Stories

The participants, all seniors of South Asian descent from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, first came together in 2014 as part of a literary storytelling circle. It was an idea cooked up by the MWSSA’s executive director, Sofia Yaqub, and Creative Age Society. Both wanted to showcase the incredible talent, life stories, and hard-won experiences of these individuals who have made Edmonton home.

We heard from attendees that the drumming, singing and dancing made City Hall feel open and accessible in a different way from before, that it felt like a historic occasion.

“When the dust settled and I crawled out, there’s a little fellow on a farm tractor who turned out to be a Scotsman. We used his phone and he hands me this glass that’s pretty much pure rye. ‘Get this into you,’ he said with his burr, ‘and I’ll get you another!’” Then when they walked back to the scene of the crash, the Scotsman said, “We better get this one out of here, there might be another one coming along!”

I certainly didn’t expect to have everything tie up neatly at the end the project, but it is sad and frustrating not to be able to deliver answers quickly to the people who contact me.

The Charles Camsell Indian Hospital operated in Edmonton roughly between 1946 and 1967, when the existing building was torn down and replaced with a new provincially-run general hospital. After that facility was shut down in 1996 and remained vacant, the empty building got a reputation for being haunted.

There are certainly “righter” and “wronger” answers, I believe, in the context of what is appropriate for the city’s vision of itself. To gauge this “rightness” (as opposed to gut-feeling “righteousness”) we have to ask ourselves: What kind of community do we want to create? What do we want our legacy to be?

They would come in groups of girls and guys, dressed in blue jeans, ready to spend their hard-earned money to dance to the new Rock & Roll. It was the late 1960s and garage bands were popping up all over Edmonton trying to be the next Beatles or Beach Boys. The Rainbow Ballroom on the south side of Whyte Avenue at 108th Street was the epicentre of this music scene.

Look at any corner of history and you’ll find tall tales and small embellishments. This is especially true of aviation, one of the only places where Canadians want their heroes to be larger-than life, to have a little swagger.