A doorway to a hidden past in Calgary

A building on Ogden Road in Calgary has a rare link to the history of the city’s Chinese community. But its future hangs in the balance as it finds itself in the path of the proposed Green Line transit system.

By Prajakta Dhopade August 10, 2021

For Feimo, the building is a chance to explore the history of Chinese immigrants (Photograph by Colin Way)

On a half-empty stretch of Ogden Road in Calgary stands an unassuming building, with plywood boards covering its windows and a tree obscuring much of its facade. Its boxy exterior and off-white brick walls betray neither its purpose nor its history. But the utilitarian structure is a 108-year-old vestige of the city’s railway history—and of a marginalized and mistreated immigrant population.

It was once the Hong Lee laundry, a combined washing facility and rooming house run by two Chinese immigrants named Eng Hon Quan and Eng Shon Yun. They are thought to have constructed the building in 1913, in the early days of the town’s time as a regional hub for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP). In its most recent past, the building was an apartment block.

But the future of 7044 Ogden Road now hangs in the balance, as it finds itself in the path of Calgary’s proposed Green Line transit system. As its fate inches toward it, concerned community members and historians are trying to uncover its past and make a case for why one of the last remaining pieces of the Ogden district’s heritage should be spared—if not for its physical features, then for the stories it represents.