Brief biography of Margaret Crang

Margaret Crang (1910-January 5, 1992) was a Canadian politician and a candidate for the Alberta Legislature. She served on the Edmonton city council from November 1933 to 1937.
Born in Edmonton, Alberta of Dr. Francis and Margaret Crang, she attained degrees in law and education from the University of alberta. Following in her father's footsteps, (he was a long-serving member of the Edmonton public schoolboard and an advocate of human rights and the rights of labour, the sick, the young and the poor),<ref>Monto, Tom. Protest and Progress. Three Labour Party Radicals in Early Edmonton (Rice Sheppard, Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang). Edmonton: Crang Publishing/Alhambra Books, 2012, p. 24-26</ref>she ran for a seat on the Edmonton city council as a Labour Party candidate. She was elected, becoming only the second woman on the city council, the first Edmonton-born person and the youngest ever in the city's history. <ref>Monto, Tom. Protest and Progress. Three Labour Party Radicals in Early Edmonton (Rice Sheppard, Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang). Edmonton: Crang Publishing/Alhambra Books, 2012, p. 229-31</ref>
She was re-elected at the top of the polls in the 1935 Edmonton municipal election.
In provincial by-elections in 1936 and 1937, Crang ran as a candidate for a seat in the Alberta legislature. She was not elected.
In 1936 she travelled to Spain, at the time engulfed in a civil war, and made a symbolic gesture in support  of the Republican government fighting against right-wing rebels. For this she was criticized by many Canadian newspapers.
She was not re-elected in the 1937 Edmonton municipal election.
She left Edmonton and as a lawyer pursued the rights of Hindu Indian refugees/ immigrants on the Wesst Coast. She later pursued a journalistic career but suffered from ill health. <ref>Monto, Tom. Protest and Progress. Three Labour Party Radicals in Early Edmonton (Rice Sheppard, Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang). Edmonton: Crang Publishing/Alhambra Books, 2012, p. 303-304</ref>

She died of old age in January 1992 in Vancouver.

Protest and Progress. Three Labour Party Radicals in Early Edmonton (Rice Sheppard, Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang) is available from Alhambra Books in Edmonton, Alberta and through abebooks.com.

Three of Edmonton's Labour Party Councillors Remembered in New Book

    Best remembered now for having a high school named after him, Harry Ainlay was a political activist of very strong convictions. A new book by local author Tom Monto retells the political life of this man and the times in which he lived.

Protest and Progress, Three Labour Radicals in Early Edmonton also chronicles the lives of Ainlay's political colleagues/sometime opponents human rights lawyer Margaret Crang and farmer organizer Rice Sheppard. 

 

The book covers Edmonton politics from the territorial-era 1890s to the Cold War of the late 1940s.

 

During these years, Sheppard helped found the UFA and saw it become the provincial government during the post-WWI labour/farmer turmoil that saw teachers get first formal union recognition, city workers engage in a general strike, and the radical One Big Union strive for legitimacy across Alberta. During this tumultuous period Ainlay helped establish the Alberta Teachers' Association and would go on to serve as ATA president in 1928-1929. At this time, he was teaching at Garneau School, where one of his students was Margaret Crang, a member of a politically-active family in southside Edmonton.

Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang and Rice Sheppard, although generations apart in age, served together on city council during the Great Depression, at a time when Labour controlled city hall. They fought side-by-side to keep streetcar fares low and fought for better treatment of the city's unemployed. But while on city council they drifted apart, Rice Sheppard to the Social Credit movement and Margaret Crang to a United Front coalition with Communists.

Crang played a leading role in the League Against War and Fascism and pursued legal redress for immigrants and political and religious dissidents under wartime “security” prohibitions. Her act of defiance on behalf of the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War caused editorial comment across Canada and contributed to her retirement from elected office at the age of 27.

Ainlay had a second stint on city council in the 1940s, first serving as alderman then mayor. He repeatedly pressed for improved people services, lower user fees and retention of public ownership of the city's utilities. Despite (or because of) his socialist sentiments, he was elected mayor in 1945, a post he served with much acclaim until his voluntary retirement in 1949. By then, in his 60s, he retired to B.C., only occasionally returning to visit the city he had led through the turbulent years of northern Alberta's first oil boom and to visit the high school that was named after him.

Protest and Progress, Three Labour Radicals in Early Edmonton, by Tom Monto, Edmonton: Crang Publishing, 450 pages, photos, illustrations, end-notes, appendices, index, soft cover, $25

 

Available at Alhambra Books, 10115 - 81 Avenue and through abebooks.com

Lives of Margaret Crang, Harry Ainlay and Rice Sheppard described in Protest and Progress

Protest and Progress

Three Labour Radicals in Early Edmonton

by Tom Monto

Best remembered now for having a high school named after him, Harry Ainlay was a political activist of very strong convictions. A teacher at the Garneau and Old Strathcona public schools, he was an active unionist and Labour Party man, serving on Edmonton's city council in the Dirty Thirties.

Rice Sheppard, who farmed the land that is now Avonmore, helped found the United Farmers of Alberta political movement and saw it become government of Alberta in 1921. He served on Edmonton city council as a Labour man and helped found the Co-operative Commonwealth party during the Depression.

Margaret Crang, a newly-trained lawyer, was barely more than a teenager when she was elected to city council to serve alongside Ainlay and Sheppard, when Labour dominated City Hall. They fought hard for proper treatment of the poor, the young and old, the sick and frail. They succeeded in keeping streetcar fares low and fought for better treatment of the unemployed.

But while on city council they drifted apart, Rice Sheppard to the radical reformist Social Credit movement led by William Aberhart, and Margaret Crang to a United Front coalition with Communists. Their political activities continued into the 1940s, but they were overshadowed by the successes of Harry Ainlay who became mayor as Edmonton finally emerged from the dark days of the world war.

Protest and Progress chronicles their lives on the streets of Strathcona, amidst the historic buildings that still stand today.

Protest and Progress (450 pages, photos, illustrations, end-notes, appendices, index) is available for $25 from Alhambra Books, 10115-81 Avenue, or through abebooks.com

Into the West, Sun Cairn Hill, Metis

I am hoping many of you caught the tv program last night Into the West,  interwining  the lives First Nations medicine-man/seer Loved by the Buffalo and "mountain-man" Jacob Wheeler.

The juxtaposing of the Lakota's sacred circle (medicine wheel) and the wooden wheels of the white man's civilization is cool.

I was reminded of the book Canada's Stonehenge, Astounding Archaeological Discoveries in Canada, England and Wales by Edmonton professor Gordon R. Freeman, in which he proves that the Stonehenge and otehr archaeological remains in the United Kingdom and Sun Temple,  sacred circles "sun cairn rings" of the Northern Prairies of Canada are similarly arrayed to the equinoital days and the solstices, as if part of a "one-world" civilization.

He examines a sacred circle near Edmonton (30 km east of the almost-abandoned small hamlet of Majorville) and preceives that it was built 5000 years ago as a solar calendar (and is still revered by the local Siksika).

In the show, we also see some of the creation of part of the Metis race, the offspring of white male adventurers and Native women, prominent still in Canada (but less well-known in the U.S.). Metis are a "invisible minority" as their coloration, to speak racially, is not distinguishable from the founding races. One of the best-known mixed-blood Albertan, Peter Lougheed, did not make a big thing of his Native-hood, for example. His short-ness was a characteristic of his Inuit ancestry.

The Metis's survival in Canada has been recently affirmed by a court ruling that the Canadian government did not abide by its obligations that it had made when it acquired rule over the North-West. The British government that controlled the Hudson's Bay Company that had economic monopoly over the region forced the Canadian government to negotiate and make a bargain with the inhabitants of Manitoba, the metis who had rights of occupancy there. The govnment promised more than 1 M acres for the children of the metis there, but never followed through and delivered. The court found this was not a dead issue (despite the 150 year lapse) as the Metis still existed, and the Canada government still existed so the bargain was still enforceable.

Laurent Garneau, a Metis belonging to a line of ancestors dating back to1700s Quebec, fought alongside Riel in his 1870 rebellion. When the bargain was not upheld, and rampant anti-Metis racism made his family's life in manitoba unbearable, he and many others fled Manitoba and moved to the Saskatchewan River country in Saskatchewan and Alberta, Garneau settling in what is now southside Edmonton.

