The Town of Edmonton was incorporated 120 years ago today

It was 120 years ago today that Edmonton was incorporated as the Town of Edmonton. In the January 9, 1892 edition of The Edmonton Bulletin, the announcement was simple and followed updates on who had visited the town recently as well as a note that John Cameron, President of the newly established Board of Trade, had been “confined to the house…with a severe cold.” The single line read: “A copy of the ordinance incorporating Edmonton as a town was received by Monday’s mail.”

Fort Edmonton had of course been around for about a century by the time Edmonton became a town. With a population of just 700, Edmonton was small but the arrival of the CPR south of the river the previous year brought with it the promise of rapid growth. It also prompted fears that South Edmonton, or Strathcona, would become the city, leaving Edmonton to remain the smaller and less important community. Thus efforts got underway to make Edmonton a town.

The first train into South Edmonton on November 25, 1891

A few weeks later on January 30, 1892, a more complete story on incorporation was published in Frank Oliver’s Edmonton Bulletin. The paper noted that incorporation would take practical effect on February 10 when the first council would be elected. It also offered a brief analysis of the reasoning behind and impact of incorporation:

“Incorporation did not become a fact on account of what Edmonton is, so much as on account of what it is to be. It is not a result of the development that has occurred – wonderful though that is, all things considered – so much as a step towards still further development.”

“It was felt that a crises had been reached in the affairs of the town in which so many have sunk so much of their capital of time and energy and money, and that united action from this time forward had become a necessity if what had been gained or made was to be preserved.”

The story went on to discuss the importance of the first town council, asserting that “there is no reason why they should not be successful, or that Edmonton should not be in a very few years, as nature plainly intended, the leading city in the Northwest.” Even then Edmontonians were clamoring for recognition!

Also in that day’s paper came notice about the first election. Nominations for a mayor and six councillors were held on February 3, 1892 at Fielder’s Hall, from 10am until noon. The election was held a week later at the same place, from 9am until 5pm. Persons qualified to vote included: “All men, unmarried women and widows, being British subjects over 21 years of age, who have been owners or householders within the municipality for a period of not less than three months next preceding the day of voting.”

Four women voted in the election, and more votes were cast than expected. “Due to an unexpected population spurt, an anomaly occurred in the statistics dealing with voter turnout. Extra ballots had to be printed to include those who were earlier excluded from the original voter list.” Matthew McCauley (after whom the McCauley neighbourhood was named) was acclaimed as Edmonton’s first mayor. There were fourteen candidates for council, and the six councillors elected alongside McCauley were Colin Strang, Daniel Fraser, Edward Carey, James Goodridge, John Cameron, and Philip Daly. The first meeting of the newly formed town council took place on February 15, 1892.

These men all had a big impact on the growing town. McCauley later represented Edmonton on the Territorial Legislature, and was a founding member of Edmonton’s school board, for which he earned the nickname “Edmonton’s Father of Education.” Strang was an accountant, and also served on the school board and the board of trade. Fraser, who operated flour mills, also served on the first council of the new formed City of Edmonton. Carey co-founded Edmonton’s first general store, Norris & Carey. Goodridge of course built Edmonton’s first brick hotel, Jasper House. Cameron was president of the board of trade and also served on the school board (the Cameron Heights neighbourhood was named in his honor). And Daly operated a pharmacy and bank before entering politics.

Strathcona followed Edmonton’s lead and was incorporated as town in 1899. Both towns experienced rapid growth – Edmonton’s population had surpassed 8000 by the time it was incorporated as a City in 1904. Once again Strathcona followed suit, becoming a city in 1907. Just five years later in 1912 the two amalgamated, setting the stage for Edmonton to grow into the city we know today.

You can see the Government of Alberta’s Location and History Profile for Edmonton in PDF here.

EPCOR’s 120th Anniversary

Last night EPCOR held an event to celebrate its 120th anniversary. A few dozen EPCOR employees, board members, VIPs, and other guests met on the 20th floor of the new tower for a brief program before being invited up to the 28th floor for a reception and the opportunity to step out onto the balcony of Edmonton’s tallest building. President & CEO Don Lowry spoke briefly about EPCOR’s history and the opportunities ahead. He also thanked Mayor Mandel for his leadership and presented him with a pair of ice grips for his shoes, a nod to the Mayor’s recent slip and fall.

The 28th floor of the building is where EPCOR’s executive and legal offices will be located, and they are set to move in this week – the last of EPCOR’s employees to do so. I’m told the interior was being worked on right up to the reception, but the last minute completion didn’t show. Guests were invited out onto the balcony for a unique view of Edmonton at night.

