Hunt House, oldest Calgary building on original site, set to reopen

It's just a shack.

The oldest Calgary building still on its original site, it's one you might have walked past a hundred times without giving a second glance.

To many it was a dingy,grey building behind the bushes near the betterknown Deane House. But nowthe Hunt House has been reborn.

The historicheart of Calgary

The Hunt House is a tiny log cabin built sometime between1876 and 1881.It's part of the historicheart of Calgary and isa rare heritage holdout in one of the fastest growing cities in the country.

The house was constructed while the last of the wild bison roamed the grasslands and settlers were carving out communities across the west. As old buildings go, it's no grand palace.

You'd even have to call it ahistoricnewcomer compared to the teepeerings that dot the Alberta Prairie.

The frail wooden building beat tough oddssurviving fires, floods, development and time albeit more than a little worse for wear, sagging and on the verge of collapse.

Now the cabin has been restored, and it's arare physical connection with the city's beginnings.

Little details reveal the history of the home

Dave Chalmers knows every inch of the Hunt House. He was part of the restoration crew hired by Fort Calgary to save it.

Crew members spent the last year carefully removing, restoring and replacing the hundreds of pieces that make up the cabin pine log walls, rough plank boards and a tar-covered roof.

Along the way, they uncovered small reminders of the people who lived here, including an eastern Canadian newspaper from 1890stuffed into the roof and a small bottle from London in the1920sburied under the floor.

Chalmers says he isn't much of a history buff, but his face still lights up when he points at the wooden floor and the subtle signs of ourhistory.

"You can see where the stove was. You can see burn marks in the floorwhere he put his iron down, where he put the lid of the stove down," he said.

Mtisinterpreter first to callit home

A carpenter himself, Chalmers says he feels a connection with the men who built the cabin more than 140 years ago.

"They did a great job.It wasn't built by a carpenter.It was built by somebody who was probably proficient in a lot of things," he said.

The names of the builders are lost, but their work remains.

It's believed the cabin was built as a home for a Hudson's Bay Company employee, right next to a company store.

It's likely the first person to live there was a Mtis interpreter for the HBC. We know the last resident was William Hunt,a local rail worker who lived there for decades until his death in the mid-1970s.

Fort Calgary restoration

In recent years, the sagging, unkept building was used as a storage shed for bottles from a neighbouring restaurant.

It later passed into city hands and is now owned by Fort Calgary.

Fort Calgary found the $400,000 needed to research it, and preserve Hunt Housewith fire-resistant whitewash, a sprinkler system and a series of steel pylons to protect it from nearby traffic.

Fort Calgary CEO and president Sara-JaneGruetznersays it's a miracle Hunt House survived, considering all the environmental and human threats over the years.

"Personally, I felt that there was an obligation for the people who had been put in charge of looking after it to keep it in a condition where it continued to be there and continued to tell a story," Gruetzner says.

Recognition that our history matters

Our city, as a young city, struggles with how it identifies and understands its origins, saysRebecca Sullivan, who teaches cultural studies at the University of Calgary.

"I think that the whole Prairie culture is coming to terms with that sense of where we're making a cultural shift from a celebration of constant newness to a recognition that our history does still matter."

And there are big plans for the little shack. Soon it will be part of Fort Calgary's interpretive program, and give Calgarians a chance to see where all those glass and steel towers that make up our citygot their start.

Cynthia Klassen, with the Calgary Heritage Initiative, says telling those tales isa critical part of saving old buildings.

"Once you tell the story of an object or an artifact or a place then people are able to connect with it, so it's more than just a thing," she says.

Relationship with past complicated

Yet making that connection isn't always easy.

Our memory is very, very short-ArithaVan Herk, Calgary author

Calgary has a complicated relationship with its own past. Many early buildings are long gone, too dilapidated or too expensive to save. Others simply disappearunder the tide of towers that have marked Calgary's economic progress over time.

Calgary author Aritha Van Herk describes our city as generous and self aware, but also one that lives in the moment.

"Our memory is very, very short and we look forward all the time, and I'm not critical of that attitude on the part of the city, but I lament what is missed, and the little shack like this is actually a perfect emblem of what we miss," she says.

In a way, our historicpreservation philosophymirrors the nature of our building materials,VanHerksays. Most wooden and sandstone buildings were never built for survival.

A good reminder

"I do think that it speaks to the ephemerality of history in the west," she said. "It's a very different space and site than it is in places like Toronto, where they've got solid brick buildings that people built to last. It's much different here."

She says places like Hunt House remind us of the people who built Calgary.

"They came out west and they committed to the place, and they committed to the opportunities and the vision of this new place.They were obviously risk takers, ready to take on almost anything. And their buildings reflect their willingness to make do with what was available," she said.

All things have origins. All cities beginnings. Calgary is now a vast collection of towers, warehouses, homes and roads. Standing and looking towards the future, even in the dark days of recession, there can be a collective sense of accomplishment in turning, justhowever briefly, and looking back at just how far we've come.

Calgary at a Crossroads is CBC Calgary's special focus on life in our city during the downturn. A look at Calgary's culture, identity and what it means to be Calgarian. Read more stories from the series at Calgary at a Crossroads.