Senator Patrick Burns Memorial Rock Garden.

Senator Patrick Burns was born a penniless Ontario Irishmen who became one of Calgary’s first millionaires. He began his career as a rancher whose business rapidly expanded into a meat industry. Burns would go on to found the Calgary stampede in 1912 and was appointed a Senator in 1931. In 1900 Burns commissioned Francis Rattenbury, the person that designed the Empress Hotel and Victoria Parliament Buildings, to create his Calgary home. The home was built of sandstone quarried from the Shaganappi Quarry in the French Chateau, and Irish Castle styles finished in 1901. This sprawling mansion had 18 rooms and was ornate with carvings of gargoyles and a three-story tower. After Burns died in 1938, the house was used as a convalescent home for patients discharged from the neighbouring Colonel Belcher Hospital for Veterans. In 1956 the house was demolished to make way for an addition to the hospital, all that remains of the house today is a piece of the sandstone fence with the burns armorial shield located at the southeast corner of the block, other sandstone remnants can be found in Senator Burns Memorial Rock Garden in Riley Park. The Gardens were constructed in the 1950s with more than 20,000 pieces of flagstone from the senator’s home. Today the Burns Manor site is home to the Sheldon Chumir Health Center opened in 2008 which houses, an urgent care center, a diagnostic imaging department, and the Southern Alberta HIV Clinic. 

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