I remember the first time I stepped onto that rickety old staircase. The aged, splintered steps and rusted metal trim beckoned me towards the bottom floor of the 104-year-old Whitney Block building. Every step creaked as if to let out a whisper of past secrets with each movement I made.

I reached the bottom and continued my tour of the now storage basement for Owl Acoustic Lounge. The walls were deeply worn. There were wires hanging from every part of the ceiling, in no particular organization. That ceiling felt uncomfortably low.
“Here’s where we keep our dry storage,” said Steve Foord, the owner of the bar.
We entered a cellar-like room lined with wooden shelves. I wondered what they were originally built to hold back in 1906.
“Do you want to see the rest of the basement? It’s pretty sweet,” said Steve.
We stepped lightly, hesitantly trusting the floor beneath us. Steve led me through a winding hallway full of things not all that historic. There was an old television set, a painting set up against a wall and some dusty chairs scattered about.
I have to admit, it wasn’t the scene I was hoping for. There was something about the room that made me feel like there was no place for the present in it.
However, the unusable TV set opened my eyes to the reality that there had, in fact, been all kinds of history in this place. What still looked like 1906 to me was romantic but overlapped by 105 years of time and change.
A subtle smile crept across my cheeks and I continued on my way down the winding hallway towards what looked like an area that had been a little more untouched.  
In the back corner, I saw a dusty black coal-burning furnace, branded with the most exceptional design. It was no less than a piece of fine art.
As someone who didn’t grow up in Lethbridge, this moment held a lot of ignorant bliss.
It was a moment where my child    like mind took flight and for a minute, this furnace explained all things about history I would ever need about a coal-mining town, in a building complete with a coal-burning furnace. It sounds so simple now, but seeing it seemed so much more concrete.
I then turned to head back through the maze and up the stairs. There it was. A trap door that tried, but failed to mask the giant circular hole behind it. It was a tunnel, but it was completely caved in with chunks of broken cement and dirt.
That was more than my imagination could handle. I knew I was hooked into seeking out the stories behind the places in this quaint historic city. One that I feel doesn’t even know the preserved beauty it possesses.
Growing up in Calgary, I grew accustomed to seeing new neighborhoods, strip malls, skyscrapers and transit lines. It was as if everything was always just a new installment. To me, old meant a shanty house that was over 30 years old and seriously needed to be torn down and rebuilt. To me, living in an old house was not glamorous.
 That’s not to say that Calgary doesn’t have historic sights. Growing up in a suburban neighborhood does not allow one to be a part of those preservations.
The closest I came to history growing up came with a $20 admission into Heritage Park, an amusement park of old houses and history in which you are expected to feel like you were in the early 1900s.
People were dressed in old-style fashion and shops sold old-style food, but I never took it seriously.
It never felt organic and it definitely lost its mystery knowing that someone in that park already knows everything there is to know about each place.
I remember being more interested in trying to find clues to uncover any lies they were telling me. I wondered if those strategically placed houses were actually the real ones, or if they had been rebuilt to make me think they were.
The first time I came to Lethbridge, I was mesmerized.
For the most part, downtown was a series of quaint, old-fashioned one or two-story buildings.
Everything just seemed so low compared to the 20-story skyscrapers in downtown Calgary. It just felt…homey.
As I drove down 4 Avenue, I saw a sign for the old Paramount Theatre on top of a deserted building. My city-slicker mind immediately kicked in and thought, “Oh wow, they need to restore that theatre to its former look. That would be a hit!”
Further down I saw the giant clock tower on the post office. Again I wondered, “I wonder how much admission is for that place?” I didn’t think it would still be in full use as a post office. I thought for sure someone would be making a buck on tourism there.
Two years later, I’ve come to realize that that is just this city.
Everywhere you turn there is a house from 1905 and streets that have been there since the city was founded. Every piece of this city seems to have some rich history behind it and someone trying to piece together clues. Everyone has a ghost story, everyone has a rumor and nothing is certain.