Every door, name and trade in this town is a line from Henderson's Calgary Directory. The map runs from First to Fifteenth Avenue on both sides of Centre Street: west to the 1700 block at Seventeenth Street, and east to the 800 block by the Grand Trunk Pacific depot. The Canadian Pacific runs through the middle on Ninth Avenue, and the Bow River lies beyond First. There are 4,138 lots over 1,344 by 366 tiles, and both volumes share the one map.
Face anything and press space to find out what it is, and whether it came from the directory or was placed for the period. The mark over a resident's head is hollow until you have spoken to them, and a filled tick afterwards.
Conversation runs on keywords. When a resident mentions something, the word joins your list of topics, and each topic reaches a different distance: ask about their house and you hear names, employers and tenure, and ask about the town and you hear figures with no names attached. Values taken from the record are set in white and the rest of the sentence is dimmer, so the bright words on their own are the data. Press R to show the record instead: the speech is replaced by the fields the canvasser filled in, tenure code and all, with the scope and fidelity that produced the answer.
What somebody says about the town depends on their own position in it. In 1913 the 89 keeping a full house want the rent, the 887 lodging six or more to a door cannot get a room at a fair price, the 715 in the building trades lost their work when the permits stopped, and the 97 real estate men had a trade until last autumn. 1,468 people have nothing in the occupation column, which can mean a widow, a retired man, a door where the canvasser got only a name, or a word the scan could not read. The report counts them without treating the blank as a finding. Much of what people say about the town is about the three blocks they can see, so a clerk in his own house among clerks and a lodger at a crowded door give different answers.
Ask about the block and about half of the residents will name somebody else on it (who else) and say why that person is worth asking: they were at the same door in both books, they keep a house rather than a room, they share a trade, or they were selling land last year and are not now. It is always somebody on the same block, never at the same door, and the address comes with the name: Ask John Morrison about that, at 104, a few doors along. A gold mark goes up over that house, an arrow at the edge of the screen points to it while it is out of view, and when you arrive the person says who sent you.
The two volumes fall either side of the crash: 1912 was canvassed before the land market broke and 1913 just after, 7,499 people against 6,995. Every lot is laid out once from both years together, so nothing moves between them. A house missing from one year shows as an empty lot in the same place, with its number kept. That means nobody was recorded at the door, not necessarily that the building was gone, and some addresses were lost to the OCR, so an empty lot needs checking against the volume itself before it means anything.
In 1913, ask a householder about a year ago and they compare the two books: who was at their number in 1912 and has gone, what has changed on their block, and their own change of trade if they had one - I was a real estate agent this time last year. I am a baker now. Households are matched by surname, because the OCR often spells a forename differently in the two volumes. The two volumes also check each other's spelling: where a surname is a letter or two from the one the other year prints at the same door, the record view shows both, and the two count as one household. 707 Thirteenth Avenue West is Edgar Lougheed, student, in 1912 and Hon J A Lougiheed, senator, in 1913 - the scan's reading of Lougheed, at the door of what is now Lougheed House. There are 283 of these in 1912, and neither spelling is ever changed, because a letter or two is also the distance between Budd and Rudd.
You can only visit 1912 and 1913, so the 1910 directory exists here only as people's memory of it: block counts, with no names and no doors. From 1912 that is two years back, and a resident gives a rounded count. From 1913 it is three, and all that is left is which way things went - half of what you are standing on was field. Where the older book has nothing for a block, they say so. The record view shows the scope as 1910/face/… at vague fidelity.
The directory prints a firm twice without connecting the two: the street section gives its door, and the alphabetical section names it in the occupation column of people living all over the town. Matching the names joins 147 firms in 1912 and 146 in 1913, most of them on the printed name and the rest on part of it, such as Robinson Little & Company at the door and Robinson Company in the column. A resident who works for one ends their answer with its address: the counter is at 102 Eighth Avenue East.
A door you can walk through stands open, with a mat on the step, and a house door stays shut. Walk onto the door of a joined firm and you are inside, with the people on its books behind the counter: 117 of them in 1912 and 124 in 1913. They are the same people you meet in the street, so after speaking to somebody at the Imperial Bank you will find the tick already over their head outside their house at 232 Twelfth Avenue West. They are at work between eight and five, and after five the room is dark. The exceptions are the 19 people who give their workplace as their home address as well, such as the baker over the bakery, the man at No 2 Fire Hall, the keeper of the Lincoln Lodge Hotel, the Palace Livery Stables and St Hilda’s Ladies’ College. A firm printed under a person's name finds that person too: Swarbrick Harry transfer is at 608 Thirteenth Avenue East, Harry Swarbrick, transfer lives there, and so he stands behind his own counter.