Edmonton was already an important centre of Metis in the western Prairies. Although only so many lived at any one time around Fort Edmonton, it is said that almost every Metis family on the western Prairies  lived near the fort at one time or another.

Socialism and A Rise of the Far Right, the NDP, Historical Repression and Canada's Exodus

Socialism and and A Rise of the Far Right, the NDP, Historical Repression and Canada's Exodus

Talk of the NDP debating its constitutional clauses of Socialism led me to write this blog.
First off, if the NDP is not socialist, is not in favour of wide-ranging social and econimc reform, how is it different from the Liberals, other than a matter of party history and present personalities. Who would join the party then decide to change it from what it is. Why not just join the Liberals?
Some may want to drop the NDP's socialist raison d'etre, in order to facilitate a coalition with the Liberals, while others say that the two parties are so close together why not make a coalition. So both processes feed off each other to the harm of the NDP's future and past. (see my blog on "The Risks of Political Co-operation Historically")
Secondly, the question of whether or not a socialist, or more socialist, economy and society is a worthwhile goal for the NDP.
one internet comment-or wrote that the problem with socialism is it is a system based on other people's money. To which I responded:
the problem with Capitalism is eventually working people realize that the rich got rich off their backs. Private control of the economy means that workers are paid less than they produce while working and very little when they are sick, disabled, or too old to work, and farmers get as little as agri-businesses decide to pay them, meanwhile much of the wealth produced by ther workers and farmers go to banks, the owners of large corporations, their shareholders, and private owners of workplaces, many of which are idlers, or at least unproductive in their activities, such as golfing
Socialism does work to the benefit of the public at large, just look at public roads. People use them as public utilities, they derive much convenience from them, while governments pay for them out of public funds.
That is one type of socialism.
Another type is co-operatives, common even in the supposedly pro-capitalist oil-heavy province of Alberta. The UFA co-op farm supply stores and the Co-op Federated grocery stores are common sights in the Alberta countryside, well patronized by rural residents.
Church organizations, benevolent associations (Kinsmen Clubs, etc.), the member-owned Alberta Motor Association, the non-profit Canada Welding Bureau and the Canadian Concrete Assocation that oversee the construction codes for their respective industries, credit unions, city, provincial and federal government services, such as libraries, health clinics, public schools, are also valuable socialist forms of activity.
Competition and selfishness do not have to be, and are not, the hallmark of all types of operation that provide goods and services.
But when people realize this, the powers-that-be have the choice of peaceably accepting the demand for change in favour of the people or fighting it with means foul and fair. Foul means would include putting unionists and political activists into prisons or concentration camps (such as Hitler's Fascists did in their initial time in power to weaken the forces against them); other means include undercutting socialist organizations and pushing them to change to become only mildly reformist groups, with political office, public prestige, large salaries as consultants, and ex-officio seats on boards of corporations, as the carrots for this change.
The moves to protect the SYSTEM increase obviously when the attacks are the strongest. And so we see that now when many people are holding "business leaders" up to disgust for the selfish behavoiur and socialist reform is being increasingly discussed - not in the mass media but on the internet - that the powers-that-be are pushing harder to weaken those who are pushing for socialist reforms.

The rise of the far-right takes little more than good people doing nothing, that is to say, for moderates (people unwilling to make critical decisions in the people's favour when needed) to rise to power. The term in the brackets may seem strong - but think that Premier Ralph Klein was recently described as a moderate by a pundit who was pursuing the theses that Canadians preferred moderates in power. Klein was (reputedly) popular so therefore must have been moderate. Klein engaged in radical changes to how government operated in Alberta and could only be described as a moderate as form of whitewash, anything pro-people is radical, anything pro-business is moderate.
For instance, Pierre Van Paasen,  in Days of Our Years, says Hitler came to power in 1933 due to the lack of strength among the leadership of "the powerfully organized bodies of the working class." The military would have acted against Hitler's 100,000 followers that crowded into Berlin if the moderates in government had called on them - and the moderates would have acted if they had the approval, or at least the ear, of the president von Hindenburg. But he was held out of reach by corrupt landed gentry in the government, and the socialists dithered, arguing late into the night, standing stubbornly against calls by Brandlerists and Troskyites for a "general strike, the immediate mobilization of a united Red fighting front, the creation of a workers' militia, demonstrations, barricades, anything!."

Van Paasen, in Germany  at the time as a foreign correspondent, hoped for a resistance to crystalize in the south and east, in Saxony and in Bavaria, where the Spartacist movement had had one of its strongholds, the Bavarian Soviet Socialist Republic (April-May 1919). He went to Munich to observe events. There caught by police for aiding a leftist to flee to Switzerland, he was tortured and thrown into the Dachau concentration camp. After ten days of this hell, he was released, due to pressure by Press colleagues, and deported. (Van Paasen, Days of Our Years, p. 204-206) (He also mentions an uprising in a working class neighbourhood of Berlin in 1933 that was not supported by the moderates in government, and was put down.)
 

It is not impossible for the far-right to come to power through a "moderate" NDP or a newly-made-politically-attractive NDP-Liberal coalition. There are great incentives for a government, even a staunchly radical one, to tone down its rhetoric once in office. The dictates of assuaging the pride of those who own the factories, those who have highly paid skills that the society depends on (such as doctors), of balancing books and being fiscally responsible with public funds, the need to be free of accusations of corruption, real or rumourd, - it is easier to disprove a rumour of personal corruption if the government is respected for doing a good job in other ways, The government is pushed to favour the needs of highly-visible taxpayers over the needs of unseen public employees who work in the sewage plants, the basements of hospitals, the garbage dumps, etc.
 

If a government came to office, with all these pressures and felt the need to favour the upper middle class for re-election, a goal it wuold conceivably hold above all else including radical reform for citizens, it could easily unleash police hell on peaceful protestors, on the radical socialists within its party, on Natives rightly digusted at their life-situation, participating in the Idle No More movement.

 

There is a very slim line between the behaviour of such a government and that of a Fascist regime. it is said that Fascism is Capitalism plus murder, but I would clarify that - Fascism is monopoly capitalism grown strong and overbearing and using government tax functions to help itself. Usually this evokes a counter-movement, and at this friction point a Fascist govenment engages in murder and other repressive measures. I say usually because the Canadian people seem quite tolerant of undemocratic behaviour by their governments. In Alberta we have recently seen the provincial government extend the term of civic government from three years to four without holding a referendum by the people on the issue. (see my letter to the editor, in the Alberta Views magazine March, 2013) 

 

How could people stand for this weakening of their democratic control of their elected representatives? However they did, and a Fascist government would appreciate that tolerance and find it very easy to do whatever Big Business required at the expense of the people. So ther ewoud be no friction point and thus no murder or other repression. (The people would self-repress, to coin a phrase, if no one else has invented it yet.)

 

It is not impossible for Canada to slip into Fascism, despite its 150-plus year history of more-or-less respesentative democracy.

Chile, Argentina, Lebanon, etc. all were long-time bastions for democracy and moderation, until the fit hit the shan. It just takes a "moderate" (moderately-pro-business) government to be squeezed under pressure, to be put in a crisis situation, for the authoritarian, anti-people elements lying dormant in the existing political-social system to push the government to take extra-ordinary measures that deprive citizens of their rights, their livelihoods, even their lives.

In the 191-14 crash, and in the post-war recession of 1919-1920 and the "Great Depression" of the 1930s when the Canadian economy was repeatedly tumbling or collapsing, it was not unknown for radicals to die:

The 1914 death of IWW-supporter Hiram Johnson of Lac La Biche (see Schultze's work on the IWWs of Edmonton and Calgary)
the shooting of Ginger Goodwin

the 1932 death of Farmers' Unity League activist Carl Axelson,

those murdered by police at Estevan,

those who died in 1935 in the final suppression of the On-To-Ottawa Trek,
etc. etc.

 

As well, kidnapping and assault and battery on activists in those years such as:
tar-and feathering of OBU organizers at Drumheller in the early 1920s (noted in my book Protest and Progress),
repression of protests, demonstrations, G10,  etc.