Looking north

Looking west

Looking back at downtown

There seem to be more opportunities to look south (from the Crowne Plaza, Coast Edmonton House, or the CWB building, etc.) so the view north is not one most Edmontonians are familiar with. It’s amazing at night to see just how far the lights go. You can see my post about the new EPCOR Tower here.

Founded on October 23, 1891 as the Edmonton Electric Lighting and Power Company, EPCOR has grown significantly over the years, and today provides water, wastewater, and electrical distribution services to over 1 million people across Western Canada. With a series of acquisitions in Arizona and New Mexico, EPCOR is becoming a series player outside of Canada as well.

Here are a few highlights from EPCOR’s history:

1891: Electric lights come on in Edmonton.
1903: First water treatment plant built at Rossdale
1933: Edmonton’s first traffic light installed at Jasper Avenue and 101 Street
1955: Rossdale switches from coal to gas
1976: E.L. Smith Water Treatment Plant opens
1996: EPCOR Utilities Inc. formed
1999: Aqualta renamed EPCOR
2009: Capital Power Corporation established

EPCOR was named one of Western Canada’s 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures and one of Alberta’s Top 50 Employers in 2010 (see a full list of awards here). President & CEO Don Lowry was named Alberta Venture’s Business Person of the Year in 2010 as well.

Here’s to another 120 years!

City’s Standing As Metropolis Declared To Hinge On Coliseum

Recently I have been doing some research on the history of Rexall Place. I thought it would be useful to understand what happened in the past when trying to make sense of our current downtown arena debate. As part of that research, I spent some time at the City of Edmonton archives. I wasn’t sure what to expect or how to approach my research, so I simply asked for anything related to the construction of the Coliseum. Sherry Bell, Reference Archivist at the Archives, was incredibly helpful and came back with a thick file folder labeled “File 1, 1963-1974”. She told me it was the first of many, just the tip of the iceberg.

I read through the entire folder, taking notes as I went. The documents inside, mostly clipped Edmonton Journal articles, tell the story of how the Coliseum came to be, from the push for a downtown arena in the early 1960s through to the construction of what we now call Rexall Place in the early 1970s.

The title of this post comes from an article in the Edmonton Journal published on September 12, 1963. In it, Alderman Les Bodie made his case for the proposed downtown coliseum of the day, saying:

“I think the successful city will be the one with a stable economic base combined with a stimulating economic climate, and the coliseum will be a major factor in attracting interest in our city.”

It was one of many gems I found in the file, some of which I have shared below, and some of which I’ll share in future posts.

In total, I recorded 93 headlines (I skipped some). Here’s the breakdown of the articles I looked at by year:

Lots was written early on in the debate, and less was written as construction got underway and progressed. Here’s a sample of the headlines:

Coliseum Site Studied – May 11, 1963
City Approves $10 Million Coliseum Plan – June 25, 1963
City Has ‘Escape Hatch’ If Coliseum Voted Down – August 29, 1963
City’s Standing As Metropolis Declared To Hinge On Coliseum – September 12, 1963
Mayor Hits Coliseum Critics – September 24, 1963
Coliseums Seem To Spark Growth – September 28, 1963
Coliseum Complex Rejected By Almost Half Ratepayers – October 17, 1963
Mayor Anticipates Verdict On New Coliseum Proposal – March 1, 1965
A Coliseum Or A New Arena? – March 25, 1965
Alderman Warns City Taxpayers Will Have To Subsidize Coliseum – July 20, 1966
Ex arena to be constructed just north of Gardens – April 22, 1972
Oilers won game but public the real winner – November 11, 1974

I was immediately struck by how similar today’s debate is to the debate in the 1960s. In short: a downtown arena is proposed and tied to the future of the city, people argue over the location and other details, but the process really gets stuck on the money.

One of the first documents I found in the file was a pamphlet published by The Hamly Press (which as far as I can tell no longer exists) entitled, “the Coliseum Plebiscite: a test of our Faith in Edmonton as a Great Metropolis of the North West”. Here are some of the statements found inside:

“A downtown showplace that will publicize Edmonton as a progressive, positive-thinking city, developing rapidly in all phases of modern city live and endeavor.”
“The Coliseum Complex will lead the way in revitalizing downtown activity.”
“A Vital Necessity for Downtown Development!”
“Construction of the Coliseum Complex will be the city’s first step in the fulfilment of Edmonton’s remarkable plan for the renewal of the downtown city centre. There is little doubt that perseverance with this project now will be a decisive factor in the eventual completion of the entire Civic Centre plan.”
And a quote from Mayor Roper: “This plebiscite will be a test of the vision of the ratepayers of our city. How much do we want Edmonton to lead all Canada in bold, imaginative downtown development?”

