The History of
Ogden
Steam engines. Naval guns. A community built by the CPR.
The CPR opened the Ogden Shops in March 1912 — the only locomotive repair facility the railway operated between Winnipeg and Vancouver. At peak capacity, 1,400 workers repaired steam engines and rail cars in a complex that effectively built the community around it. During the Depression, shifts shrank to 10 days a month and the workforce fell to 600, but the shops never closed.
When the Second World War broke out, the Ogden Shops were retooled for naval production. By early 1941 the facility was manufacturing gun mounts for Royal Canadian Navy warships. The first gun left Calgary in November 1941, bound for Halifax dockyards. At the height of the war effort, nearly 2,500 workers filled the plant. Those Ogden-made guns were used in the Battle of the Atlantic — a fact that has no monument in the neighbourhood, but should.
Ogden’s working-class heritage gives it a character unlike any other Calgary community.
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