Let's Find Out

We're taking a summer break this month, but we have some updates:

You may be tired of parks named after dead white men. Kyla Tichkowsky? She's railing against a different kind of tyranny. We have parks named for: Elk. Wood Buffalo. Aspen Beach. Cypress Hills. Dinosaurs even! And yet, not one single lichen.

Why not? Lichen are, in fact, fantastically diverse and fascinating organisms. From a conservation standpoint, they are excellent bioindicators. So for conservation organizations, a lichen preserve would make a lot of sense.

Together with Kyla, we set out to understand more about lichens and their place in Edmonton's conservation scene. 

Why not? Lichen are, in fact, fantastically diverse and fascinating organisms. From a conservation standpoint, they are excellent bioindicators. So for conservation organizations, a lichen preserve would make a lot of sense.

Together with Kyla, we set out to understand more about lichens and their place in Edmonton's conservation scene. 

And we were guided into the Larch Sanctuary by Meghan Jacklin, a conservation coordinator with the Edmonton and Area Land Trust.

Zulima Acuña noticed that some of Edmonton's old riverlots are highly developed, and some not at all. She asked us to help her learn why some of them became parks and others didn't.

Zulima is a mom, teacher, and artist who has lived in Edmonton for the last ten years, and is eager to know as many stories about the land in Edmonton as her old hometown. It’s easy to take our spaces for granted: the way our roads are laid out, how big our parks are, where they are, the funny angles where some spaces meet. But Zulima’s question got us to peel back the layers a bit and see that many of the shapes and spaces we move through every day… are influenced by decisions made by land surveyors and farmers and land speculators almost a hundred and fifty years ago.

We met Zulima in Emily Murphy Park (on the site of the old Riverlot #3) on a bright but smoky day. We consulted two books about local river lots to begin answering her question: Tom Monto's Old Strathcona, Edmonton's Southside Roots and Jan Olson's Scona Lives: A History of Riverlots 13, 15, & 17.

Next, we spoke to two local history researchers who have looked at the overlap between the old riverlots and the map of modern-day Edmonton. Connor Thompson is a PhD candidate at the University of Alberta, focusing on Western Canadian history. He wrote an article in 2020 for the Edmonton City as Museum Project, "Edmonton’s River Lots: A Layer in Our History". Dylan Reade is a local documentary filmmaker and history researcher who has traced back many of the individual family stories and land sales on Edmonton's riverlots through archival documents and maps.

Back in 2016, the very first episode of Let’s Find Out was about a festival in Tofield, a town about 45 minutes southeast of Edmonton: The Snow Goose Festival. In that episode, we set out to find out how this big festival that started in the 90’s with thousands of bird watchers coming to Tofield to admire the geese migrating through in the spring became a convoy of school bus tours run by the Edmonton Nature Club. In that episode what we found out was that the festival was centred on Beaverhill Lake, which mostly dried up a decade later, leading the organizers wind down the festival. A die-hard group of goose admirers planned those bus tours - the Snow Goose Chase - to catch them in wet farm fields instead.

The first story was interesting to us because it demonstrated how quickly we can get used to big changes, and accept new normals – something called shifting baselines. Imagine our surprise and delight when we found out the festival was coming back for 2023.

How is that possible? What does it mean? Is Beaverhill Lake back?

In this episode, Chris took a field trip out to Tofield, because he sensed this would be kind of a good news story, of people who remembered the lake, remembered this celebration of birds, and wanted to breathe new life into it. The actual story was more complicated than we imagined.

Edmonton calls itself a winter city, which partly means we’ve got a lot of wintery festivals. This episode, our producer Trevor Chow-Fraser asks: what does that mean for our parks? How are they changing to live up to the winter city ideal?

Trevor started out by taking his daughter Eliot to Victoria Park to take advantage of its free snowshoeing and fort building. He spoke to activity leader Ryanne Osguthorpe. Victoria Park is one of a few parks in Edmonton that now feature geodesic dome warming huts in the winter.

That got us curious about warming huts in parks, so we met up with Danielle Soneff — an industrial and social designer in Edmonton who created warming huts for a pilot project to bring them into city parks. She’s now an MA student at the University of Alberta, studying winter city design and governance.

We talked about why she feels that pilot project failed, and what good winter design principles could be brought to the new Warehouse Park (final name TBD) downtown.

Finally, we spoke with Isla Tanaka, a winter city planner for the City of Edmonton. We asked her how its winter city strategy has evolved over the years, and how it might change now after the first decade of implementation.

Full show notes

Soni Dasmohapatra asks: Who is Sohan Singh Bullar? Why is there a park named after them?

Mathew Thomson asks: what’s the process for naming a park in Edmonton? We investigate: who has authority, how much do names mean, and what happens when someone goes rogue on Google Maps?

Karen Unland asks: When did we stop dumping garbage into river valley spaces and start turning them into parks?

In this episode, former historian laureate Shirley Lowe walks us through three stories: how the Grierson Hill dump became Louise McKinney Park, how the Strathcona dump and gravel mine became Hawrelak (aka Mayfair) Park, and how the Beverly Dump became Rundle Park.

Shelley Jodoin-Chouinard asks what Edmonton’s smallest park is.

Kay Rollans asks who hung two effigies from the 142nd Street Bridge amid 1965 protests against a freeway slated to be built through MacKinnon Ravine. This episode is part of our season exploring the history of parks and natural areas in Edmonton.