Another example:

OBU activist P.N. Christophers (later Alberta MLA) was beaten up  at Estevan (a year before the police shootings there). he was then  kidnapped and driven across the U.S. border because the thugs thought he must have been from the U.S., apparently because no correct-thinking Canadian could wish to upset the apple cart.

(Now of course, Canadians, by reputation if not often in fact, are thought to be more progressive than their U.S. counterparts. But the evidence of  the U.S.'s drone missile attacks set against the high rate of Native incarceration in Canada, the little regard for third parties in the U.S. set against Canada's un-elected Senate, etc. makes an exact comparison difficult to master.
 

It is fair to say that neither country is a workers' paradise. Ernest Brown, one of Edmonton's most radical thinkers and writers (albeit unpublished), pointed out that if there had been built a wall around Canada's population in 1867 and no immigration or emigration allowed, through natural increase, Canada would have more people that it had with fairly open immigration. In the 1920s when he made the calculation Canada would have had  more than 10 million, a number it did not achieve until the 1930s.

How did this happen?

because Canada kept losing people to other places, most predominantly to the U.S. Sure, the Canadian weather, sure, the U.S. glitz and glamour, But Brown said, it was mostly the pro-monopoly, pro-Big Business, the anti-people policies of the government that drove Canadians away.

Just something to think about.

Thanks for reading.

 

the mathematics:

3.5 million in 1867

2 percent natural increase (compounded) means doubling each 36 years

so 7 million in 1903 (in actuality, 5.5 M)

14 million in 1939  (in actuality, 11.5 M)

28 million in 1975  (in actuality, 22 M)

56 million in 2011  (in actuality, around 30 million)

 

The Risks of Political Co-operation Historically

The Risk of Political Co-operation Historically

History over the last century gives us examples of the folly or opportunity of political co-operation between the NDP-Labour and Liberals.

In 1919, workers and farmers were angry about their economic situation - high prices, low wages, low prices for agricultural products (food), the lies of the federal Conservative/Union government and the party machine politics of the provincial Liberal government in Alberta. The general strikes in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, etc. were the most prominent signs of this anger. The creation of the Dominion Labour Party and other grassroots organizations of discontent were also signs of "Labour's revolt."
Hoping to undercut this opposition movement, the governing Liberal Party adopted a platform similar to the UFA demands, promising to implement it if elected. (Liberals, many would later say, act like NDP when trying for power and as Conservatives when in power.) It contacted the UFA and a veteran's organization to put forward a joint slate, but the UFA voted to stay separate from any other party, instead to put forward its own candidates. The United Farmers soon saw success in two by-elections: MLA George Moore and MP Robert Gardiner.

In the next general election, the UFA ran in a majority of constituencies and the UFA was elected to replace the Liberal government.

 

If the UFA had agreed to the merger, if it had been elected it would undoubtedly have been elected to the office but not to power, as the Liberals and the veterans' organization would have been, it seems, the "force behind the throne."

 

This trap was refered to by J.H. Coldwel, leader of the CCF in 1940s.

The article "Can Coldwell Lead the CCF to Power? in the May 31, 1941 issue of the   Liberty magazine has this remark. (It is included in Ernest Brown's collection at the Provincial Archives of Alberta (1965.124, 270h(i)))

The article describes Coldwell as a schoolteacherish, excedingly capable middle-aged man "...but the main thing is that the CCF is a revolutionary party opposed to capitalism and dedicated to knocking the props out from under it - that is within the realm of law and constitutional order. The CCF-ers are the mildest-mannered revolutionists in the world. They pray daily for the advent of the New Order that they espouse. but Coldwell will never be seen leading a band of bloodthirsty rebels at the barricades... [Progress for the CCF was slow in the Depression but with the war it has spurred forward]

Many factors are contributing to the party's growing prestige. the eclipse of the Chamberlain regime in Britain, the rise of British Labour in the Empire's wartime Cabinet, the almost daily broadcasts by J.B. Priestly who talks unendingly about the new order and the economic levelling-out that will follow the war - all those assist the CCF. Democracy and capitalism appear to have become separated in the public mind, and almost everybody admits today that a new order is coming...

[Woodsworth one year after his retirement is close to becoming a mythical figure,] Woodsworth said he hated war but firmly demied being a pacifist. ...fortunately for the sake of his value to the CCF cause, ill health caused him to retire shortly after the outbreak of war. He would not have been understood by the majority of Canadians, not even by his own followers.

one thing in addition to his personality and his sincerity Woodsworth has left to the CCF is a one-sentence politic creed: "Some day co-operation for the common good must replace competition for private gain."... Coldwell has the happy faculty rare among his followers of being able to present the CCF case as a lesson in pure logic.

On the war Coldwell said  ``as the war approached, Canada and the CCF and Woodsworth was isolationist, mostly because of who was in power in London.

After war's outbreak, the party adopted the policy that Canada should contribute to the war effort by organizing its economic life to supply all the needs of Britain without profit to this country."

On socialism, Coldwell said, the CCF was socialist - it believed in state control of public utilities, monopolies and big business. He said that at the CCF founding it was proposed that it come out openly as such and call itself the Socialist Party. This was rejected because of the unfortunate associations with socialism resulting from the misuse of the term in other countries, particularly by Adolph Hitler who termed his party National Socialist.

A part of the party's optimism is the fact the CCF has been successful in melding farmers and workers together. Coldwell said he thought this had been possible because the CCF had its beginnings among the co-operative groups made up of mechanized agriculturalists on the prairies who are actually industrial farm workers and who appreciate the problems of Eastern industrial workers. "The Western farmer and Eastern labour are oppressed by exactly the same economic system," he said.

Coldwell said the strength of the CCF lay largely in its groups of humantarian and intellectual people who have become associated in a desire to perform a public service. "Man for man, the CCF members have made greater studies of social and economic questions than the members of any other party, and that is the party's strength...

Behind them stand the power of the organized labour and farm and co-operative movements. However labour has not supported CCF as much as was hoped, in part, Coldwell said, because the labourers in the East still think they can rise up and become an employer. Not more than 20 per cent of all Canada labour is unionized today. Coldwell said the CCF has the support of no daily newspaper in the land, but, he said, the press has always given the CCF a square deal in its reportage although "it attacks us editorially."

He said optimistically but conservatively tht he felt Canada would drift into a two-party system with the rightist members of the Conservative and Liberal parties drifting together and the progressive joining the CCF. Then through natural rotation usually experienced by alternate political parties, the CCF would eventually rise to power.

And Coldwell said the party had already prepared what it would do in power.

First, abolish the Senate which was seen as archaic and substitute a form of revision committee in the single chamber along the lines of the Norwegian system.

Then nationalization of the banks. Banks ought to be instruments of national economic policy and should be entirely owned by the nation. He said he was not Social Credit and in the interview did not say how he would like it if the Social Credit, or from his standpoint as bad an outcome, the Conservatives, were returned to power and thus fell heir to these powerful economic weapons. [in truth, the Conservatives would probably privatize them to reward their corporate supporters, and thus deprive the CCF of easy use of them at least in the short term if the CCF should come to power again.]

In closing Coldwell said We beleive in an orderly and ordered program. We believe in a planned economy...We are not out to destroy; we are out ot create. In regards to the province of Quebec, we realize that the French -Canadian outlook is essentialy Canadian. As the rest of Canada becomes more Canadian and more North American-conscious which is inevitable asa result of this war, the differences between French and English Canadians will disappear."  [Nowadays it is justthe opposite English Canada, or atleat its privately-owned media and the ¸Harper-directed English CBC  is totally dedicated to the U.S., while any viewing of the French-language CBC will give you more international news than those all put together.]

Coldwell also said that the CCF would never be trapped as the British Labour Party was during the 1920s. "We won't take office without power." he said.

[It is very likely that in 2013 the Alberta NDP could fall into that trap if it attained office through a working truce with the Liberal Party. It is conceivable it would have government but would be held in a straitjacket by the Liberal Party, which would prove to be no friend of the NDP.

The abilty for a NDP govenment to aid workers, farmers, the old sick and infirm would be stritjacketed by the Liberals`` preoccupaton with keeping tax burden light on the middle-class, the class-less segment of hte populaton most taken with the Liberal`s laissez-faire philosophy.

