The future premier on the Palace stage
Here’s one for your next Calgary trivia night. William Aberhart, who later became premier of Alberta, once broadcast from a movie theatre.
According to the Alberta Register of Historic Places entry for the Palace Theatre, he broadcast his Back to the Bible hours from the Palace stage between 1925 and 1927. Three years earlier, in 1922, the same theatre had hosted the first public exhibition of radio in Calgary, when three members of the Palace orchestra were heard over the Calgary Herald’s radio station, later CFAC.
A silent-film room that got the city used to radio
The Palace was built for silent film, and it ended up being where Calgary got comfortable with radio. Take the new technology, give it a stage and see what happens. Very Calgary.
Parks Canada keeps the official record of the Palace as a National Historic Site, so it’s worth a read before you walk past the building again. Our post on how Calgary heard its first public radio in a movie theatre tells the same story from the radio side.
Quick answers
According to the Alberta Register of Historic Places entry for the Palace Theatre, Aberhart broadcast his Back to the Bible hours from the Palace stage between 1925 and 1927. He later became premier of Alberta.
The Palace hosted the first public exhibition of radio in Calgary in 1922. Three members of the Palace orchestra were heard over the Calgary Herald’s radio station, which later became CFAC. That was three years before Aberhart’s broadcasts from the same theatre.
Parks Canada keeps the official record of the Palace as a National Historic Site. It is worth a read before you walk past the building, which was built for silent film and ended up being where Calgary got comfortable with radio.
Sources: Alberta Register of Historic Places, Parks Canada.
More from the archive: Four Halls of Fame Share One Calgary Address and The year Joni Mitchell spent in Calgary before she took off.
