Dateline Calgary Ogden, August 19th 1959, 9:15am: a gas leak leads to an explosion and levels an entire residence. Nearby homes sustain serious damage and the blast breaks windows all over the community. Miraculously those inside the collapsed structure received non-life threatening injuries and survived.
Several folks in nearby dwellings also required medical treatment, but given the scope of the event, it’s an amazing no one was seriously disfigured or died. It was a lucky day for all.
The explosion rocked the entire community, but today there’s really nothing to indicate what happened here many decades back. It’s a quiet street in a quiet neighbourhood, yet it holds an amazing secret. Folks we spoke with in the two homes had no idea and expressed amazement at what happened. In our photos we present a look at this same location present day.
Calgary Ogden – The House That Went Boom: the location of an amazing story. Dollar store history with Chris Doering & Connie Biggart (BIGDoer/Synd)
The Then image is thanks to the University of Calgary Archives and is from the Rosettis Studio collection. That firm operated in this city from 1943 to 1965 and were staff or freelance photographers for many companies, groups and organizations. Their local clients included the the Calgary Stampede, the Glenbow Foundation, the Calgary Herald newspaper and the Calgary Albertan newspaper.
Scroll down for photos and to comment.
We sourced this Then image ourselves, but some come thanks to readers. If you have a photo from an old family collection, for example, you think would make the good starting point for a Then & Now, please reach out. We’ll take a similarly composed shot and then chat about it on this here website. Social media too.
Local papers covered the explosion and we’ll share a few snippets from the Calgary Herald’s report here. The event made the front page and the headline reads: “City house blows up, sending 6 to hospital”.
A photo shared reads: “Explosion Demolishes Ogden House – Torn apart in a violent explosion 9:15 am today, a home in Ogden was completely wrecked…firemen and onlookers are seen probing the wreckage. Six persons were injured in the blast, which was heard over a mile away…adjoining houses were severely damaged.”
It could have been a complete and utter disaster, but in the end everyone made it out relatively unscathed. Any injuries would heal, although the memories were no doubt traumatic and they can hang around for a long time. That no one perished or sustained life-changing injuries is incredible given the damage. There should have been carnage, but fate dealt all those involved a winning hand that day.
Mrs Smart and her two children, Wendy six, and Gregg ten, were in the house that exploded. In spite of the structure collapsing around her, Mrs Smart emerged mostly unhurt. Searchers found the children in the back yard and the Herald report suggests the explosion threw them from the house. Wendy sustained the worst injuries and suffered two fractured legs.
Possessions from the Smart home ended up scattered all over the block. Glass and shattered timbers flew everywhere and in some cases with enough force to embed them into the walls of neighbouring homes or garages. A fire followed the explosion, but the report suggested it was minor and soon brought under control.
Mr Bloom, a city employee cutting lawns in the park across the street, recieved some cuts from flying glass. He was working about where were we captured our Now image when it happened.
Houses in a couple block radius had their windows blown out by the blast. Others reported objects knocked from shelves and walls. A good number of the houses here date from earlier in the 1950s, so at the time of the explosion they were not that old.
Mrs Fox and her seven year old daughter were in the basement of their house across 72nd Avenue (unseen to the left of our scene) and both required medical attention for unstated injuries.
“(The) condition of the house across the street from the one destroyed earlier today attests to the force of the explosion.” The photo that accompanied those words shows the wall badly damaged by debris, with shattered windows and timbers scattered about.
Mrs Maisey (spelled Massi in the Herald piece) and her three young children in the house right next door, all escaped injury. That’s the house still standing to the right in both photos. It sustained damage on the wall and roof facing the explosion, but neither were seriously breached.
Phone lines in the neighbourhood went down for a time. Many folks thought the explosion came from the nearby Ogden Shops belonging to the Canadian Pacific Railway and others thought it was an earthquake. It shook dishes all over Ogden and was the talk of the community for some time.
From Lawrence Boote of the nearby Ogden Garage…
“The explosion knocked all the tools from the walls of the garage…I grabbed a couple fire extinguishers and dashed down the road to the Smart Home. There was a man lying in the field (the city worker). I asked someone to check on him and then I gave another guy an extinguisher and we tried to put out the fire.”
“Mr Boote said a child, Wendy Smart, was already lying in the backyard.” So was her brother as it turned out. “Mrs Smart was till missing, so Mr Boote and an onlooker started shifting wreckage….about five minutes later they found Mrs Smart buried under a section of roof and walls. She was still conscious.”
People feared a second explosion but fortunately it didn’t happen. The Fire Department and Police were quick on the scene and kept order.
The cause of the explosion was quickly investigated and the Canadian Western Natural Gas Company it’s explained here…
“It appears that an excavating machine working on a sewer project struck and parted a gas line at 72nd Avenue and 24th Street. Gas escaping from the parted line into the ground, entered the house of J Smart, where the explosion took place.” Presumably a pilot light or some such thing was the source of ignition.
Crews quickly repaired the leak. It’s not said what happened to the fellow on the machinery, but if he was there when the house exploded, he’d be right in the blast zone. Where he was working was just to the right of the photos.
A new house replaced the one leveled in 1961, but they aligned it to front on 72nd Avenue. Directories of the time tell us the Smarts moved on after the incident to elsewhere in he city. That seems a pretty normal response and we bet they were eager to put any memories of the event behind them.
Had we stood on this spot some sixty five years ago, it would have been a crazy, chaotic scene. Terrifying too. Today, it’s peaceful and quiet, like nothing ever happened. The memories of those still with us are distant, many have likely passed on, and the event only lives on in old newspaper accounts and now here.
It’s a little fly on the wall look at some forgotten history and there’s a happy ending in that no one died. The home itself and possessions were lost, but they made it out. They cheated the reaper.
“As a long time area historian I can say unequivocally that the thoroughness of the research and documentation done by Chris and Connie on any site they so respectfully explore is first rate. I consider them a go to on many many aspects of western Canadian history. And I am thankful that Off the Beaten Path exists as a first rate site to guide other explorers.” John William Kinnear.
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Date of adventure: August 19th 1959 (original) and May to August 2024 (us). Location: Calgary, Alberta. Article references and thanks: City of Calgary, Calgary Herald Articles August 1959 and the University of Calgary archives.
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