The Calgary neighbourhood of Alyth/Bonnybrook is industrial, but interestingly there’s a few houses (or former houses) in the mix. Businesses have repurposed some for other uses, offices for example, but a number are still homes. So they’re lived in…these people reside among all those fabrications shops, grain terminals, warehouses and trucking firms located here.
Join us a we stroll about this gritty area, a bit southeast of downtown, in search of these dwellings. It’s a post reminiscent of our “X” Houses series where we searched out homes/former homes deep in the city’s core. There’s a link to the most recent installment of that piece down near the photos if you’re curious.
Industrial Park Living Alyth Calgary: from 2015. Another silly post with Chris Doering & Connie Biggart (BIGDoer/Synd)
Thanks to “Anonymous” for sponsoring this and many other posts at BIGDoer.com. Be an angel too…
Industrial areas are often a gold mines when it comes to other things of interest to folks like us, so forgive us if some pictures stray from the main theme. Things like old vehicles and that.
Scroll down for photos and to comment.
This piece is from 2015 and brought back after a system crash, with mostly new text, but original photos. The face of Alyth/Bonnybrook has changed since and these older images show the houses better than if we shot them today. They’re not pretty in any way, but neither should they be. Also, some houses seen back then are gone now and these are noted in the photos. The 2015 context of the write up was kept where possible.
All the houses seen here are concentrated in triangle chunk of land perhaps 20 blocks square (mostly in the Alyth section). The Canadian Pacific Kansas City Alyth railyards are to the northeast and there’s an escarpment in the west. A city sewage plant, with Bow River behind it, is directly south in the Bonnybrook part. Welcome to stinkytown.
It’s not a beautiful area, but industrial neighbourhoods never are. Still, we find them strangely compelling.
This is only a small part of the extensive Alyth/Bonnybrook district (let’s just collectively call it Alyth, ok). Other parts, as far as we could tell, seem devoid of residences of any kind.
It appears many of the old homes function as offices or as storage places for various businesses.
A couple other homes in the area were empty, including one for sale at the time and probably slatted for redevelopment. A few show signs of habitation and must certainly qualify as some of the weirdest places to live in Calgary. Realtors always say “location, location, location” but here that rule is best not discussed.
The oddest of the group are four that have a railway track running right past their front yards. The street they’re on (road one side and track beside it) is one of the few in Calgary that’s unpaved. There’s lots of gravel alleys in the city – we have one – but few roads of this nature.
Imagine living at any one of them with trucks kicking up dust, industrial noises and smells (if the wind is right, you’ll catch a whiff of the poop plant), and the occasional passing train. At odd hours of course. You have to admit, it’s a bit weird.
I doubt many people could live in such an environment without going a bit nuts. It takes a certain type and it’s for these people we call the article Industrial Park Living. They’re a strange breed perhaps. We always hoped one of them would reach out after reading the original post and chat about the experience. We even offered to bring beer, but no one responded. How could anyone turn down that?
We’ve researched each house, as best we could, but as you might expect data on many was spotty at best and for others completely missing. The oldest of the group we found information in the city of Calgary database is from 1914 and the most recent 1939. The build date of each, if known, is posted with each photo down in the gallery.
A few houses are multi-story, but the rest are single level and most rather small in size. One is in contention as being one of the smallest houses in all Calgary (and we missed it initially) and has less square footage than most two car garages.
It sounded like someone was living inside and we don’t mean a home owner. The building was clearly vacated some time ago, and who ever this was, they sounded a bit…well…unhinged. Cursing and stuff – not at us, but whom, only they knew. Best to get out of there.
A good number of these houses have that broken glass stucco so popular in the mid-century era.
Many of our subjects were blocked from view by vehicles, machinery, signage, fencing or who knows what else. For others it’s by trees or bushes, sometimes almost completely, and certain yards have a real wildness about them. One house was totally obscured by containers at the time and only visible on Google Earth from above.
The city has numerous aerial photos available online showing the area in the past and if anything, they demonstrate the extent of change here. In the old days it was more a semi-rural mixed residential and industrial, with some farm land and many empty lots. In the end, the land proved better suited for factories and warehouses. It grew more and more industrial over time, until only a few houses remained. Since we first published this piece, now there’s even less.
It’s possible there are more houses/ex-houses we overlooked in the area. We followed this visit up with a Google Earth scan and it doesn’t look like that happened, but who knows.
Alyth/Bonnybrook is home to a number of huge concrete grain terminals and these dominate the skyline. You can’t miss those.
A Pace Arrow Eleganza motorhome (1980s) is tucked away on a corner property and looks lived in. On site security for a property perhaps? Or someone down on their luck and with no home otherwise?
It’s not odd to find someone residing in a rolling-home in out of the way places like this and while the city disapproves, these folks often fly under the radar. Due to any number of factors, usually money related, empty lots and side roads become temporary addresses for some folks. Sometimes the police roust them out and they find a new place.
Note the grain terminal in back and it’s a big one. The railyard is right behind it, but unseen.
We pass a rare Hendrickson VT-100 from the mid to late 1980s and it carries a drilling rig. In trucking circles the Hendrickson firm is best known for making suspensions used in big rigs. They also produced specialized or highly customized heavy duty trucks for a period and always in small numbers. Known as HME today (Hendrickson Mobile Equipment), they only make fire trucks now.
This make is uncommon in Canada and pretty much anywhere else for that matter and it’s the first we’ve ever seen in the wild. That’s a big front end.
A battered and worn Kenworth W900A series works for a metal recycling firm and how long before it too becomes scrap? What a road warrior. Kenworth produced this model from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s and this one seems to be from the last half dozen years of production.
The company continues to build W900B models, in a slightly different form, to this day, but not for much longer. They’ve announced the end is near and 2026 will be the last year. That’s quite the legacy and this series ended up as one of the most popular and recognizable highway haulers ever.
Unimogs, in production since the 1940s, will never win a beauty contest, but they are functional.
So ends our little walkabout of this unique community. We’re drawn to industrial areas, for reasons we’ll never be able to fully explain, and always find something interesting to see. Look for us (maybe with one of us in the yellow jacket) out exploring other neighbourhoods like Alyth/Bonnybrook. Maybe the one you work in.
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Date of adventure: July 2015, with one 2021 addition that we missed the first time. Location: Alyth/Bonnybrook, Calgary. Article references and thanks: City of Calgary property records and aerial photos.
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