Firm: Rule Wynn and Rule

Address: site of Baycrest Court SW

Date of final plans: 1962

Status: demolished circa 1990

Benton MacKid built this country house the year he remarried, following his first wife's death in 1959. The house stood on what might be the most impressive lot in greater Calgary. It was on a high point on the south bank of the Glenmore Reservoir and looked west with an unobstructed view over the Weaselhead to the mountains. The house itself was an elongated split level that was 126 feet overall in length. The bedroom wing, at the south, had three rooms on the upper floor and three in the lower floor. The foyer on the main floor led to a living room at the back that looked west. The north wing held the dining room, kitchen, and utility room. The basement contained a rumpus room and gun room.

MacKid was an insurance man who worked for Reed, Shaw & McNaught, which had its offices on the third floor of Elveden House. Thus, for a time, Mr MacKid spent most of his life in buildings designed by Rule Wynn and Rule. I have no idea whether he had a black Continental, but it seems like the sort of car a director of a Bay Street company who owned a country house should own.

The house was demolished sometime in the early 1990s to make way for the final phase of the Bayview neighbourhood.