alberta that championed legislation for women’s rights in the dower act for homesteads so women got their share of property. It was Alberta where women lobbied to get women the right to sit in the Senate and when the courts in Canada said no, it was Alberta women who took it one step farther and went even to the Privy Council in England to upset the law and get women that right. 

That’s Alberta. We are feisty. We break rules and kind of admire innovators who broke rules for the public good.

Our school names are even a celebration of both those things. We have schools named after kings and queens and old school tradition but also schools recalling Louis Riel who was hanged for confronting the government, for Nellie McClung who among the Famous Five got women those Senate rights.

It used to be that we in the west of Canada worried what the easterners might think of us, trying to impress them and come up to their standard. It is actually more true lately that in the west people stopped worrying about that.  Alberta’s oil and gas industry is a  job generator for the country and an economic anchor to all of Canada now.  The ‘roughnecks’ who were cowboys are now ‘roughnecks’ in the oil and gas industry, even use the same term from the cowboy era.  They are gutsy people and those who come here for jobs often want to be part of that excitement.  So do their kids.

It’s an intriguing mix.

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Schools named after government officials

Sir John A. Macdonald was the first Prime Minister of Canada in 1867  and oversaw building of the railway that came through Calgary .

James A. Lougheed was a lawyer in 1883 in  Calgary and became a member of the Senate. W. H. Cushing was alderman and mayor around 1899.

Lord Beaverbrook – Max Aitken- was a businessman who set up Calgary power. He was in government’s information ministry in the first world war and in England set up several newspapers.  He later was  minister of aircraft production in England in world war two.  H.G. Wells, the writer once said that Beaverbrook was such a good businessman that when he died he’d likely try to pull off a merger between heaven and the other place.

Frederick Haultain was premier of the Northwest Territories in 1897 till Alberta joined Confederation.  He had hoped that all four districts of the territories would be made into one big province- Alberta, Saskatchewan,  Anniniboia and Athabasca, -to be named Buffalo, but Ottawa did not like the idea for that would make it bigger than Quebec.  Frederick Osborne owned a school supply store called Osborne’s and he served as mayor of Calgary in 1927. Georges P. Vanier was a Quebecer, trained as a lawyer who in the first world war was shot in the chest and both legs. He lost his right leg.  He became Governor General in 1959.

Annie Gale in 1917 served on city council and was the first woman in the British Empire to have such a position. R. B. Bennett was born to a Maritime family in 1870. He studied and became a lawyer then moved out to Alberta where he ran successfully for office in the Northwest Territories and then for Canada. He became prime minister in 1930 just before the Depression. To handle the Depression he started many social policies that lasted for decades including minimum wage, unemployment insurance, a pension  plan and grants to farmers. He never married.

E. C. Manning was born to a farm couple in Saskatchewan in 1908 He became active with religious radio broadcasting and in politics, winning election to the Alberta legislature. In 1943 he became premier and the party he led held power for 7 straight elections. He retired in 1968.  John Diefenbaker was  born in Ontario in 1895, grew up in Saskatchewan and became a lawyer. He ran for political office many times, eventually becoming a member of Parliament, ran for party leader many times and eventually won, and was prime minister from 1957-1963. He advanced women’s  rights, the bill of rights and rights of natives.

Chris Akkerman in the 1950s was a maker of overhead truck campers in Forest Lawn. He became mayor of the community but resigned to protest having the district annexed to Calgary. Lester Pearson was born in Ontario in 1897 and played rugby and basketball. He was a medical officer in the first world war and while training as a pilot was in a plane crash, and injured. He was also injured when a bus hit him during a London blackout in 1918.  After the war he continued his education, taught history at the university of Toronto and coached football and hockey. He joined the civil service in the 1940s, was elected to parliament in the 1950s and became Prime Minister in 1962. He never had a majority government but was able to find common ground for many laws.

Roland Michener was born in Lacombe Alberta in 1900 and became a lawyer, studying overseas. Back in Canada he ran for parliament successfully in 1957 and was named Governor General in 1967. He ended the tradition of women having to curtsey to the governor general.

Annie Gale was born in 1876 in Britain and came to Calgary with her husband and family in 1912. She lobbied to reduce the prices of vegetables, household heating and hospital care and won election to aldermanic office in 1917. She became the first woman to serve on any city council in the British Empire.

