#uh it's what EDMONTONIANS want

[the-quotable-alberta-hansard]

March 11, 2024

Mrs. Petrovic: Madam Speaker, Trudeau and his continued mission to further encroach into the lives of Albertans is ignoring the voices of us in this matter. That is why Bill 204 is a necessary piece of legislation to make sure Albertans will be heard loud and clear. This is not just a hypothetical concern, either. Last August the city of Edmonton council voted 10 to 3 in favour of moving forward with a plan to potentially establish a national urban park in Edmonton’s river valley. This is not what Albertans want. From my experience leading a municipality as a former mayor, I can attest that this is not the approach Albertans want.

[allbeendonebefore]

“For all of that, the notion that Alberta’s politics stifles all dissent, or made queer life impossible was not historically accurate. This research illustrates how the largely middle-class activists and organizers strove to make it safe... to be queer in Edmonton. And it makes plain how much further they had to go than their peers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.” “It is suggestive of the challenges of being queer in Edmonton that so much energy and resources went into counselling individuals struggling with their sexual orientation and negotiating the commensurate identities issues.”

this is very hard hitting to me because waking up today in this reality was an ordeal. but it makes me think a lot.

i don’t want to glamourize or valourize the difficulty of being queer in the “tough” city too much because i don’t want to fall into the trap of queer life in edmonton = suffering only but. at the same time it makes me reflect a lot on how i’ve perceived and chosen to personify and characterize my city (is it mine yet? has it always been?) in art over the years and so rambles about that follow

i designed Ed in sub-rural high school a few years after returning to Canada from post 9/11 midwestern America when i was filled with this dissatisfaction of being "home” only to discover that my life was matching next to none of the imagined past i had growing up in Edmonton, and trying to reconcile the gap between this mythical multicultural utopia in the Big City just out of my reach that existed only in my memory and this growing awareness of the rest of Canada looking down on us as a province and as a city- as I discovered firsthand in a rural k-9 school (which even this past year was subject to a horrific hate crime), this was not an entirely undeserved reputation.

of course during this time i was dealing with several battles that didn’t occur to me until later as having any real impact on who i was: all my classmates assuming upon barely interacting with me that i was a lesbian on the grounds of not admitting to liking anyone Ever; being referred to as “that” because my gender expression was considered deviant by my peers; grappling with the sexual deviance associated with hobbies at the time that were far far far from the mainstream at this point (anime and online social networks! gasp); protesting bill 44 without a second thought as to how people would perceive me after; coming out as asexual to relative strangers in a time where there were still only 2.5 orientations and identities barely spoken aloud; and graduating (finally!) into Big City University where I was struggling to reconcile things like being a notorious atheist completely against religious fundamentalism with my Not a Sexuality TM with my Yaoi is for Perverts Which I Am Not with my Feminism is Too Political For Me and so on and so forth.

(so you can see why when i was stepping between ultra religious conservative alberta and weird lefty university life i made these characters somewhat ironically with all the yaoi tropes and demanded that they not be shipped together. lmao. what was i thinking honestly. was it a challenge for others or for me? was it the start of a dialogue or the end of one?)

and sequestered as i was in my little southside university life a certain born and raised Edmontonian from an inner city north side school background, as desperate to escape the city as i was to be repatriated to it, decided this was insufficient and thrust me into directly confronting the fears and anxieties i had picked up through osmosis of Scary Downtown Edmonton. It’s not really a coincidence that the two major changes in Ed’s design (his queerness and his Indigeneity) happened at northside transit stops, both at night, in the company of the incorrigible quatschmachen). I remember us joking about Ed as “the gay cousin” after a particular journey to a discount theatre with a distinct sketchy reputation just a hop skip and a jump from the industrial, uh, charm of the meat packing plants and Belvedere LRT station and, naturally, it stuck. The myth in my head was beginning to grasp onto the realities that I had once been disenchanted by and was desperate to cover up. And it stuck.

And it stuck and I spent a long time “justifying” it in my head, because you have to remember up until this point that personifying a place with any “difference” (in ethnicity, ability, etc) or acknowledging the real struggles of being queer in a place outside of the sacrilegiously gay-and-silly and yes subversive heta-verse... it wasn’t acceptable in fandom. It was rarely done and when it was it was often met with extremely virulent hostility, hostility in similar-but-different ways to the hostility i faced for accidentally expressing “difference” that I didn’t realize I was expressing in rural backwater Alberta.

And it stuck and suddenly it became a gateway into this secret untold history of the city.

And maybe I will write more about that as my research progresses. but there you go, a little insight into why I designed Ed the way I did and why I’ve upheld that particular characterization for all these years. And now a decade after designing him exist the citations to back up my choices, on one hand, and the resolve to keep fighting, to keep writing that history in spite of these odds that look insurmountable from the outside.

it’s tough being the tough city but the battles are worth fighting. and that’s why i do what i do.

