A photo of an Tom Daniels, one of the ironworkers featured in Alvin Finkel's story Waltzing with the Angels. Here he is an older man with glasses, sitting in an office.

Labour History

Want to learn about what it was like to build one of Edmonton’s skyscrapers without a safety harness, or the work it took to rebuild a family after a tragic run-in with scarlet fever?

This collection features stories like these about the history of labour in Edmonton. Our writers will be exploring the work that Edmontonians have done in television, construction, making food, and much more.

A group of workers standing outside the A-Channel headquarters, holding a sign that says "Scab TV"

The Labour Dispute Will Be Televised

John Vandenbeld

An inside look at the 2003-2004 strike at A-Channel Edmonton. “The strike dragged on through the fall and into the winter,” writes John Vandenbeld. “I both wanted it to end and feared its conclusion, knowing that I’d have to work with these people again.”

A black and white photograph of a middle-aged woman shown in profile from the shoulders up. She wears a v-cut black top with a long white pearl necklace and her hair is pulled back into a low bun.

Maud Bowman: The leader who kickstarted the Art Gallery of Alberta

Danielle Siemens

In the early 1920s, a resolute woman named Maud Bowman set out to start the Edmonton Museum of Arts – today’s Art Gallery of Alberta. Bowman was a somewhat unconventional model of a female museum leader. Her work is even more remarkable given the sexism she faced.

A daguerrotype of an older woman, a boy, and a young man.

Lessons of loss and perseverance from Jane Klyne McDonald

Catherine C. Cole

During the early days of the Covid pandemic, I thought of my Métis great-great-great-grandmother, and the loss of three of her young children to scarlet fever in Edmonton in May 1845.

A photo of an Tom Daniels, one of the ironworkers featured in Alvin Finkel's story Waltzing with the Angels. Here he is an older man with glasses, sitting in an office.

Waltzing With the Angels: The Metis Ironworkers Who Built Edmonton’s Downtown

Alvin Finkel

The people who did the most dangerous jobs constructing the skyscrapers in downtown Edmonton in the 1960s and 1970s were almost all Metis ironworkers. That included the CN Tower.

Teachable Moments

Bruce Cinnamon

Velva Hueston moved to Edmonton with her mother in the early 1920s, after her father died in the 1918 flu…

Imrie House: Home of Canada’s First Female Architectural Firm 

Josephine Boxwell

Imrie House is unassuming. It is an older home, modest in size, tucked away at the end of a treed…

Wong Bark Ging 黃柏振 : A History of My Father’s Market Gardens

Ging Wei Wong 黃景煒

One hundred years ago my father stepped onto Canadian soil for the first time. It wasn’t until he passed away…

Once a Teacher, Always a Teacher

Jeannette Austin-Odina

My journey towards becoming an educator started in my childhood with time spent under a mango tree at my home…

Against the Law: the 1988 Nurses’ Strike

Josephine Boxwell

“The government can make all the laws they want, but they can’t stop people from going on strike… You could…

The Last Edmonton Coal Mine: Whitemud Creek

Katherine Koller

Rambling up the steep paths of the Whitemud Creek cutbank, a view of Rainbow Valley Park appears along with the…

The Cowboys in the Sky: The Story of Edmonton’s Ironworkers

Jamie Ausmus

High above the rooftops, the iron giants balance and shimmy along beams, attaching one piece of strategically placed steel after…

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