Mel Hurtig: A Legacy at the Intersection of Publishing and Politics
Hurtig’s Firsts Mel Hurtig didn’t start in the book business, but once there, he fell in love. In his 1996…
Stories tagged: 1970s
Candy Cane Lane
Before Esther and Ron Matcham moved to Edmonton, the stretch of 148th Street between 92nd and 100th Avenue wasn’t much…
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’s South Asian Community
Today, Edmonton is home to more than 60,000 people of South Asian heritage. Speaking Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Bengali, Malayalam,…
There Were No Safety Nets, Part 3: Edmonton’s Italian Community, 1949 to the Present
The end of the Second World War in 1945 signalled an economic boom for Canada with primary and secondary industries…
The Cowboys in the Sky: The Story of Edmonton’s Ironworkers
High above the rooftops, the iron giants balance and shimmy along beams, attaching one piece of strategically placed steel after…
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…
Remembering the Corner Store
A bell jangles as the weathered door creaks open and the smells and memories flood back: being six years old,…
NeWest Press: A Regional Publishing Pioneer
NeWest Press may no longer be new—it will soon commemorate its 40th anniversary—but when it began in 1977, it was…
Heritage Meets History: Exploring a Family’s Past
I married into a big Edmonton family. The matriarch of the clan is Elsie Henderson (née Maksymuik), my wife’s grandmother….
Queers on Campus
Before the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969, the University of Alberta’s queer community was similar to those everywhere else in Canada:…
A Kingdom in North Edmonton: Castle Downs, 1969-1979
When I moved to Castle Downs nearly ten years ago, I saw a typical 1970s development: parks, schools, stores, churches,…