Each room is fitted out from the trades of the people who work in it: clerks get desks, cooks a range, smiths a bench, butchers a meat rail and tailors a cutting table. Where nobody's trade says anything, the name over the door decides, as with Hop Lee laundry. Where neither says anything, the room gets the crates and barrels any firm might have kept, and says so. The directory describes no interiors, so every fitting is placed for the period and only the trades behind it are recorded, which the fitting tells you when you press space. There are 470 rooms in 1912 and 521 in 1913, and 119 of them have anybody in them. The others have a day book on the counter saying that nobody on the map names the firm, and whether the other volume does. Pressing Y inside a room keeps you at the same door in the other year, or puts you on the pavement outside if nobody was there. Some firms have no door on the map at all: 336 people work for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and its yards are past the south edge.
Walking along a block records what was on the screen: how many doors, how many with nobody about, and how many sign boards. These figures are rounded the way somebody walking past would round them, and they cover ground nobody can tell you about, since a block where nobody lives has nobody to ask. They can also be checked: walk a block end to end, then have somebody count it for you, and the report says how often your glance fell within its own rounding. What you see cannot tell an empty lot from a house where nobody answered, so on that point the report relies on what people told you. What you have seen is kept separately for each year, and the report draws it as a map rather than a percentage.
N opens the notebook, which keeps what people have told you. Asking somebody about their block gives a count of every door on it, and asking about the year before gives that count in both volumes, so ten such answers cover ten whole blocks. The notebook shows how many of the 291 blocks you have and compares them with the whole district, so you can see whether the blocks you walked are typical of Calgary. It also sets the two city-wide summaries side by side, 1912/city/calgary and 1913/city/calgary. These are the vaguest tier, contain no names, and are the only scope a stranger's question reaches, and a short note on what changed between the years is written from them alone.
D opens the report you are writing, as a traveller sent back to one town eleven months apart. It sets down what has been established and also what has not. Every figure in it is a count, and the paragraph Claude writes at the end only describes numbers already on the page. The last section says how few of the 291 blocks have been described, and that an absence can mean an empty house, a missed occupant or a line the scan could not read.
Residents never quote exact census figures. Up to nine they give the number, and above that they round more coarsely as it grows - about twenty on the block, and we lost five or six - using more than only where they rounded down. The report adds up what was actually said and carries the margin, writing within 1 where a change is smaller than its own margin, while the notebook keeps the exact figures.
Every fact carries three dates. Valid from is the canvass month the volume states, and lasts until the next canvass supersedes it. Published is the date under the publishers' preface, such as November 5 for the October 1912 canvass. Learned is the moment on your own walk when you were told it. In the report, ← and → show it as it stood at any earlier point in your walk, with its sums, margins and gaps as they were then. I opens a short page on the controls and on what the words on the screen mean.
The doors you have called at, the blocks counted, the year you are in and where you are standing are saved in the browser as you go, and the town picks up where you left it. The town is rebuilt from the scans from time to time, so a saved walk is checked against the current volumes when it loads, and the notebook says how many people no longer match. Start a new walk asks twice before clearing anything, and resets the year, your position and the horse as well as the notebook. Adding ?new to the address always opens a clean walk, which is useful for a demonstration.
The layout comes from the addresses. Calgary house numbers encode the block, odd numbers are on the south side of each avenue and even numbers on the north, and the numbers climb outward from Centre Street in both directions, so walking east on an avenue west of Centre they count down. The street directory prints each cross street as it walks an avenue, so where it prints none between two, no street crossed there: Third Street stops at Ninth Avenue, and Thirteenth Street at Twelfth. This is why eleven block faces are double length or more. A street recorded crossing the avenues either side of one is drawn crossing that one too, which accounts for 29 crossings.
The directory gives no lot sizes, so each lot is as wide as the number of people living at it. Where a household is too big for its own yard, such as the 20 people at 335 Eleventh Avenue West or the 24 at 228 Twelfth, the rest stand in the back lane. The 300 block of Eleventh Avenue West holds 116 people at 17 doors.
The screen shows 26 by 19 tiles. The Bow River runs along the top of the map. The volume records nothing about the river itself, so the shingle bank, the shallows and the gravel bars are placed for the period, and the channel beyond them cannot be crossed. The two bridges are recorded, because the street directory prints Langevin Bridge here and Elbow River Bridge here the same way it prints a street crossing.
