Roads of Misery: Following an Afro-Indigenous Family from Oklahoma to Edmonton (And Back Again)
Part 1: Sally Atkins: Black Land / Black Gold As the train pulled into the station at North Portal, Saskatchewan,…
Author: Dr. Russell Cobb
The Last Best West: Hattie’s Place, Part 3
Disclaimer: Please note that this piece references anti-Black violence, brutality, and white supremacy. A reference to a specific act of…
The Last Black West: Oklahoma Freedmen Seek Refuge in Alberta, Part 1
Advertisements promoting the “Last Best West”—a frontier open to all pioneers—have become an ingrained part of the Canadian national mythology. Like…
The Last Black West: Oklahoma Freedmen Seek Refuge in Alberta, Part 2
Read The Last Black West: Oklahoma Freedmen Seek Refuge in Alberta, Part 1. As we noted in Part 1, early…
Edmonton: A World Class Dump, Part Three – Salvage Men, Coal Mines, and a Futuristic Weir
In the middle of the twentieth century, G. S. Woodward was one of a handful of Edmontonians who plied the…
Edmonton: A World Class Dump, Part Two – Feel the Burn: Edmonton’s Curious Love Affair with Incinerators
Perhaps the desire to burn our waste comes from a primeval desire to cover our tracks. And our smells. Incineration…
Edmonton: A World Class Dump, Part One – Grierson Dump
Waste may be as old as humanity, but the idea of trash is a relatively modern concept. In the first…
Retrofutures: Edmonton’s Omniplex – Part 1
Many recent projects—the expansion of the University of Alberta, the construction of the West Edmonton Mall, the plans for new…
Retrofutures: Edmonton’s Omniplex – Part 2
Continued from Retrofutures: Edmonton’s Omniplex – Part 1 This moment in Edmonton’s history happened to coincide with one of the…