Edmonton Journal writer Ben Tierney, working in the City Hall Bureau, wrote a lot about the proposed project. In a September 24, 1963 article entitled “Other Cities Find Value in Coliseums” he highlighted what he saw as “three basic benefits”:

Attraction of major sports, entertainment and cultural events that the city could not otherwise hope to obtain.
Attraction of outside dollars to the city through increased convention activity as well as non-local attendance at coliseum events.
Increased tax revenue for the city through construction of new downtown building encouraged by the coliseum’s construction, and a revitalized city centre.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Of course, the initial plan never came to fruition, and subsequent attempts to rescue it failed also. On October 17, 1963 the Edmonton Journal reported the results of the plebiscite that would have authorized the City to borrow $14,250,000 to finance the coliseum:

“The coliseum complex was strongly backed by the former city council, the Edmonton and District Labor Council, the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce and Jaycees, the Edmonton Exhibition Association, the Edmonton Area Civic Centennial Committee, and the Edmonton Building and Construction Trades Council.”

“55% of voters favored the two money bylaws…but a 2/3 majority was required. Opposition to the project centered on the costs involved.”

Over the next ten years, various attempts to salvage the idea were made, but ultimately the cheaper Edmonton Coliseum was built instead. I wonder how different things might have been had the downtown complex gone ahead?

Edmonton’s 2010 Grey Cup Festival Never Happened

In November 2010, Edmonton hosted the 98th Grey Cup. The Montreal Alouettes defeated the Saskatchewan Roughriders for the second straight year to capture the CFL’s top prize. Of course, the event was more than just a football game. We’re festival city, and we turned the Grey Cup into a very successful festival. There was something for everyone, and downtown was full of people, which unfortunately doesn’t happen very often. It wasn’t a perfect event, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an Edmontonian who would consider it anything less than a success.

Here’s what Todd Babiak wrote (archive):

Ten years from now, only the statisticians and the really, really heartbroken will recall the winner of Sunday’s Grey Cup game in Edmonton.

What we would like to remember, in 10 years, is that many thousands of warmly audacious people from Saskatchewan came to witness Edmonton’s transition from a cosy little prairie city to something else.

I would go further and say that we absolutely need to remember what we accomplished with the Grey Cup Festival. We need to be proud of it, we need to learn from it, and we need to improve upon it.

But, the Grey Cup Festival never happened.

If you try to visit the festival website, at http://www.greycupfestival2010.com, you’re redirected to the website of the Edmonton Eskimos. As far as the web is concerned, the festival never happened. And in 2011 and beyond, the web is all that matters. Think about it for a second – less than two months after the event took place, the most important online record of it has vanished.

Ignoring the fact that the website barely worked during the festival (which is an important, but different issue), this is troubling. I have written before about the need to preserve our local, digital, cultural artifacts. The web is the single most important platform for doing so. The web is accessible and pervasive. Too often, however, it is not permanent. We can and must do better. We also need to stop thinking of event websites as only being relevant during the event.

Now obviously the festival happened. And there are other places online that provide evidence and a record of it. There’s the Wikipedia entry, the many blog posts that were written, thousands of photos uploaded to the web, etc. But all of these should be ancillary to the event website, not a substitute for it. And there’s no guarantee that they’ll exist in the future. For instance, you can read Todd’s article today, but in six months it will no longer be available on the web (hopefully my archive link is…this is a problem the Journal is aware of and hopes to address).

The saddest part about this particular instance is that I guessed it would happen. I should have spoken up sooner. The good news is that I archived the entire site on November 27, 2010. You can see the front page here.

I don’t think this is an easy problem to solve, but I believe it is important that we do solve it. I’m going to do what I can to help educate others about why this is so important, I’ll continue learning from the very smart people we have in the “archival” business, and I’ll continue doing what I can to help archive.

Looking back on 35 years at the City of Edmonton with Joyce Tustian

In November, Joyce Tustian celebrated her 35th year as a City of Edmonton employee. She currently holds the position of Deputy City Manager (archive), an office that was created around her in April 2008. Last month, it was announced that Joyce would be retiring at the end of January, with most of the DCMO’s responsibilities folding back into the City Manager’s office. I sat down with Joyce just before Christmas to reflect on her time at the City of Edmonton.

