Blow, Dr. Thomas Henry
• 2104 - 8th Street SW
• Built:1912
• 1862-1932
Thomas Henry Blow was born in South Mountain, Ontario in 1862. After graduating in medicine from McGill University in 1885 he worked in Denver and later pursued post-graduate work in London, England. Blow became Calgary’s first eye, ear, nose and throat specialist when he moved to the city in 1903.
In addition to his extensive medical practice, Blow sat as a Conservative member of Alberta’s Legislative Assembly from 1913 to 1923. Privately he supported the initiative to establish a university in Calgary by serving on the first Board of Governors and donating $40,000. After the provincial government denied degree-granting status for the third time in 1915, the project was abandoned. Blow was instrumental in having a tuberculosis hospital and the Provincial Institute of Technology (now the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) located in Calgary.
Blow invested heavily in Calgary real estate, buying downtown property and building office blocks including the Blow Building (1908) and the Blow warehouse (1912). In 1912 he built his mansion in Mount Royal.
Blow married Ida J. Mulholland in 1895 and the couple had four children. Daughter, Marion Irene, married Senator James Lougheed’s son Douglas.
Blow died in Vancouver in 1932.
Calgary Public Library, Central Library, Local History Room
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