Oliver Bowen (December 21, 1942 – January 1, 2000) was a Canadian engineer who managed the design and construction of the first line of

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...

's light rail transit system: the

CTrain CTrain (previously branded C-Train) is a light rail rapid transit system in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Most of the network functions as a light metro, though in the free-fare zone that runs through the downtown core the Red and Blue lines oper ...

. The City of Calgary acknowledged his engineering work by naming a light rail transit (LRT) maintenance facility in his honour.

Family

Oliver Bowen was the grandson of Willis Reese Bowen and the son of Obadiah Bowen, who were among the first black settlers and civic leaders in Amber Valley. Following

Clifford Sifton Sir Clifford Sifton, (March 10, 1861 – April 17, 1929), was a Canadian lawyer and a long-time Liberal politician, best known for being Minister of the Interior under Sir Wilfrid Laurier. He was responsible for encouraging the massive amount ...

's 1910 Canadian immigration campaign to lure settlers from Southern US states as part of the

Great Migration (African American) The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of six million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1910 an ...

, many black settlers came to Alberta. The Canadian government tried to bar black people from settling in Canada and hired agents to dissuade them, but was only successful in barring future settlers.

Career

Bowen started working on Calgary's street construction crews and rose to manage the design and construction of Calgary's first LRT line. The Calgary C-Train started service May 25, 1981. In 1984 he was named the City of Calgary's Director of Transportation, a position he held until his retirement in 1998.

Honours

In 2009, the City of Calgary named its largest maintenance facility after Bowen to honour his work. The Oliver Bowen LRT Maintenance Facility (OBMF) in northeast Calgary is a $6.5 million rail facility. Bowen and his brother grew up with

Cheryl Foggo Cheryl Dawn Foggo is a Canadian author, documentary film director, screenwriter and playwright. Biography Born in Calgary, Alberta in 1956, she is descended from Black Oklahomans who settled in Maidstone, Saskatchewan in 1910. She also had ance ...

, who profiled Bowen in a documentary. In May 2014, the play ''

The Real McCoy "The real McCoy" is an idiom and metaphor used in much of the English-speaking world to mean "the real thing" or "the genuine article", e.g. "he's the real McCoy". The phrase has been the subject of numerous false etymologies. History The phr ...

'' was performed in tribute to Bowen, alongside a play by Cheryl Foggo.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bowen, Oliver Canadian people of African-American descent People from Calgary 20th-century Canadian engineers People from Amber Valley, Alberta 1942 births 2000 deaths Black Canadian scientists