Kelwood Drive, Part I
by Colin Campbell, with thanks to Charles Clarke
I moved to Calgary from North Vancouver in 1973. In 1975, I started working in the motorcycle industry; that lasted several decades. I purchased a home on Kelwood Drive in December of 1979. I’m the second owner of this house. The original owners were the Hildegards, who, like most of the neighbours at the time, were the original owners of their homes when Glendale started being built in 1955.
Back in the early 80s Glendale was known as the country club neighbourhood by the police department because of the very low crime rate. Even back earlier in the 60s and 70s Glendale was an extremely safe neighbourhood. Some neighbours that have lived here their whole lives have told me stories, like one about the milk chutes that just about every home had, where some households would have a spare key in them. That is almost inconceivable today.
Many years later, I discovered why I live on a street in Glendale that starts with a “K”. Most neighbourhoods built in Calgary in that time had their street names starting with the first letter of their named neighbourhood. I discovered the name Kelwood was the name of one of the home builders in Glendale, Kelwood Corporation the owner Ellis Vee Keith (1917-1985).
In 1944, Ellis built and sold his first house. Over the next several years he hired several carpenters and grew his home building company. In 1950 he formed Keith Construction; in 1953 he formed Kelwood Corporation and was largely responsible for building Glendale, Highwood, Wildwood, Kingsland, Haysboro, and Fairview. The 1960s saw Mr. Keith built two of Calgary’s most luxurious new neighbourhoods: Willow Park and Lake Bonavista. He finally retired in 1971.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Kelwood Drive home story in the next Thumper issue.
Information source: https://www.calgarymodern.com/.
Kelwood Drive home, through the years.
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