The Conservatives know who their friends are - the rich - and the NDP knows if not where its support comes from, at least to whom its policies are targetted at helping - working stiffs, the old, the young, the sick, the infirm; while the Liberals appeal to the middle-class who do not, or think they do not, need unions, medical services, old-age homes, pensions plans,  etc. instead relying on their ability to use the system to get ahead personally and leave others behind, while holding on to the coattails of the rich who direct the system that works so well for them - a bit of a harsh judgement but judging by Liberal governments in times of financial crisis not unwarranted.]

There is no short-cut to the political climate that will give the workers, farmers, the old and sick, the children, the next generations, the social justice and economic security that is their due. Selfishness begets selfishness until it does not. Beggaring you neighbour works until you lfind you live in a slum then you begin to care more.
Living in a province where taxes are low but university fees are high, works until your children want to go to university, a society where taxes are low but care for old age is expensive works until you are old - the age that baby boomers are now approaching. Sheer demographics will shift Alberta voters' behaviour to the left, in time. It is important to present ideological alternatives that can capture the voters interest and support when the swing happens.
If the Alberta voters were that upset, they would vote the government down. As it is, the largest (single) section of them that take the energy to vote are happy with the government, or at least happy enough.
Unfortunately the progressive left is not doing all it can to expose the environmental damage, the short-sided economic policies, the human waste caused by the present dependence on the un-sustainable expoloitaiton of the province's resoeurces. Until they see there is a desperate need to change the politics, that they would be better off with a different govenment that is less tied to Big Oil, a quick grab at office will not have power, what kind of mandate would a government have, what kind of confidence would it have to make the significant changes that are required if the voters haven't woken up to the need for the changes. And if a reform government does not have the power/confidence to make important structural reforms, then it will be sen by those who work hardest for it, (and by those whose lives were dediected to that end for the last 90 plus years) then what would be the long-term result -- more time in the political wilderness.

 

The End

 

 

A Short History of Old Strathcona

Courtesy of Alhambra Books

10115 - 81 Avenue — On the Fuzzy Edge of Whyte Avenue

50,000 Quality Books At Affordable Prices

A Short History of Old Strathcona

By Tom Monto

(Excerpted from his 500-page book

Old Strathcona - Edmonton's Southside Roots

available at Alhambra Books and the OSF Booth at the Farmers’ Market.)

Through the 1800s, Wood Cree and Prairie Blackfoot battled in what is now southside Edmonton, asserting dominance in the long-standing “grey zone” between the two nations.
 

After peace was established at Peace Hills “Wetaskiwin” in 1871, Metis and Euro-Canadians felt safe to settle in southside Edmonton. Metis farmers, freighters, small entrepreneurs, working often for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Edmonton, settled along the south shore, from Cloverdale where William Bird established a flour mill alongside “Mill Creek,” to Garneau’s farmhouse, in today’s Garneau neighbourhood.
 

John Walter left his Fort Edmonton employment and settled on the southside. He started a ferry and established many other businesses in Walter’s Flats (Walterdale): lumberyard, coalmine, woodworking factory, etc., becoming Strathcona’s first millionaire.
 

James McKernan established a farm where today’s McKernan neighbourhood is.

An early survey (1882) carved up the land creating University Avenue, making the land ready for a wave of white pioneers, resulting in the 1885 Metis Rebellion. After the Metis were defeated, peace settled on a land joined to eastern Canada by the CPR through Calgary.
 

In 1891, the Calgary & Edmonton Railway connected Edmonton (or at least South Edmonton) to the CPR. The railway company built the Strathcona Hotel and the first railway station (a replica of this building now is at 10447 - 86 Avenue). The railway surveyed Main Street (today’s 104 Street) and Whyte Avenue, named after a CPR vice-president.
 

On the first trains came pioneer families whose names echo through the history of Old Strathcona:

– John Gainer and his packinghouses and 1902 butchershop (at 10341 Whyte)

– William Ross whose Ross Block still stands at 10309 Whyte.

– Robert Ritchie’s mill was built at the end-of-steel, where it stands as the oldest

surviving timber mill in western Canada.

– A.C. Rutherford arrived and established a legal practice on Whyte Avenue before

becoming Alberta‘s first premier in 1905.

Fine homes were built. One small area has A. McLean’s 1896 home at 10454 - 84 Ave.; Delmar Bard’s 1912 house at 10544 - 84 Ave.; J. Jackson’s 1912 house, 10443 - 85 Ave.

The pioneers brought with them the mutual-help groups they had known at Home.

– Loyal Orange Order. The Orange Hall still stands behind the Library.

– Masons. The 1929 Acacia Masonic Temple is on 83 Avenue.

 

Schools were built: Duggan Street (Queen Alexandra) School was built in 1906…

St. Anthony School, built by Roman Catholics, stands next to the historic Baptist Church, at 104 Street and 84 Ave … The 1909 Strathcona Collegiate (today’s Old Scona) is nearby.
 

A woodframe Commercial Hotel was built, later replaced by today’s brick Blues on Whyte.
 

The Yukon Gold Rush saw hundreds come to Strathcona, the closest rail point to that bonanza (although still 2200 kilometres away!) They spent money in Whyte Avenue stores, Many decided to settle here, some panning for gold at suitably-named Goldbar.
 

In 1899, the hamlet of South Edmonton became a town, named after CPR magnate Sir Donald Smith, the first baron of Strathcona and Mount Royal.
 

Edmontonians still dreamed of getting a railway and organized the Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific Railway. This railway – although not going as far as the Pacific…or the Yukon… or even out of Edmonton – did build a bridge across the river. The Low Level Bridge, the first bridge across the North Saskatchewan, opened for road traffic in 1900, for trains in 1902.
 

In 1901, Strathcona had 1500 residents. As befitting a metropolis of this size, town council outlawed the construction of woodframe buildings in the downtown, to lessen the threat of fire spreading. The new building code saw the construction of the Dominion Hotel (a replica stands on its original site, 10324 Whyte) and its neighbours, the Bank of Commerce Building and the Sheppard Block.
 

When the Province of Alberta was founded in 1905, Whyte Avenue lawyer Rutherford was elected its first premier. Rutherford named Strathcona as the location of the University of Alberta and the newly-built brick Queen Alexandra School at 78 Avenue and 106 Street became its first home. Strathcona’s MP Peter Talbot became a Canadian senator. Wilbert McIntyre of McIntyre Fountain fame became the new MP.

On March 15, 1907, Strathcona became a city. A city hall (since demolished) and a new firehall (now Walterdale Theatre) followed. Preparations were made for a new city hospital (later the U of A Hospital; since demolished) and for a Public Library (opened 1913).
 

1909–1913 High Level Bridge and the soon-to-be-lost Walterdale Bridge constructed.
 

The “Twin Cities” negotiated amalgamation—S’cona was guaranteed the McKernan Lake Streetcar line, nicknamed the Toonerville Trolley, an annual sports day at the Southside Athletic Grounds (today’s Strathcona Composite Schoolyard), a southside courthouse and city office, recognition as a single political entity for election-district boundaries, and more.

Amalgamation under one name “Edmonton” came into effect on February 1, 1912.

“Old Strathcona” struggled along as an overlooked sister, its businesses selling goods and services to local residents, the University crowd and area farmers in what would be the County of Strathcona. Its old buildings slowly became heritage properties and funky locations for movie sets, as the Old Strathcona Foundation and other local activists fended off their destruction by the city and private developers.

Old Strathcona's History Revealed in New Book by Tom Monto

Old Strathcona's History Revealed in New Book

Old Strathcona, Edmonton's Southside Roots,written by Tom Monto, is the story of southside Edmonton from its start as a scattering of Metis/Indian log cabins to its development as a bustling section of the City of Edmonton in the boom times of the 1920s. The community's history is filled with many ups and downs, personal tragedies and public victories, floods, fires, fights and frights. Author Tom Monto tells of the struggles of immigrant families, of farmers, workers and small business people, of political radicals and reformers, in such a way that comparisons with today's world are not difficult to see.
According to Old Strathcona, Edmonton Southside Roots, the first people to settle in the area were rough-and-ready employees of the old Fort Edmonton furtrading post. Many of them were Metis connected to the Papaschase Cree band in the area. A portion of the book written by Randy Lawrence elaborates on this connection. Through the 1880s pioneer white families moved in, the Cree band was moved out and the land surveyed in preparation for organized settlement.

