Family history

As advertised at reference 1, I have now had a go at tracking down my mother's natal house, in Calgary, in Canada.

I was once emailed a picture of the house, but that now seems to have vanished. Gmail search did, however, turn up the fact that her parents figured in Canada's 1921 Census. A fairly small number of seconds later I turn up a high quality image of the relevant page of the census enumerator's street record. The last census, it turns out, for which one can do this.

Street record

In the original, this image will take enough zooming to extract the address of my mother's father, known to me as Gordon Rendall, 1524 13th Avenue West. Also that for these purposes he was John G. W. Rendall. Also that my mother's elder sister had been born in England, which I had forgotten if I had ever known. Also that you only bothered to record the date of birth, on this part of the record anyway, in the case of foreigners, which my mother, born in 1916 was not.

Next stop gmaps, where the trouble started. Gmaps knew all about 13th Avenue Southwest, but nothing about 13th Avenue West. After some fiddling about I turned up an old map of Calgary.

Old map

I eventually decided that Calgary had originally been built to the south of a bend in the Bow River, a river which still floods from time to time, as can be seen at reference 2. So in the beginning, the roads were laid out in the north American grid fashion, south of the river. Streets running north and south, avenues running west and east. With the avenues divided into western and eastern halves, although I have yet to find the divide.

Later on, the city spread north of the river and the city fathers opted for four quadrants for the avenues: northwest, northeast, southeast and southwest, with southwest corresponding to the former west. One wonders whether the street signage contractors made a killing at this point. Were they the cousins of the relevant alderman or councillor or whatever they have in Calgary?

Possible house

Back into Street View which turns up what might be the right house, the blue one in the snap above, not so different from the house we stayed in in Ottawa, some miles to the east. The right sort of suburban street, wide by English standards, but with very few house numbers visible. Does the Street View software attempt to blot them all out as part of some privacy policy?

Quite a lot of the houses have been knocked down and replaced by small blocks of flats, on which numbers are more frequently visible. But replacement by flats not so different from what is happening in many London suburbs.

So warm, but not sure.

From our correspondent

The story now seems to be that I was one house out, with the right house being the one to the immediate left of the blue house I had selected.

Right house?

With the composite above being a snap from Street View (left) placed next to a snap (right) taken by my mother's sister in the course of a visit to her natal town around forty years ago. I couldn't get the right angle in Street View as there was a van in the way, the one visible bottom left in the previous snap. Also, there seems to be a Google join in the middle of the house.

Nevertheless, the two houses do look very similar, with the same arrangement of shingles (just about visible in both snaps), windows, doors, steps and railings. On the other hand, do we have a new roof to get it from red to grey? Paint job on the shingles to match the new roof? Primitive camera right getting the colours mixed up right? Have I have got it right this time?

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/01/fathers.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/12/true-of-false.html.