[battle-of-alberta]

Chapter 4: Day Job - Easter Eggs

Hello again and welcome, if you read and enjoyed Chapter 4 of Battle of Alberta but wanted a closer look at some of the stuff I referenced or incorporated, links to more information, or just an explanation of my thought processes, you’re in the right place. Feel free to reply to this post or shoot me a message with any questions you have about this chapter I could add. 

Page 1

Hello Calgary is a song that was stuck in my head for weeks after I decided to use it as Calvin’s alarm! I linked to the version I had stuck in my head (which is also the version used for the intro to the Alberta Advantage Podcast), but there’s tons of other versions. It’s not only Calgary’s song, it was actually written for hundreds of American cities, but Calgary seemed to take a particular shine to the song that really stuck. 

Howdy is one of the two Olympic mascots for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. Calgary was the first city to use two mascots for the Olympics; Howdy and Hidy welcomed people to the city with good old fashioned Western hospitality... I read a piece from 2007 quoting councilors on the decision to remove them from the city’s welcome signs saying something to the effect of “it’s time Calgary outgrew them!” which is pretty sad... obviously Calvin hates to let go of things.

Page 2

Calvin’s apartment is based on the Keynote Penthouse in downtown Calgary, which is just as ridiculous as i draw it. In fact, it’s MORE ridiculous in the photos.

His socks aren’t real but based on the Calgary flag, which literally has a cowboy hat on it. Because.

Page 3

Bankers Hall on the left side of the first panel is part of two twin towers in downtown Calgary designed to resemble cowboy hats on top. I wish I were making this up.

The Calgary Tower was built in the 70s to be the tallest building in the city by Husk- er, uh, “Malamute” Energy. It was surpassed at almost breakneck speeds by the rest of the skyline. And it shoots fire sometimes because of course it does.

Page 4

I would NEVER put real people in the background of my comics, especially not caricatures of infamous prime ministers. Don’t @ me.

The firm handshake thing is dedicated to an ad for a certain business school in calgary that i saw all over the airport one time when I was there that I can’t recall at the moment. 

On that note: the western overlay on his business talk is also real. A few months ago in a class I took, a guest speaker mentioned that a “gentleman’s handshake” was still an acceptable form of contract in Calgary, shivered, and said “no thank you”. I was laughing so hard internally I also choked internally.

Page 7

The Lethbridge viaduct which is symbolic of the city is confusingly also named the High Level Bridge, which as an Edmontonian annoys me, but I begrudgingly admit that Lethbridge’s was first.

Page 8

Lethbridge recently surpassed Red Deer as the third biggest city by population, which is still tiny at about 1/8th-1/10th the size of Edmonton or Calgary. They say “no hard feelings” since they often switch back and forth in this role, although since recent cuts to post secondary on top of a pandemic it is unlikely that RDC will be a fully fledged university anytime soon.

Ed’s weird socialist agenda faces only minor setbacks. He’s allowed to elect people too, you know.

Page 9

For the love of god LEAVE YOUR CLIPPINGS ON THE LAWN!

I just assume Lilith enjoys ikebana for reasons

Page 10

okay ngl Amazing Race Canada 2019 (Season 7) was the best season and I’m not just saying that because I’m biased towards my team. They did ikebana in the Edmonton episode and my heart... 

Astounding Trek is what they refer to it as in Kim’s Convenience (S03E11)

Seriously my team is the best team do NOT @ me. 

Page 11

I believe the beer in panel one is from Coulee Brew Co. This is more for local colour than for endorsement, I don’t drink so you’ll have to tell me if it’s any good.

For non-Canadians or for Canadians who missed my subtle dragging, I am referencing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (who said the quote) and outgoing Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer (who recently got into a scandal about pretending to be an insurance broker when he was not qualified).

This comic took place before the federal election of October 2019, where Justin Trudeau scraped by with a sobering minority government. Many people across the country are frustrated with Trudeau for different (and evolving) reasons, but he is particularly hated in western Canada and especially Alberta for qualities including his perceived weakness and his poor efforts to ‘compromise’ on such projects as the Keystone XL pipeline. 

Personally, I don’t agree with many reasons that people in Alberta hate him, but I still have a lot of reasons to hate him anyway. He’s not the woke bae you think he is, and he is a coward. However, thats not the point of this comic.

Page 12

The cartoon Calvin is watching is an episode of Dudley Do-Right. I made the horrible mistake of re-watching the live action version after drawing this. It was Bad with no redeeming qualities beyond Brendan Fraser’s face.