The coming of the railway in 1891 gave a big impetus to the area's development. The Calgary and Edmonton Railway was expected to cross the river to connect to the "old town" of Edmonton on the northside. However, the railway did not bridge the river and "south Edmonton" grew up on the southside. The southside community grew outwards from its railway station and nearby railway hotel, that survives today as the Strathcona Hotel. The settlement's commercial centre filled up with simple woodframe buildings and later with more elaborate brick buildings, many of which survive even today. These historic buildings anchor today's Whyte Avenue, which is now Edmonton's premier historic area.

Strathcona became a town in 1899, then a city in 1907. Amalgamation with the larger city of Edmonton in 1912 ended the community's separate existence and the area was particularly hard hit by the downturn of WW I. However, residents of "Old Strathcona" played a large role in the life of the combined cities, as the last section of the book shows.

This extensively researched 500-page "door-stopper" includes numerous archival photographs, bibliographical footnotes and an index to the hundreds of names and buildings that it describes. It is a revised edition of the respected book that Monto published in 2008.

Copies of Old Strathcona, Edmonton's Southside Roots are available at Alhambra Books, 10115 - 81 Avenue, ph. 780-439-4195, for $38.

Women of Old Strathcona Worth Remembering, Says Local Historian

Women of Old Strathcona Worth Remembering, Says Local Historian

Where would we be without the hard work of the women of the past, asks local historian Tom Monto. The author of the book Old Strathcona - Edmonton's Southside Roots says that many tough women appeared in Strathcona history through the years.

Prior to the invention of "labour-saving devices" on the farms and workshops, couples had many children to help out around the place. Mothers cooked large meals on wood or coal stoves to feed the numerous children who seemed to be always hungry.

Edmonton's Southside Roots gives the example of Margaret Martin. She and her husband settled on a rough pioneer farm near today's Mount Pleasant Cemetery in 1899. Only two years later her husband died and Margaret was left to cope alone wit the farm and to care for their 11 children. She coped so well that eight years later she had the money to pay for the construction of a substantial brick house "in town." This house still stands at the corner of 84 Avenue and 106 Street. A daughter, Grace Martin, taught in area schools for many years and now has a school named after her.

Tom Monto also included the stories of many women who had heroic accomplishments after the pioneer era had passed.

Emily Murphy, living on the southside near the University in the 1920s, is one of the people he was happy to include in his book. A best-selling author, Murphy was a leader in the movement to get women appointed to the Senate. It was on the front porch of her home on 88 Avenue that Alberta's "Famous Five" met in 1927 to launch a legal appeal to achieve that measure of equality. Two years later they achieved their goal.

Margaret Crang grew up on Strathcona's Main Street, now known as 104 Street. In 1933, at the age of 23, she was elected to he Edmonton city council. Two years later she was the most popular candidate in the city when she won re-election. In 1937, she and other Labour candidates were ignored at the polls. Her political career was over - at the age of 27.

Old Strathcona - Edmonton's Southside Roots uses more than 100 historic photos and 500 pages of detailed story-telling to tell the stories of these and many other daring women of the city's early days.

"I was still discovering amazing life adventures of Edmonton women almost even as the book went to the printers," enthused Monto. He said he was particularly surprised by his discovery of the story of Sarah Lendrum, a southside farm girl who trekked into the North in 1896 with a husband she had met for the first time less than a month earlier.

Copies of Edmonton's Southside Roots are available at Alhambra Books, 10115 - 81 Avenue.

The Term "Old Strathcona", Strathcona Oldtimers, Ernest Brown

A wide-ranging series of observations that transition from
The Term "Old Strathcona" to
A Strathcona old-timers reunion to
Zola Campbell to
A.A. Campbell to
Ernest Brown to
The term "Strathcona" to
Lord Strathcona to
Ernest Brown on charges of muckraking...

After the amalgamation of the cities of Strathcona and Edmonton in 1912, how long did it take for the term "Old Strathcona" to emerge?

By 1919 the Strathcona Hotel was known as the "Old Strathcona hotel" (such as in the Ed. Bull., June 19, 1919). iI had been the first building built in the railway centre that became the City of Strathcona, to discriminate between the railway centre and the already-20-year-old farming district on the southside of the river. This pre-existing farming district had been the homes of some families whose names have been immortalized in the naming of places in the city to this day - McKernan, Ottewell, Garneau, Walter (Walterdale). (see my blog "Short history of Old Strathcona")
 

But when did the term "Old Strathcona" first get used for the southside  area that had once been the City of Strathcona?
 

The earliest reference I can find is in 1923 and the "old" is in lower case.

A Edmonton Bulletin report of a gathering of old-timers in that year says "Mrs. A.A. Campbell read her poem on the pioneer spirit that prevailed in old Strathcona, 'It's Just the Thing the Country Needed,' and another rhyme she had written about the early days."

The article relates a historical and hysterical fun night - oh, to have been a fly on that wall that night, as you can see if you read the article reprinted below.
 

The term "Old Strathcona" came into general use in the 1970s as part of the campaign to save Strathcona's historic downtown centre from destruction at the hands of Edmonton city council to build a freeway.

"Old Strathcona" should be used to mean the old city of Strathcona which extended as far asouth as 68 Avenue and west to the river thus taking in the University of Alberta.

But the term is usually used just for a handful of blocks either side of  the Whyte Avenue and 104 Street (which had been Strathcona's Main Street) but has now been sort of sidetracked to mean the Old Strathcona Preservation area  (see below for an article where Old Strathcona is used in this way)

Information on "Mrs. A.A. Campbell"

Mrs. A.A. Campbell (Zola Isabell) (1880-1967) was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. D.L. Campbell.
Her husband "Archie had been responsible for the oversight of money matters for the City of Strathcona and became the assistant treasurer of the City of Edmonton after amalgamation of the two cities.
A political reformer in those days when progressive political change was not largely disregarded in Alberta, Archie had run as a candidate for the Independent Labour Party in the 1921 provincial election. The ILP slate also included Ernest Brown, the city's most prominent photographer. (look forward with expectancy to my upcoming book on this character!)

Zola was the author of "A Tale of the Early Years,  Dedicated to all South Edmonton Pioneers," a epic poem she published in 1938.
 

Wedding Anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell Honoured by Old-Timers
(Feb. 12, 1923 Edmonton Bulletin)

D. L. Campbell and wife celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary in 1923. The Edmonton Bulletin coverd the event at which many old-timers, some who had lived on the southside for 30 to 40 years, attended.

They were divided into groups by the year they had come and asked to share the funniest and most interesting event that they remembered occuring in that year. The Campbells themselves came 25 yeras ago.

The stories were exeedingly interesting and varied from the tale of the August snow to the adventures of crossing the river in the days before the bridges were built. Mr. Jack Jackson gave a very amusing account of the police court and how it was run in the early days in Strathcona.

It was indeed a reunion of the old-timers, and the evening passed away very pleasantly in talking of the old times and singing the old-time songs.

Mrs. Jack Jackson presided at the piano just as she used to do in the old Ross hall and sang very delightfuly once more the real old songs of “Mary of Argyle” and 'I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Hall.' Mr. Jackson too contributed his favourite 'Rocked in the Cardle of the Deep', while Arthur Davies sang his two songs that used to be a regular feature of the entertainments in Ross Hall, 'Sister Mary' and 'I'm Off to Philadelphia in the Morning.'...Mrs. A.A. Campbell read her poem on the pioneer spirit that prevailed in old Strathcona, 'It's Just the Thing the Country Needed' and another rhyme she had written about the early days.

The program was quite impromptu and wholly delightful and entertaining.”

