THE RED CROSS AT LOUGHEED HOUSE
1947-1979
When the Canadian Women’s Army Corps left Lougheed House in 1946, the building’s role as a place of service continued under new stewardship. The Canadian Red Cross Society leased the property from the City of Calgary in mid-1947, and purchased it the following year for $10,000, officially establishing the “Red Cross House.” The Red Cross Society would remain in residence for over three decades, until 1979.
The Red Cross connection to the house had, however, begun years earlier. Throughout the Second World War, a wartime Blood Donor Clinic had been operating in the house basement since January 1942, running simultaneously alongside the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC) military barracks upstairs. When a new laboratory was built on site in 1953, it rose on the very ground once occupied by the CWAC’s wooden hutments.
Staff at work inside the Canadian Red Cross blood donor clinic office, set up within the repurposed historic rooms of Lougheed House, ca. 1957. Glenbow Archives PA-1599-480-53
At the centre of the Red Cross years was Gertrude O’Keefe, a trained nurse who organized Calgary’s Blood Donor Service as a volunteer for twenty-three years, from 1947 to 1970. Under her direction, donors were welcomed through a dedicated clinic entrance beneath the front steps, guided through the donation rooms, and offered light refreshments upstairs in what had once been the family’s Conservatory. Her contribution was recognized with an Honorary Membership in the Canadian Red Cross Society, the title of Calgary’s Citizen of the Year in 1963, and the Order of Canada.
In adapting to these new community needs, the house’s interior spaces were reshaped once again, a domestic arrangement not unlike the one the CWAC recruits had known a decade before.
Longtime volunteer Mrs. T.L. (Gertrude) O’Keefe in front of Red Cross House, 1971. Glenbow Archive NA-2903-76