a PHoto eSSaY bY GeorGe WebberLoCKInG DoWn tHe

CeCiLAT THE START OF THE NEW YEAR, GEORGE WEBBER KNOCKED

ON THE DOOR OF CALGARY’S MOST NOTORIOUS DOWNTOWN

HOTEL, COMPELLED TO LEARN THE STORIES OF ITS RESIDENTS

AND ITS ROOMS. BY 1 P.M. ON FEB. 13, EVERYONE HAD PACKED

UP AND LEFT. THESE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE ALL THAT REMAIN.

TWENTY-THREE

e waited until it was almost too late. Like most of us, he was scared of the place. He’d drive by and see all the ug-liness taking place in the parking lot:

fist fights, negotiations for sex and drugs. It wasn’t until the City of Calgary closed down the bar, leaving just the hotel and its 59 rooms in opera-tion, that the Cecil began to feel safer and more approachable for George Webber. He had photo-graphed the final residents of the King Edward Hotel in 2005, then documented the last days of the St. Louis in 2007. But he had always felt safe in the Eddy and the Louie. They operated accord-ing to a code he could understand, whereas the Cecil seemed mad, unpredictable.

But that chaos, he says, only made him hungri-er to get inside the city’s dark inner-city hotel. Web-ber has devoted his career to documenting what he describes as “this postage-stamp-sized piece of ma-terial—rich and inexhaustible—within a hundred miles of where I live.” The Cecil is an irresistible part of his town, his history. “I longed to savour its rough beauty, to consider it, to lift it up, to hold it fast,” he says. At the start of 2009, once the rough trade moved on, Webber knew the time had come and knocked on the Cecil’s door.

He was politely, but forcefully, told to go away. But he kept coming back, listening, observing, re-specting the people and their spaces. One of the residents, Barb Kari, had seen his photo essays on the King Edward and the St. Louis in Swerve. Web-ber spoke with her, photographed her. He returned, this time to give her a print of her portrait, and she was able to vouch for his trustworthiness.

And when the Cecil’s lockdown came, Webber arrived at 10 a.m., just as the final residents were packing up. When you look at their portraits, imag-ine yourself in their places, leaving your home for an even harder unknown. Would you be willing to let someone photograph you at that moment of loss? By noon, everyone was gone. Webber moved quickly from room to room, knowing that he had fallen into the one sliver in the Cecil’s 97-year his-tory when all the doors were wide open. An hour later, those doors closed for good.

“By the grace of God, it was me or nobody,” Webber says. “Every one of those photographs could have been taken by anybody, but it was get-ting in there, being there between 10 and 1 p.m. on Friday the 13th—that was the blessing.” The results are his gifts of rough beauty to us.

NEW YEAR’ DAY 2009: HARLEY SHANKS The Cecil’s front-desk man at the start of the hotel’s last year. “There was a lot going on during the final months,” Webber says. “There were people trying to book rooms so that they could get in there and take pictures.” Shanks knew not to let them in. He eventually knew enough about Webber to grant him access.

H

JAN. 1, 2009 At 6:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day, I arrive at the Cecil and park nearby. It’s snowy, foggy and pitch dark.

I walk through the entrance and meet front-desk man Harley Shanks. He is bearded, baseball-capped, soft-spoken and friendly. He moves around behind the front-entrance cage on crutches to take the weight off a recently injured leg. He tells me that all the rooms are to be vacated by Friday, Feb. 13 and that the City of Calgary will be taking possession of the building two weeks later, on Feb. 27.

Harley gives me the contact information for owner Sam Silberman, telling me I’ll have to speak with him before I can take any photographs inside.

JAN. 2 TO 17, 2009 I repeatedly call Silberman, but am unable to make contact.

JAN. 18, 2009 Harley takes pity on me, cuts me some slack and un-locks the door leading to the upstairs rooms at the Cecil. I start to work.

Walking up to the first floor, I meet “F”, a former metal worker/welder. He is cleaning up the room he had rented the night before. It bears the signs of an argument and altercation with his girlfriend. A bouquet of red roses lies crushed and scattered on the floor.

“F” cleaned and swept the room meticulously, even going under the bed—he likes to leave his room neat. When he is done, he rewards himself by guz-zling down a litre of orange juice. As he leaves the now tidy room he shakes my hand, telling me that he doesn’t know where he will sleep tonight.