The 60s were a hip and happening time in Canada on a national level: apart from the threat of nuclear war, we were busy beavers celebrating the country’s centennial and the world expo in Montreal. Provincial leaders started meeting with each other for the first time, bilingualism and multiculturalism were making headlines, and the Socreds (Social Credit Party) were in the middle of their almost dynastic reign in Alberta.

Page 13

Fort McMurray is connected to the rest of the world either by air or by a highway which is so prone to danger and bottle necking that it is nicknamed the Highway of Death. Edmonton is the most major destination at the end of this highway, and thus Mac is quite used to crashing at Ed’s place when things go south (which seems to be an awful lot.) He’s happy for access to cheap beer.

Page 14

This is Patches’ first appearance in the main storyline. He is a rescue slash emotional support dog and a malamute/husky/??? mix. Mac pretends he’s a guard dog but he really only guards Mac’s brain.

Mac picks up a lot of east coast slang, ‘darts’ for cigarettes being one example. 

The take-out packages are the kids boxes from Oodle Noodle... many fond memories of getting take out with my friends from there ;u;

Page 17

The nostalgia panel is full of Edmonton memorabilia including: A Klondike Days flag, a photo of young Wayne Gretzky, old and proposed city flags, a flag for the CFL team (which I deliberately drew backwards), a redesigned Oilers logo from the mid aughts, and of course the Alberta flag in the center. Many of these items have colonial/racist baggage associated with them.

Page 22

Panel one is a delicious shot of some green onion cakes, the unofficial civic food of Edmonton. 

Vulcan Ale is indeed a real thing you can buy with your money - it’s an American beer from Montana but available in western Canada. See also the Federation of Beer based in Alberta... we are a province of Trekkies (although if you ask Ed, he actually prefers Star Wars)

Page 23

Pizza 73 is just whatever the worst generic pizza chain in your area is but for Alberta (Eastern Canadians, think Pizza Pizza).

That’s all for now folks!

[leeb2s]

Hello! I’m Goalie lover, or Lee, or uh whatever you want to call me— Anyways, I’m an Edmontonian and Loyal to the Oil, and have been an on off hockey fan growing up, but now I’m here to stay! (thank you maturity).

But other than the oilers, I love the krakens, growing to love the sens, and watching the capitals quietly.

My favourites on the oilers consist of Yamo, Skinner, Clouder, as well as the dynamic duo, I do love all of them though <3

Off the oilers my favs are Dylan Strome, Alex Debrincat, and Mitch Marner! And I’m always a huge goalie lover, obvs.

Anyways idk what else to put here so yea.

NOTE: IF U ARE FOLLOWED BY ASNAZUM-ART THATS MY MAIN HELLO! <3

[allbeendonebefore]

Hapo Reads Calgary History pt 2. 1896-1939

Some MORE biased Edmontonian notes from ME

- Johnny Mac’s policy was (white) anglo saxon protestants from the british isles as settlers in the west, while Clifford Sifton threw the doors wide open to “The Scum of Europe” (both groups of whom are my ancestors lol). This book completely fails to mention several times re: immigration, suffrage etc that it was whites only so... there’s that

- “Calgary has been said to be more American in style than, say, Edmonton” see I read everything regarding Edmonton as throwing shade in this book and yet, how is it shade to be called less American? please, Calgary. (also “than, say, Edmonton” as if you had to think of Other Points of Comparison Other than US, your Eternal Rivals for All Eternity)

- “business and burlesque” in response to edmonton becoming the capital B)

- the big stink aka chinooks dont mean you DONT HAVE TO WORK

- Its time for the Calgary Dominion Exhibition aka ‘is calgary world class yet’ (no). There was a wild west show, automobiles, and a dirigible (which like all dirigibles caught fire and exploded)

- “WHHHHHY DOES MEDICINE HAT GET TO HAVE ALL HELL FOR A BASEMENT AND NOT MEEEEEEE WAAAHH” aka a bunch of entrepreneurs scrambling all over themselves trying to be The First to get Calgary natural gas power

- “oh my god that one wild west show we booked was So good... what if we had a week long rodeo............... but just once thats enough”

- 1912 ALL THE COWBOYS AND COWGIRLS EVER ALL THE WAY FROM MEXICO AND THE STATES CONVERGE ON CALGARY AND HAVE A GOOD TIME but we don’t need to do that again we’re good

- “um... should natives compete against non natives :/” [Tom Three Persons from the Blood Reserve is the Only Canadian to win any of the events] “OKAY NEVER MIND 

- modern cal looks back on the first stampede like ‘there were no time limits back then you just... watched the rodeo until they stopped bucking... how did we manage”

- THAT WAS SO FUN LETS HAVE ANOTHER- oh its WWI

- Hey what if we redesigned Calgary to look like VENICE ON THE PRAIRIES- oh wait its WWI

- OK NOW WE DEFINITELY WANT ANOTHER - HEy WHy IS WinnIPEG GetTING THE StAMPEdE ITS OuRS

- Finally the Exhibition is Back and Fred McCall and Wop May are doing crazy air stunts that they did as pilots in the war for our entertainmen- oh my god Fred’s going down he’s landed on the merry-go-round its..... everyones fine but the plane impaled on the merry-go-round looks like some kind of... Metaphor for wanting to forget The War

- Finally, the Exhibition and Stampede are UNITED AS ONE and nobody came because no one could afford the ticket prices.