Schools named after explorers and pioneers

David Thompson explored the area in 1787. He came as a trader, did not like working for the Hudson’s Bay Company and walked 75 miles to the nearest post of the Northwest Mounted Police. He liked charting and the natives called him “man who looks at maps”. John Ware came from the US bringing cattle to Alberta in about 1790. He was a slave freed at the end of the Civil War and  natives here were surprised to see a black man. They called him the ‘black white man’. He set down roots in Calgary.  He was six foot three and weighed 200 pounds. People at first thought he might not be good at roping animals but he showed them by roping a steer in under a minute. He never learned to read or write but was anxious to set up a school for his own children.  He died when his horse stumbled and rolled on him.

Simon Fraser established a trading post in 1805 and died in poverty. Sir John Franklin explored the area from the east coast to the Arctic in 1845. His last expedition was lost and bodies have still not been found. Jerry Potts in the 1880s was a native interpreter hired by the Northwest Mounted Police. He had a Blood Indian mother and Scottish father.

William Roper Hull brought 1200 horses to the area in 1883 and ran a butcher shop here, supplying railway workers. His will at death set up  a trust fund to build a home for orphans and troubled youth. Sir Winston Spencer Churchill was Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1940 and served as a politician for 69 years.

A. E. Cross was a veterinary surgeon and became a member of the Northwest Territories government in 1898 representing east Calgary. He was injured while trying to ride a difficult horse and the doctor suggested he find a less strenuous occupation so he started up a brewery. He was an active businessman, trained as a brewer’s apprentice and was one of the “Big Four’ who helped finance the dream that cowboy Guy Weadick had of a large fair for Calgary. It became the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. Henry Wise Wood was a Texas farmer who visited Alberta, liked it and bought land near Carstairs in 1905. He headed the United Farmers of Alberta and was influential in government.

Harold Riley was part of the Riley family that homestead a 146,000 hectare parcel of land on the north side of the river in 1888-1909. It was known as the Cochrane Ranch. Part of this land was later willed to the city of Calgary as Riley Park. Harold Riley also helped set up the University of Alberta. Clem Gardner was a cowboy at the Calgary Stampede in 1912.  He had come to Calgary from Manitoba via covered wagon. His family had brought 100 head of cattle to set up a homestead here. He became a rancher, rodeo rider and chuckwagon rider and his horse brand was drawn on an airplane in the second world war. He took part in rodeos  till he was fifty and died while chasing cattle, so died ‘ in the saddle’ doing what he loved..

Schools named after the police, military

Colonel James Walker in 1884 was a North West Mounted Police officer.  After serving with the mounties he delivered reserve payments to natives, then  ranched at Cochrane and established a saw mill. He supplied lumber to churches, bridges and for house construction all through Calgary and area. His red brick house is still at the Inglewood bird sanctuary. The two earlier houses he built himself washed away in floods.  In 1917 at age 70 he took a forestry corps to Scotland to saw wood for war trenches. He helped organize Calgary’s first schools and even donated land. Captain John Palliser was born in the republic of Ireland in 1817 and was a sheriff and served in the militia there. However he became a passionate big game hunter and visitor to the new world.  He explored the areas of Saskatchewan and Alberta in the 1850s.

Colonel James Macleod was a mounted police officer from Scotland who helped establish Fort Calgary in 1880. In 1884 a visiting federal cabinet minister, Mr. Burgess, was thrown from a horse and broke his collar bone. Macleod invited Burgess to spend some time recuperating at his ranch and while there convinced him to grant the city some land for a fair. It became the Stampede grounds.   Cappy Smart was the city fire chief in 1912 and also the official starter for all road races, referee for boxing matches and hockey games.  Stanley Jones was a Nova Scotian who had fought in South Africa.  As a lawyer in Calgary he enlisted in world war one, served as a major and died of wounds suffered in battle in 1916.