Names of those in attendance, in addition to Mr. and Mrs. D.L. Campbell, included:

Mr. and Mrs. Jack Jackson

Mr. and Mrs. John McKenzie

Mr. and Mrs. F.A. Peel

Mr. and Mrs. W.J. Scott

Mrs. Margaret Martin [whose house still stands at 84 Avenue and 106 Street]

Mr. and Mrs. Hennessey

Mrs. Duguid

Mr. and Mrs. Tookey

Mrs. Robert Douglas [brother of James Douglas, Strathcona MP, 1909-1921]

Mrs. Christie

Mr. Atkins

Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Davies

Mr. and Mrs. George Thomson

Mr and Mrs. Radford

Mr. and Mrs. Carmichael

Mr. and Mrs. Bob Turnbull

Miss Emily Campbell and Master Duncan Campbell

(Feb. 12, 1923 Ed. Bull.)

(Information on many of these named here can be found in my book "Old Strathcona - Edmonton 's Southside Roots", available at Alhambra Books, Edmonton or through ABEBOOKS.com)

"Old Strathcona" to mean a very small portion of the Old City of Strathcona
Old Strathcona Provincial Historic Area
(with my comments following)

Old Strathcona Provincial Historic Area is situated in the City of Edmonton on the south side of the North Saskatchewan River. Encompassing roughly 5 city blocks stretching from 85 Avenue south to 80 Avenue and from 102 Street west to 106 Street, the district is the historic centre of Strathcona's commercial life. Among the commercial, cultural, and public resources that contribute to the district's heritage value are buildings constructed between 1891 and 1914, including the Strathcona Hotel, the Gainers Block, the Orange Hall, the Canadian Pacific Railway Station, the South Side Post Office, the Douglas Block, and the Princess Theatre.

Heritage Value
The heritage value of the Old Strathcona Provincial Historic Area lies in its representation of the pre-World War One commercial and social development of one of Alberta's most significant early communities. The district also possesses heritage value for the architectural richness and integrity of its historic buildings.

Like many provincial towns and cities, the early history of Strathcona was inextricably tied to the railways. In 1891, the Calgary &Edmonton Railway Company laid track from Calgary to a site opposite Edmonton on the south side of the North Saskatchewan River. The company subdivided the unincorporated Town of South Edmonton and largely directed early development in the community by grading roads and erecting some of the first buildings, among them the Strathcona Hotel, built in 1891. The railway company's activities helped the fledgling settlement to grow and in 1899 South Edmonton was incorporated as a Town and renamed Strathcona; eight years later, the City of Strathcona was incorporated. The economic and cultural development of the community between 1899 and 1907 is embodied in the Gainers Block constructed in 1902 and the Orange Hall built in 1903. The years between 1907 and 1912 represented a period of dynamic and robust growth in Strathcona, as the population swelled and business expanded. The rapid development in these years is embodied in the Canadian Pacific Railway Station constructed in 1907 to serve as the Northern Alberta terminus of the company's rail network and in the South Side Post Office, built between 1911 and 1913 to provide federal services to the burgeoning population. Though the years from 1891 to 1912 had witnessed appreciable growth in Strathcona, it nonetheless continued to lag behind the pace of commercial development set by its cross-river rival, the City of Edmonton. In 1912, Strathcona amalgamated with Edmonton, marking the end of the district's independent development. The Strathcona Public Library was paid for and built by the newly expanded City of Edmonton in 1913, thus reflecting the shift in civic authority in the district. [my comment: Construction of the library had been approved by Strathcona electors before amalgamation and as Strathcona had not had a debt and Edmoton had had one before amalgamation it is a bit of a stretch to say that Edmonton paid for the library.]

The economic slowdown in Strathcona following amalgamation helped to preserve the architectural variety and integrity of the community's early buildings and their embodiment of the area's historic evolution. Early constructions in Strathcona's commercial core were simple wood-frame [my comment: some of the early buildings on Whyte Avenue were log cabin buildings, such as the first school.]

buildings like the Strathcona Hotel and the Orange Hall.

In 1902, mindful of the destruction visited upon other Prairie communities by fires, Town Council passed a bylaw mandating the construction of non-wood buildings along Whyte Avenue. Buildings like the stately red-brick Gainers Block reflect this legislative change. The buildings erected in the Old Strathcona District after the turn of the century differed from their predecessors not only in materials, but also in style. The false-fronted frontier architecture of the 1890s gave way after the turn of the century to more ornate constructions, a reflection of the growth of business capital and entrepreneurial confidence within Strathcona.
Commercial buildings often exhibited a strong classical influence to project an image of stability, permanence, and prestige. Examples of the increasing sophistication of architecture in the Strathcona district are the elegant Princess Theatre, which boasted the first marble-fronted facade west of Winnipeg, and the Douglas Block, which featured a diachromatic design of brick and stone and a crowning cornice, parapet, and pediment. Non-commercial buildings like the South Side Post Office and the Strathcona Public Library also reflected the increasing sophistication of architecture in the community in the post-1900 period while also embodying the success and importance of the district.

Source: Alberta Culture and Community Spirit, Historic Resources Management Branch (File: Des. 86)


Character-Defining Elements
The character-defining elements of the Old Strathcona Provincial Historic Area include such features as:
- the grid-like arrangement of streets and avenues;
- the width of Whyte Avenue and 104 Street reflecting their prominence as early transportation routes and the first graded roads in Strathcona;
- spatial relationship between railway station, commercial district, and non-commercial area situated north of 83 Avenue along 104 Street;
- simple wood-frame architecture of Strathcona Hotel and Orange Hall;
- the predominance of brick structures dating from between 1902 and 1914;
- the predominance of commercial businesses along Whyte Avenue between Gateway Boulevard and 105 Street;
- the scale of the buildings, with the vast majority being three storeys in height or less;
- buildings in commercial area built to the property line;
- sight lines to significant contributing resource elements, including South Side Post Office clock tower and painted signs on commercial buildings;
- use of traditional materials, including painted wood, red and orange brick, and cast stone;
- general design of commercial buildings, including recessed entries, windowed storefront level, sign band area, and upper floors with balanced fenestration;
- pedestrian scale to signage;
- the strong classical architectural influence evident in the South Side Post Office, the Strathcona Public Library, the Douglas Block, the Gainers Block, and the Princess Theatre;
- the standard station design of the Canadian Pacific Railway Station, constructed in the Queen Anne style and incorporating elements from French and Scottish architectural sources.

My comments on the above article: Old Strathcona Provincial Historic Area

"Old Strathcona Provincial Historic Area is situated in the City of Edmonton on the south side of the North Saskatchewan River. Encompassing roughly 5 city blocks stretching from 85 Avenue south to 80 Avenue and from 102 Street west to 106 Street..."

How an area that is five blocks north-south and four blocks east-west can be only five city blocks eludes me. the number should be 20 or so.

the district is the historic centre of Strathcona's commercial life. Among the commercial, cultural, and public resources that contribute to the district's heritage value are buildings constructed between 1891 and 1914, including the Strathcona Hotel, the Gainers Block, the Orange Hall, the Canadian Pacific Railway Station, the South Side Post Office, the Douglas Block, and the Princess Theatre.

The Princess Theatre opened in 1915.

The Alberta Register of Historic Places (ARHP): Old Strathcona info. as excerpted in Wikipedia has many errors:
Old Strathcona is Alberta's second Provincial Historic Area (downtown Fort Macleod being the first), and contains a number of historic buildings.
The designation as a Provincial Historic Area applies to roughly 5 square blocks (see my remark above)

that formed the commercial hub of the former city of Strathcona. It runs from 85 Avenue south to 80 Avenue and from 102 Street west to 106 Street. Within this area are many of the most significant buildings built during Strathcona's early boom from the arrival of the Calgary and Edmonton Railway in 1891 to the Edmonton (should say, and Strathcona)

 real estate crash of 1913–14. Heritage buildings within this area include the Strathcona Hotel, the Gainers Block, the Orange Hall, the Canadian Pacific Railway Station, the South Side Post Office, the Douglas Block, the Princess Theatre, Strathcona Public Library, the Connaught Armoury and Old Scona Academic High School.

My comments: The Connaught Armoury is outside the preservation area, being north of 86 Avenue.
And
The Princess Theatre opened in 1915, despite of and after the real estate crash of 1913-1914.

And the "City of Edmonton Map Utility" as quoted by Wikipedia "Strathcona, Edmonton" has a strange way to answer the question who was the Lord Strathcona that Strathcona was named after:
It says : "Strathcona was named for Lord Strathcona, Hudson's Bay Company Governor (1889–1914) and the man chosen to drive the "last spike" of the CPR transcontinental railway."

