Canada Life Assurance Building
A point of interest on the Discover Downtown Calgary GPS-guided audio walking tour.
Press play & listen to the tour audio!
Audio Transcript
If you look to your right, you’ll see a large, white, stone building on the corner of 8th Avenue Southwest and 2nd Street Southwest. This is the Canada Life Assurance Building and it’s one of the more substantial buildings in downtown Calgary! It was built between 1912 and 1913, during the city’s housing boom right before World War One.
The architects of the building, Brown and Vallance, were influenced by an architectural style that gave it a look that was sort of futuristic for the time! The building is six storeys high, but if it seems taller than that to you, that’s actually by design! Brown and Vallance decided to split the building into three different sections.
The first is the main floor shop windows, then a number of storeys for office space, and lastly a projecting cornice on the top. All of this was to give the impression that the building has more height than it really does! It’s almost like the whole building is standing on its tippy-toes!
Calgary, AB Discover Calgary
This POI is featured on the Downtown Calgary Audio Walking Tour, part of the Tripvia Tours mobile app available for Android & Apple.
All audio walking tours are self-guided and include fully narrated commentary.
Trivia Challenge
Each POI has a fun multiple choice trivia challenge you can test your skills on.
The trivia questions are separate from the commentary and completely optional.
The app keeps score for you so you can challenge your friends and family.