The Canadian Pacific right of way runs between Ninth and Tenth Avenue, with a level crossing at every street. The line and the crossings are recorded, and the train is placed for the period; from the saddle you can catch it and ride in the open stock car. The CPR depot is recorded too, since the directory's walk south along Centre Street prints Ninth Avenue intersects / C P R Depot / Tenth Avenue intersects. The Grand Trunk Pacific depot stands past the last block in the east. The west edge is a board and a line of poles at Seventeenth Street West. Past it, 22 doors in 1912 and 31 in 1913 run out to the 2200 block, which would take a fifth more map for 53 people.
Mewata Park is on Ninth Avenue West between Ninth and Eleventh Street, where the volume places it in the parks list, the fire alarm boxes and the corner of its school. Neither volume has a single door on the 1000 block of Ninth Avenue West, so the park is drawn there as open ground. The sandstone armoury was not built until 1918.
Each volume also prints civic lists, which add 82 named blocks, halls and apartment buildings, 16 churches, 3 schools with their corners and principals, and 45 of the fire department's 142 Gamewell alarm boxes on the corners listed. Named buildings are drawn in sandstone. Six houses have somebody lodging at the rear - Henry Seal, gardener, r rear 707 13th Av W - and those yards are planted, since a gardener is the only sign the directory gives that a lot had grounds. 707 Thirteenth Avenue West is Lougheed House.
The street directory adds 512 named premises at 402 addresses in 1912 and 563 at 446 in 1913, including the Elk Livery Stables, the Calgary Aerated Water Company, the Columbia Private Hospital, the Georgian Court Apartments, Wing Chong Lung & Company and a Hupmobile garage. It also marks vacancies outright: 99 in 1912 and 147 in 1913.
People are dressed by their trade. In 1913 there are 1,830 clerks, salesmen and partners in bowlers and white collars, 305 railwaymen in peaked caps, 14 constables in custodian helmets, 123 smiths and curriers in leather aprons, 286 in the white aprons of the kitchens and wards, and 145 widows in mourning. The back lanes follow the households: an address with a trade that meant keeping a horse has a stable and a horse in the lane (252 stables and 245 horses in 1912, 269 and 265 in 1913), the building trades have their wood and coal, and crowded addresses have a privy.
Every name is printed as the book gives it. 275 entries in 1912 and 33 in 1913 have a dash where the forename should be, and 90 more give only an address at the rear of a building - McIntyre - r 937 13th Ave W - so those people appear under their surname alone. Names are never reordered, and middle initials are kept. Nothing is corrected either: where a commoner spelling of a surname is one letter away, the record view offers it as a possible reading, because English surnames are close enough that an automatic correction would turn Rose into Ross and Cooke into Cook. Residents only ever say what the canvasser wrote down.
The clock runs by itself, and T moves it on a few hours. The directory records no times, so the hours are placed for the period, but who moves is recorded: 3,412 of the 7,499 people drawn have an employer, so they leave their doors at eight and come back at five, and anybody still at home at noon has a blank occupation column. Daylight follows the canvass month at Calgary's 51 degrees north: October 1912 runs from 7.9 to 18.9 hours and September 1913 from 7.1 to 20.0, so switching year in the evening can change the light. After dusk a window is lit only where somebody is recorded at the door, so a dark house at night is one where the canvasser found nobody. Chimney smoke follows the same rule at every hour. Shop windows are lit only in the evening, and rooms indoors are always lit.
L switches the town into German or French: the conversation, the topic words and the panels, but never a name, an employer or a street, because a German speaker in 1913 Calgary still said Canadian Pacific Railway and Eighth Avenue West. The sixty commonest trades are translated and the rest are quoted as printed. The volume itself prints the name of the Deutsche Baptisten Kirche in German.
The opening is four cards in the style of the Ultima intros, and The opening under the screen plays it again. The walk starts in 1912, so you learn the boom year first and then meet the volume that revises it.
The music is off until you press M. In the street it plays eight guitar pieces by Mauro Giuliani, published in Vienna between 1812 and 1815: the six Études and No. 10 of Op. 1, and the first of Le Papillon, Op. 50. Étude 3 plays first and the rest are shuffled. The page plays the notes itself, so nothing is downloaded. The notes come from the Mutopia Project: the Études typeset by Laurent Ducos (CC BY-SA 3.0), No. 10 by Glen Larsen (CC BY-SA 4.0), and Le Papillon by Stephen Rhen (CC BY 3.0), from mutopiaproject.org. The music is placed for the period: the volumes list 31 music teachers, tuners, dealers and musicians in 1912 and 24 in 1913, which shows that the town had music but not what it played.
On the train it plays Scott Joplin's rags, which were in print and selling while these volumes were canvassed. Wall Street Rag comes first: Joplin wrote it in 1909 after the panic of 1907 and headed its four strains for a crash and a recovery. Maple Leaf Rag (1899), Pineapple Rag (1908) and The Entertainer (1902) follow in random order.