I have tried to change the Wikpedia entry to correct this strange wording on the Wikipedia entry but each time it gets changed back (apparently by someone who believes everything someone in authority tells them)

Here's what I would say:
Strathcona was named for Lord Strathcona (Sir Donald Smith) (1820-1914), HBC and CPR magnate  who played in important role in financing the building of the CPR. Lord Strathcona had the honour in 1885 of driving the "Last Spike" at Craigellachie to finish construction of the CPR transcontinental line.

To fill out the story, I want to say:
A Scottish immigrant, Donald Smith worked his way up the ranks of the HBC and helped shepherd the CPR as it worked its way west and east to Craigellachie.

Randy Lawrence in his "Metis Strathcona", a part of "Old Strathcona - Edmonton's Southside Roots" says that "Lord Strathcona's entire career was spent not only "looking out for number one" but in dedicated service to at least portions of the Canadian Establishment and to the British Empire. He helped create a new western Canda, tended over time to more and more identify Canada's, HBC's and the CPR's interests with his own and seemingly had no sruples. Examples of his lack of scruples include his betrayal of HBC "wintering partners"... and some of its institutions such as Fort Edmonton. The railway he and his cousin owned, the CPR, was used to defeat Riel in 1885..He drove the Last Spike only days before Riel was hung in Regina....

If you think this is muckracking I would quote Ernest Brown who did extensive research on the political and economic questions of his day - still very much the same questions today. not like whether to build a pipeline across Native land or to risk wholesale pollution on the West Coast but on why these questions arise - from the capitalist control of the economy. (A low-consumption lifestyle, if widely adhered to, would make the pipeline and oil tankers unnecessary. Alberta is wholesale selling its resources despite ecological risks, to try to ensure that oil company executives are millionaires, oil workers make $100,000-plus incomes (while they are working), and the Conservative Party gets power (to help their friends) and enormous campaign coffers. Why? because they want to and THEY control the economy and the politics of our day... For now anyway.

Here's what Ernest Brown wrote in regards charges of muckraking:

 

In his 30 or 40 years of research he wrote he had come across "things that ought not to have occured in public life."

Some people, he wrote, tell him to "write only of the nice things that people have done", but he wrote "if a perpetrator of some crooked deal knows he is going to be exposed it will give him pause."

On the subject of public swindles, Brown wrote of "the swindle by the chairman and others of one of Canada's largest insurance companies who manipuated funds paid in by policy holders to the tune of $200 M and which was exposed by J.J. Harpell, chairman of the policy holders' committee. - Surely, Harpell did a public service although no monument will be erected in Canada to perpetuate his name."

 

 

THE END

Mound Culture in North America - Edmonton, Alberta too ?

Mound Culture in North America - Edmonton, Alberta too?

Government officials worked to eradicate evidence of  pre-contact North American peoples in the late 1800s but they could not erase all their structures, in particular the thousands of man-made mounds that still be seen today.

According to one source, John Wesley Powell, the leader of the first trip down the Grand Canyon - and one-armed to boot - and the Director of the Bureau of Ethnology (U.S.) to 1894, directed archeologists,etc. across the U.S. to send him any evidence they had of pre-Contact peoples. More than 100,000 figurines, sketches of rock drawings, etc. were sent to him and promptly destroyed because as he said there was no culture in the U.S. before Contact with Europe so the evidence could not be true. (This accusation is supported in Henriette Mertz's book The Mystic Symbol, Mark of the Michigan Mound Builders, p. 203.)

But many of the more than 30,000 mounds left behind by these peoples in the Mississippi valley, southern Canada and the west coast survived their efforts. One of the largest mound complexes left by this culture were at Marietta, Ohio, where I happen to have spent some of my youth. My paper route was across the street from the town cemetery that had been built around a 10-metre-high mound on a bluff in town. Nearby was the Via Sacria Street, named thusly because it is built on a paved road found by the first White pioneers. it is hypothesized that the road had no material purpose, as the Natives did not have wheeled transport, so must have been for a ceremonial procession, and one local amateur archaeologist/ anthropologist has worked out a scheme whereby the procession ascended to the mound on the bluff then returned to the (Muskingum) river, crossing and after convulations through various mound constructions ascended the hills across the river from Marietta.
 No mounds have yet been found in Alberta although they have been found as nearby as Saskatchewan where Moose Mountain has one of the best known Prairie ones. Pilot Mound, Manitoba is named after one in that area. A Quebecois-born interpreter, Jean L'Heureux, who lived in central Alberta in the 1860s and 1870s, observed that the mound civilization of the Mississippian river valley could have extended as far as Alberta (see "Jean L'Heureux: A Life of Adventure", Alberta History, Autumn, 2012).

The recent discovery of what some think is a pyramid in the Balkans, hidden inside what had been assumed to be a mountain, leads me at least to wonder if perhaps Edmonton's Mount Pleasant or Rabbit Hill could be man-made features - mounds.

Below are some rough notes on this Mound culture.
(The newspaper citations refer to local newspapers, as found by a newspaper search in the Peel's Prairie Provinces website in 2013.)

From The Mound Builders by George Bryce

Mounds were often bifurgated

conical or flat-topped (platform)

Bryce says some mounds built by deposit of midden and multiple burials

used for sepulture and observation, for ritual and ceremonies, and to hold temples and housing

often located near oxbows due to increased surface area between water and land for increased fishing opportunities (Rabbit Hill in Edmonton also near a bend in the river and near Blackmud Creek. Could it be a mound?)

Bryce postulates that when one mound got too big for ease of use, they began on another, perhaps the origin of “Two Hills” in southside Edmonton, the two "hills" of Mount Pleasant (106 Street and 65 Avenue) and Huntington Hills (west of Calgary Trail south of 51 Avenue).

definite mounds have been found and recorded as close to Edmonton, Alberta as Manitoba and Moose Mountain, Sask. and on west coast near New Westminster, Michigan and Illinois and north along the Bering shores.
********************

Brandon Mail June 16, 1887 says pottery and other atifacts exposed by flood in New York State pottery is of type found in western mounds so disproving the assumed separation between Indians and the moundbuilders

***************

B.C.

Mounds at Hatzig in the New Westminster area. Similar mounds can be found in various other parts of the western province (B.C.)

A member of the Historical and Scientific Society of Vancouver dug and found an old skull of distinctive shape that did not correlate with the skulls of the present-day Indians in the area. Also found a copper ring.
(Moose Jaw Herald, Nov. 2, 1894)

***************

author Russell Harper found remains of sophisticated Indian townsites on Rice Lake in the Peterborough area  estimated to have been inhabited 2000 years ago.
goods found that originated in Florida or Georgia coasts

Elaborate mounds also found. They are similar to those found in Ohio while pottery discovered, the earliest painted pottery to be found in Canada, is similar to that found in Massachusetts so the Ontario tribe was perhaps a intermingling of the two groups

Biggest townsite is on the present Hiawatha reserve of the Mississauga Indians and directly south of the present village of Keene, near the mouth of the Indian River.
Another site is on a farm owned by D. Humphrey.
Chronicle, September 11, 1952

********************

Canada has a Serpent Mound

Serpent Mounds National Historic Site of Canada, Otonabee -South Monaghan, Ontario, Canada

Aug. 14, 1906 Red Deer News talks of a call to protect a mound in Ontario, the only serpent mound in Canada in Otonabee Township, Peterboro county. Local historian says he does not accept the theory that the mounds of North America were the work of an extinct race.“All evidence goes to show that these mounds were built by the ancestors of our Indians and mounds have been constructed by the Indians within historical times.”

***

Serpent Mounds in Ontario, the only known effigy mound in Canada.

Serpent Mounds, situated on a bluff overlooking Rice Lake near Peterborough, Ont, south of village of Keene, is the only known effigy mound in Canada. It is a sinuous earthen structure composed of six separate burial locations and measuring about 60 m long, 8 m wide and 1.5-1.8 m high. Excavation indicated that the mounds forming the effigy were gradually built up between 50 BCE and 300 CE. This would suggest that Serpent Mounds was a sacred place, visited periodically for religious ceremonies.

