The quick firing 12-pounder was a three-inch (76.2 mm caliber) naval gun introduced in 1894 and commonly used until the middle of the 20th century. It was employed on several warships in the Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy throughout the Second World War (1939 to 1945).
This 12-pounder naval gun was produced in Ogden Shops by the Canadian Pacific (CP) munitions department and is on loan to CP by the Naval Museum of Alberta. Originally acquired from the Maritime Command Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia, CP transported it back to the Ogden Shops in Calgary on July 2, 1993. It was restored in preparation for display at The Military Museums before transport to its current location in 2022.
Ten warships were named after Alberta cities and towns during the Second World War, including four minesweepers armed with Ogden Shops 12-pounders. This gun may have been aboard one of them.
At the commencement of the Second World War, Canadian Pacific (CP) President Edward Beatty placed the company’s full resources at the disposal of Canada and the British Empire in support of the war effort. He instructed the employees of CP: “On our readiness to meet the challenge, and, each of us, to do our duty, there hangs the fate of a nation – the destiny of future generations.”
That readiness saw two locomotive shops refitted to produce armaments. The Angus Shops in Montreal would build 1,420 Valentine tanks and other equipment to support the war effort. The Ogden Shops in Calgary were refitted at the beginning of 1941. The first gun was completed that November and shipped to the Halifax dockyards. By the end of the war, the Ogden Shops had produced over 3,000 guns and 1,650 gun mounts for use by the Royal Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy and the United States Army. With the conclusion of the Second World War in August 1945, Ogden Shops returned to maintaining locomotives. The naval gun production by Canadian Pacific remains one of the most significant Calgarian contributions to the Canadian war effort.
Just 200 meters east of this location, the Ogden Locomotive Shops (Building 7) first opened in 1913 and remained in use for locomotive maintenance until 2011.