Fred McCall was a 19 year old army pilot who got 35 hits in a single plane during world war one. After the war he returned to Alberta and did stunt flying, nosedives, barrel dives and took passengers for rides.  On one ride in 1919 he had to do an emergency landing, setting the plane down on the merry go round at the Calgary Stampede. Ian Bazelgette was a world War II pilot who acted valiantly in battle. Though his plane was on fire and he let his crew bail out, he stayed with the plane long enough to guide bombers to their target.  He died and received a posthumous distinguished flying cross. J. Fred Scott was a colonel in the Calgary Highlanders who were part of the landing of troops at Dieppe in the second world war. He founded a battle drill school in BC and was a lawyer.

Schools named after missionaries and religious orders

Madeleine d’Houet born in 1781 in France was with a religious order sent to Calgary in the early 1800s . Cecil Swanson was an Anglican missionary in 1912.

Schools named after prominent community leaders

Eugene Coste was an engineer who discovered gas at Bow Island in 1908, built a pipeline to Calgary and founded what later became ATCO gas. Senator Patrick Burns sold beef to construction crews on the railway line. He came to Calgary in 1890, bred Percheron horses and was one of the Big Four to fund the Calgary Stampede. He set up a meat packing empire, Burns & Co. and was named to the Senate in 1931.  Chief Justice Milvain in 1927 was a lawyer who became justice of the Supreme Court of Alberta.  He was born in Lundbreck in 1903 when the area was still part of the North West Territories. His biographer calls him a ‘cowboy judge’.

Tom  Baines was an active advocate for zoos and visited schools teaching about animals, often bringing his pet snake in the 1920s. Sam Nickel was born in the US in 1889  but came with his family to Calgary and operated a shoe business. He later sold soup, home study courses and then raised money to drill oil wells. He got funding for mineral rights in Alberta and Saskatchewan and by age 70 finally became wealthy from his work. He donated millions to charity. Carl Nickle became a radio reporter and then started a newsletter about the oil and gas industry and helped set up natural gas pipelines.. He became a member of Parliament in 1951 and was a generous contributor to community work.  

Gladys Egbert won a scholarship to study music at age 12 and pursued piano in New York City. She returned to Calgary after successful training and began a lifelong passion of teaching children to play piano here. Dr. E. P. Scarlett was a university chancellor and medical doctor. He was one of the first to use an electrocardiograph to study the heart. Terry Fox wanted to be a phys ed teacher but his dreams were changed when he developed cancer in the 1970s. He embarked on a nation wide run to raise funds for cancer research and died in 1981 just before he turned 23.  Dr. Gordon Townsend was a medical doctor at the children’s hospital.

Schools named after teachers

Janet Johnson taught at 5 Calgary schools  Andrew Sibbald was a school teacher in Morley in 1875. He taught despite the hardship of loss of a hand in an accident. W. O. Mitchell was born in Saskatchewan in 1914 and had to drop out of school for a while when he contracted tuberculosis. Later he returned to his studies and became a teacher in Castor and New Dayton, Alberta in 1942. He became a freelance writer and penned award winning books such as Who Has Seen the Wind?  Douglas Harkness was a teacher at Crescent Heights High School in 1938 and fought in the second world war. He became a member of Parliament.

Grant MacEwan taught in Calgary and became mayor. He married a school teacher in 1935 and was so down to earth that at his wedding ceremony someone had a flat tire and he went out to the parking lot to fix it. He became a member of the legislature in 1955 and later was named Lt. Governor for Alberta. He wrote many historical books and lived to age 97. Ethel M. Johnson was a teacher. Alex Ferguson was a school teacher in 1910. His nickname was Fergie and he was a sergeant major who taught many cadets military exercises. Dr. J. K.Mulloy was a medical doctor and teacher in 1911. 

Ernest W. Coffin was a teacher in the West Indies and in 1911 taught in Calgary. Alice M. Curtis was a teacher who in 1913 set up the first home and school association in western Canada. Fred Parker taught school in Calgary in 1914 and industrial arts at a teachers’ college. James Fowler was a teacher in Olds in 1914 and later taught at Crescent Heights. He also served as a school inspector. Frank L. Woodman was a teacher in 1915 and later principal at Western. He later served as school trustee.

Harold Panabaker was a decorated soldier who became a teacher and principal in about 1918.  Jennie (Mary Jane) Elliott was a teacher in the 1920s and later became a school trustee  Norman Bethune was a Scottish Canadian whose great grandfather had been a fur trader.  He studied medicine and taught immigrant miners in northern Ontario how to read and write English.  Though he got tuberculosis in 1926 the treatment he received worked and he survived and became a chest surgeon himself.  He started mobile medical units to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield and died in 1939 of blood poisoning.