- Nellie McClung and Bob Edwards FIGHT in the leg and then Bob Edwards dies unrelatedly

- we need to have MORE PARTIES... what about... A WINTER SPORTS FESTIVAL WE WILL... PUT A SKI JUMP ON TOP OF A ROOF... ON TOP OF A HILL. YES.

- this book keeps waxing poetic Every Chapter about “this event foreshadowed the 1988 WINTER OLYMPICS WOW AMAZING” and i realize this book was published less than a decade after said olympics but considering i live in a world where Calgary is STILL TRYING TO RECAPTURE THE 1988 OLYMPICS PRESTIGE even though the Olympics have been Proven EVIL and there is no financial benefit... it’s mostly just Sad

- seriously calgary you dont need the olympics when you have NAHEED NENSHI...

- Sunday Morning pasttimes in 1920s calgary: Listening to Back to the Bible Hour with William “Bible Bill” Aberhart on the radio, driving out with a picnic to Turner Valley to watch them light gas on fire

- 1920s calgary, arms full of bogus certificates and shares he bought off a vendor on the street due to the natural gas strike, “I’m an adult!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!1!”

- 1930s calgary, crying in the street surrounded by bogus shares and also The Depression “WHY ISNT LIFE FAIR TO ME”

- The climate was still better than Sask so crops kept growing which was nice but it was still bad enough that Cal decided to invent a little party of angry farmers and workers called the CCF... which you may have heard of as the NDP B)

- Ed: Finally something Good and Useful comes out of Calgary Cal: nah i give up on socialism what about... WE JUST PRINT OUR OWN MONEY AND STOP PAYING DEBTS.

- Bert: here is your allowance of funny money- I mean, uh, your Prosperity Certificate Cal: sweet can I give this to you to pay back taxes Bert: No Cal: can I use it in stores Bert: Yes Cal: SWEET HEY ED CAN I BUY- Ed: [polishing the counter of the HBC] [flips sign from open to closed and locks the door] Cal: ok i will go to the bank and take out a LOAN of REAL MONEY Cal: ... WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CANT TAKE MONEY OUT OF BANKS WHEN I DONT PAY OFF MY DEBTS???? 

- Cal: wait all that gas that was impossible to cap wAS ON TOP OF AN OIL RESERVE THAT WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT ALONE TO RECOVER PROPERLY

- Conclusion: Calgary continues to be a spoiled baby who doesn’t understand how money works

[allbeendonebefore]

Smol CPR cities headcanons?

did someone mention the CPR!?!?! [slides everything off desk]

to be honest i haven’t read nearly enough on it but here’s some thoughts

- obligatory edmontonian “HOW DARE THE CPR LEAVE US FOR DEAD LIKE THIS AND GIVE THE TRAIN TO SOME GOD FORSAKEN PATCH OF DIRT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE” grumbling here

- winnie in true wild west spirit standing knee deep in water with one hand full of cash and a pistol in the other like ‘give me the train, damn it’, selkirk shrinks in the bg

- ‘what’s this kid doing in this pile of bones’ ‘he looks like a pile of bones’ ‘how about we call him reggie he looks like a reggie’

- ok but like etienne taking the cross country ride to vancouver for the first time, john a’s wife like “I WANT TO BE THE FIRST TO SEE EVERYTHING and etienne like ‘uh we’re at the front’ her like ‘no i want to be AT THE REAL FRONT OF THE TRAIN’ and then him getting her a box and awkwardly like hanging on to her while they are literally sitting on the cowcatcher of the train

- etienne pulling into vancouver in this state and a young and smol van man just sees him sitting at the front of the train and inwardly thinks ‘this is the most hardcore man i have ever seen’

- victoria sniffling and wringing handkerchiefs and generally crying about not getting the CPR but also refusing to ponder the logistics of getting the train over the georgia strait??? 

- i want to say something about RAILWAY HOTELS but i can’t figure out What

- obviously they all played with toy trains as kids although obviously with bitter resentment ed took cal’s without permission because he felt like he was owed it

i have more to say i feel like? but i cannot think