I go up to the second floor, where I meet Barb Kari and Rob Johnston, who reside in a jam-packed Room 222. Both are native Calgarians. Barb worked in the Cecil’s bar for four years and has been a resident in the hotel for that same period. She is scheduled to be receiving EI benefits shortly. Rob works mainly in construction.

The rent on their tiny room is $55 a day, or around $1,600 a month. On the south wall is a poster of a Shar-Pei with the words, “Give your worries to God, Do not be anxious about anything, But in ev-erything, by prayer and petition with Thanksgiving present your request to God” Phillipians 4:6.

JAN. 19 TO FEB. 12, 2009I photograph various people and spaces at the Cecil.

(ABOVE) FEB. 1 : WAYNE ANDERSON The last person Webber saw leaving the Cecil, Anderson carefully boxed up his TV and DVD player and a collection of DVDs (many of them animated Disney movies) and phoned for a cab to take him and his buddy Dave to their new home. “Wayne didn’t say where that new home might be,” Webber says. “I’m not sure if he knew.”

(RIGHT) JAN. 18: “F” He had recently been discharged from prison after serving time for armed robbery. He told Webber that a work-related injury, coupled with the death of his mother a number of years ago, led him into drug addiction and, ultimately, a life on the street.

FROM GEORGE WEBBER’S SHOOTING NOTES

(LEFT) JAN. 18: ROB JOHNSTON + BARB KARI The day Webber got into the Cecil, the first person he approached was Kari. “I know your work,” she said. “I’ve seen it in the Herald.” Webber thus had credibility with her, and she took him around the hotel, saying, “You can trust this guy.” “If it weren’t for the King Edward and St. Louis stories,” Webber says, “the Cecil would have been much more difficult.”

(TOP) FEB. 13 : ALLISON BEGGS + DANIEL SHAW Shaw has published some short stories and is looking forward to having a computer and a quiet place in his “new” apartment where he can return to his writing. A friend of Begg’s says he should be a model. Shaw tells Webber he got his good looks from hard work and his mother’s home cooking.

(ABOVE) FEB. 13 : MIKE LAMBERT He has worked off and on at the Cecil for 14 years and tells Webber he has found a new home at the Town & Country Motor Inn.

FEB. 13, 2009Faint blowing snow obscures the morning sun when I arrive shortly after 10 a.m. Harley is at the front desk. Over his shoulder is a battered, navy-blue Bank of Montreal calendar that reads Friday, February 13—the Cecil’s last day.

I meet and photograph Cecil housekeeper Allison Beggs and her boyfriend, Daniel Shaw, as they com-plete the final cleanup and collect empties. Allison used to work at the Regis Hotel. Daniel is originally from the Maritimes, where he worked as a trades-man and fisherman. They have been a couple for about four months and have found new accommo-dations in Haysboro near Heritage Station, not far from my old high school, Bishop Grandin.

Bryce, a man I had met several weeks ago, sits in his room smoking until just before the noon dead-line. He gathers up two knapsacks containing his clothes. Everything else—microwave, radio, TV, pin-up calendar, books and magazines—is left be-hind. He offers me a shiny black coffee cup that he’d recently received, shakes my hand, wishes me luck and descends the staircase.

I photograph the now-empty rooms. Many bear the scars of hard living, but one is immaculate, with a recent coat of white paint. It has been the home of an elderly Asian man for 14 years. He carries three large plastic shopping bags down the stairs, one at a time. He ascends and descends the stairs with la-boured breath until all the bags are removed.

Mike Lambert, who has been working at the Cecil for many years, tells me that the man is a mem-ber of a wealthy family with substantial real-estate holdings in the city. His family supplies him with a modest budget for rent and food, but beyond that, they want nothing to do with him. Mike speculates that he will be sleeping at the Calgary Drop-In Centre tonight. A little later, I see the man standing just outside the front door of the Cecil. I approach and try to speak with him. He looks startled, casting his eyes down and away.

I finally meet Sam Silberman. He and a small group of employees and residents are sitting in the now-abandoned bar commiserating. Sam confirms that the city will be taking over the Cecil on Feb. 27. Harley will stay around until then to watch over the building and help with salvaging anything worth saving. At the end of the month, Harley will move out to the coast, where he will finally get his leg operated on and move in with his daughter while he recovers. S