Clarence Sansom was a teacher in the 1920s and even taught teachers  Le Roi Daniels was also a teacher in the 1920s  Georgina Thomson was born in 1904 on the prairies and was home-schooled by a mother who had been a teacher. She herself attended schools later in Calgary and became a teacher and librarian.  Fred Seymour was a teacher in the 1930sDr.E.W. Coffin was principal of the normal school training teachers in the 1930s.  Louise Dean was a teacher in the 1930s.

Jack (John Wesley ) James was a teacher in 1948 and became superintendent of secondary schools.  H. D. Cartwright was a teacher and school inspector in the 1950s. Christine Meikle had twin babies in 1946 and one was mentally handicapped. She set up a school for his education in her home and it enlarged. O. S. C. Geiger was a teacher in the 1960s and then school supervisor. He  loved boxing and got nicknamed after a famous fighter Pelkey. Dr. Carl Safran was a teacher and later superintendent of schools in the 1970s.

Schools named after school board members

Sam Livingston in 1873 came from Ireland to look for gold in California. He moved to Calgary to graze cattle and became an early school trustee. Bishop William Pinkham in 1889 was a school trustee as well as the first Anglican bishop in Calgary.  His jurisdiction at one time included much of both Saskatchewan and Alberta.  To get to Calgary he had to take wagons, sleep in tents, ford rivers with horses tied to each other by knotted tails. When he and his wife married there were no wedding rings so he had a blacksmith make her a ring out of a five dollar coin.

David D. Oughton was a school trustee in 1906 and donated land for schools. Annie Foote was a school trustee in 1913 and the first woman to serve on a civic committee.  Ernest Morrow was born in Forest Lawn and became a school trustee in 1913 and later mayor.  William Branton was school board superintendent in the 1920s and supervised building new schools in Calgary for 34 years.  Thomas B .Riley was a school trustee in the 1920s and got free textbooks for students. He himself taught metal work.

Melville Scott was a school superintendent in the 1930s.  Robert T. Alderman was a school trustee in the 1930s. He introduced the concept of junior high schools..  George W. Skene was a school trustee  in the 1940s and lawyer for the school board for 29 years.  Wilma Hansen was a school trustee in the 1940s and was active promoting home and school associations.  Dr. Gordon Higgins was a medical doctor and school board trustee. He promoted special education and in particular a camp for children with diabetes.

Schools named after those who helped the schools

Dr. Geraldine Oakley was medical officer of health for Calgary schools in 1917  Albert Keeler was born in England and came to Calgary, donating land for schools and serving as school trustee. He was in the navy in world war II and was a town councillor in Forest Lawn. Marion Carson was a school trustee in 1920 and provided free clinics for school children in the 1930s. Her family came to Calgary before 1900 and she worked to get a hospital for those with tuberculosis, and to get free milk to needy families.

Banting and Best were two medical pioneers who saved lives of children with diabetes by discovering insulin in the 1920s.  Catherine Nichols Gunn was a school nurse for 30 years starting in the 1920s. She had been to war with the Canadian army and back in Calgary opened a health department for school children. She specialized in helping those with tuberculosis. Dr. Frank Buchanan was a school inspector in the 1930s.

Schools named after rebels for a cause

In 1869 Louis Riel led an uprising in Manitoba against the Canadian government as he tried to protect Metis culture.  He became an independent member of Parliament, was found guilty of treason and was hanged.  Nellie McClung did not learn to read till she was ten and only had 6 years of formal education but she became a writer. She fought for women to get the vote in Manitoba and then in Alberta and was a member of the legislature in 1921. She fought for women to be allowed to be Senators.

Bob Edwards was born in Edinburgh in 1860. His mother died shortly after his birth and his dad died when he was 8. He was raised by his aunts. His grandfather owned a publishing company in Scotland and when he came to Alberta in 1892 he too became a journalist. He was an independent member of the legislature in 1920 but was most known for his satirical writings about life.

I guess it could be said though that all of the above were rebels for one cause, education.