Although pieces of grave furniture were not plentiful, their distribution shows they were restricted largely to individuals of higher status within the community. Those individuals were buried either at the base of the mounds or in shallow, submound pits. The commoners were randomly scattered throughout the mounds' fill. From Canadian Encyclopedia

On Saturday, September 9, 1961, a provincial historical plaque commemorating the prehistoric Serpent Mounds will be unveiled in Serpent Mounds Park, County Road 34, Rice Lake, south of the village of Keene in Peterborough County.

This is one in a series of plaques being erected throughout the province by the Department of Travel and Publicity, on the advice of the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario.

The unveiling ceremony was arranged and sponsored by the Peterborough Historical Society; Dr. Ralph Honey, president, was the program chairman. Speakers included: Professor J.M.S. Careless of the University of Toronto, a member of the province's Historic Sites Board; Mr. Keith Brown, M.P.P. (Peterborough); Mr. K.E. Kidd, Curator of Ethnology at the Royal Ontario Museum; Mr. T.E. McKay, president of the Serpent Mounds Foundation; and Mr. J.J. Slattery, Reeve of Otonabee Township. The plaque was unveiled by Mr. Ralph Loukes, Chief of the Rice Lake Indian Band.

The plaque reads:
THE SERPENT MOUNDS

The principal mound of this group is the only known example in Canada of a mound of serpentine shape. The earliest archaeological excavation on the site was carried out by David Boyle in 1896. Artifacts and skeletal remains were discovered, but the first comprehensive investigation was not started until 1955. The mounds, somewhat similar to those of the Ohio Valley, appear to have been built while the region was occupied by Indians of the Point Peninsula culture, and are thought to have been religious or ceremonial in nature. Numerous burials have been found in the mounds, which are estimated to have been constructed about the second century A.D.

Historical background

The prehistoric man-made mounds near the north shore of Rice Lake known as the Serpent Mounds are the only ones of their type known to exist in Canada, although there are also similar mounds in Adams County, Ohio. The main ridge of the Rice Lake mound is almost 200 feet in length and serpentine in shape; adjacent to it are several small circular mounds, commonly referred to as the "serpent's eggs."

The Rice Lake formations have been known to archaeologists since at least 1896 when Dr. David Boyle partially excavated them and published a report on his work. (Boyle was the first curator of the Provincial Archaeological Museum, which later became the Royal Ontario Museum.) Systematic investigation of the site began in 1955 when the Royal Ontario Museum, with aid from the Serpent Mounds Foundation and the Ontario government, initiated an extensive program in an effort to discover the nature and origin of the mounds.

Work was carried out during the summer months of the next few years and by 1958 a considerable number of prehistoric Indian burials had been discovered in the immediate vicinity, some twenty-one of these in the mounds themselves. While most of the graves contained little in the way of burial goods, two proved to be quite prolific. One of these included a cluster of forty-one disc beads as well as a turtle carapace and flint chips. Another contained the complete skeleton of a young man, a small animal effigy and shell disc beads.

There were numerous shell deposits in the vicinity and some decorated pottery shards recovered from the site seemed to indicate affinities with the Middle Point Peninsula culture. A charcoal sample collected in association with one of the burials was submitted to a Carbon-14 dating test, resulting in a tentative dating of 128 A.D.

While no definite conclusions have been drawn regarding the purpose of these ancient mounds, it is believed they were originally constructed about the second century A.D., and they were of religious or ceremonial significance to the people who built them.

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1906 A diamond, pottery and skeletons found in mounds in the Rainy River district and on the Seine River

40 miles up from where the Big Fork River empties into the Rainy River there are many mounds. A couple miles farther upstream, at a place called Big Falls is an ancient pottery works.
Ed. Bull., Aug. 17, 1906

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1908 Mounds in Manitoba investigated including Pilot Mound. no relationship between the moundbuilders and whites or the present-day Indians although there might be a distant relationship with the Indians.
Ed. Bull., Oct. 30, 1908

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1911 Near Sheep Creek gold mining camp 25 miles south of Nelson, miners found a prehistoric subterranean chamber carved out of the solid rock perhaps 10,000 years old,.smooth plumb walls 35 feet square A McGill University scientist says it was a mine, and he is aware of such remains of a prehistoric civilization all along the west Coast.  
Ed. Capital May 19, 1911, p. 3

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1916 Prehistoric barrows found at Rock Lake, Manitoba Bow Island Review, April 28, 1916

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Gateway Nov. 14, 1930 article entitled “Secret of the Gods” (by Mugwump) bemoans fact that students study ancient civilizations in the Old World but ignore the “twin continents” of the New World. He/she says perhaps South America was joined to Australia by a Pacific continent and to Africa by an Atlantic continent. And that it is likely that Chinese and Japanese individuals had knowledge of the Twin continents.

And says strange mounds have been discovered on the eastern edge of the Bering Sea

the totem poles and copper sun discs of BC appear to have connection with South American relics.

The magic swastika is found in both old and new worlds.

Mayans were of Indo-Chinese origin

similarity of statues in old Mayan city to those in Cambodia

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Mrs. Perren Baker wrote Prairie Place Names. It talks of cairns and two old rectangles composed of large rocks in the Old Man area of Alberta that gave its name to the nearby river. The Old Man was a mythical character who dug a channel for the river and lingered for a long time in this playground before venturing down to the open plains. Oyen News, Oct. 30, 1929

(Other pre-historic/historic cultural evidences in Alberta include
the diagrams at eponymous Picture Butte, Alberta (now destroyed) and
Writing-on-Stone Historic Site.

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1930s
the Spiro Mound in Oklahoma was opened, and the remains of a tall man dressed in armour with a treasure of pearls lying beside him is said to have been found. Said to be clear evidence that the Mound civilization had equivalent technology to Europe and Asia of the time, and support for the theory that there was one world civilization, with technology and cultural practises being diffused throughout the world, instead of the long-held beleif that the Americas were isoloated from the "Old World."
(My note: The recent arrival of Japanese Tsunami flotsam on the BC coast, unpowered and undirected, gives credence to the idea that through the ageless past groups and individuals made their way back and forth across the Pacific Ocean, some using the proximity of Russia Far East and Alaska to make relatively-easy shore-hugging voyages between the two continents.
That there were conections between the eastern and Western hemispheres is supported in a theory of an early-1400s-AD Chinese gold mine in Cape Breton (on the east coast of Canada!) extolled in Paul Chiasson's book The Island of Seven Cities, and in accounts of the far-ranging voyages of Chinese travellers 600  years ago, such as Gavin Menzies 2002 book 1421. Strangely, Menzie's book overlooks the evidence in pursuit of the same case presented in a book by Henriette Mertz (who is mentioned above) entitled Pale Ink, Two Ancient Records of Chinese Exploration in America, self-published in 1953. (Although overlapping in subject matter, and having identical letters their last names start with, which put the books side by side in alphabetical arrangement on the shelf in the bookstore, every one so far has preferred Menzie's book to Mertz's, a too-common spurning of sources of old knowledge in favour of new shiny presentations. Mertz's book is available at Alhambra Books and through ABEBOOKS.com for those interested in this overlooked gem.)
Neither Chiasson's book and Mertz's books nor their theories are mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for "Pre-Columbian Oceanic Contact." Maybe they are considered too far out there!)

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1950 Prehistoric Adena house discovered in the U.S.
June 8, 1950 Chronicle

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1950 Prehistoric hairpins and necklaces made from Florida shells and alligator teeth found in mounds in Ohio.
Gleichen Call, September 6, 1950

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1952 Mound and remains of a village discovered seven miles west of Brandon.
Crossfield Chronicle, Nov. 14, 1952

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Whiteshell Forest Reserve in SE Manitoba has boulder mosaics or “stone pictures.”
Farm and Ranch Review, Sept. 1, 1959

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Indians grave house was used in old days as a grave marker contained the things the Indian would need in the after life. 
Farm and Ranch Review, Dec. 1, 1952
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aside from mention of mounds in Ohio being used as hazards in gold courses, there is no other mention of “Indians AND mounds” from 1900 to 2000 in Alberta newspapers as of Jan. 2013 in Peel's Prairie Provinces website newspaper search

Much interesting information on "Sask. Archaeology" in the Saskatchewan Encyclopedia (on-line)