When Joyce started at the City of Edmonton, she planned to work for just two years. “I had a big misconception about what the City would be like.” Like most people, she figured it would be dry and very rule-bound, but actually found that the City offered tons of opportunity. “You can do many things with the same employer,” she told me. I wonder if anyone at the City has done as many things as Joyce has! When I asked her what areas of the City she had worked in, she replied “everything but transportation and buildings.” Joyce told me she has always been interested in transit, though she has never really worked with the department. She noted that transit really impacts families and is “so integral to the kind of city you want to build.”

Joyce started her career at the City of Edmonton in 1975, working as a public information officer in the Parks & Recreation department. On her first day, thousands of Edmontonians were streaming through City Hall to pay their respects to former Mayor William Hawrelak, who had recently died of a heart attack. Over the years she worked her way into management, and in May 1995, Joyce took over as the general manager of Community & Family Services. Just a couple of years later, it was decided that Joyce would take over as general manager of the newly formed Community Services department (her main rival for the position was another longtime City employee, Maria David-Evans, who left after the restructuring). During her time in that role, Joyce was also responsible for the Emergency Response department. After a nationwide search in 2003 to find a new general manager for Corporate Services, Joyce was selected. While in that role, Joyce led the department through the “Shared Services Business Model” review. She held the position for five years, until the Deputy City Manager’s Office was formed in 2008 (two other roles were created at the same time – Chief Financial Officer, and General Manager of Capital Construction).

Joyce has had the opportunity to lead some really interesting projects at the City of Edmonton. In 1999, when she was acting general manager of the Emergency Response department, Joyce was tasked with making sure the City survived Y2K. It was her responsibility to outline the City’s plans in case things went south. “We believe that we are ready,” she assured everyone.

Another project she spearheaded was Racism Free Edmonton. As Deputy City Manager, Joyce is responsible for the implementation of the City’s Diversity and Inclusion Policy. “I take great pride in championing the Racism Free Edmonton initiative,” she declares on the website.

Perhaps the project Joyce is best known for was the merger of Community & Family Services and Parks & Recreation to create the Community Services department in 1997. It was part of then-city manager Bruce Thom’s reorganization plan that trimmed the number of City departments from thirteen to eight. When she was interviewed about leading the new department, Joyce told the Edmonton Journal, “my bottom line is I want to make it easier for citizens to access city services without having to know the city as well as I do.” Looking back on the merger, Joyce told me it was “a really rare opportunity,” to get to set things up the way you want to. She considers it a big success, noting that many other cities have since followed Edmonton’s model.

More recently, Joyce led the web renewal and was the project sponsor for the 311 initiative. Both projects “were about transparency and ease of accessibility.” When I mentioned some of the criticism that 311 has received, Joyce acknowledged that “more needs to move to 311 and then to the web” but is confident the initiative is “past the struggles.” For Joyce, 311 is the first major citizen-facing outcome of the investment the City has made in automation (ERP systems, etc).

The behind-the-scenes automation is just one part of a larger journey the City has embarked on. Joyce described it as “moving from an organizational structure that works well for us to one that works well for citizens.” The ability to have standardization, and to break down hierarchies, will help the City make it easier for citizens to access services and information. We touched on open data, and noting that automation should help make it possible, Joyce said there’s “very little that we do that shouldn’t be accessible to the public.”

Another big, related change has been the shift away from independent units and into one organization (something that increased automation has helped make possible). Joyce said Edmonton has been considered a “municipal leader in shared services.” Though the shift had already started, a major reorganization in 1987 “really paved the way.” Subsequent reorganizations have pushed the City further toward the “one organization” vision, though Joyce made it clear that the City is “still very much on the path”.

Perhaps the biggest change has been the focus on strategy (a word that many City of Edmonton employees have come to associate with Joyce). As soon as we started talking about strategy, Joyce said “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” I suspect she’s fond of that statement. Joyce told me her recent work on the City’s strategic vision has been one of the most rewarding things she has done. “We have always been good operationally, but now we spend lots of time and energy on strategy.” She talked about the City’s six “Way Ahead” plans, and praised the most recent City Council for having “a willingness to commit.” Joyce also said Mayor Mandel deserves credit for aligning everyone around what kind of City we want to be.

Joyce deserves a lot of credit too. One of the biggest challenges Joyce faced was during her time with the Emergency Response department. She was only supposed to work with the department for a short time, but was “never afraid to work on the fundamental issues.” And so she did. The department was losing a lot of people to retirement, and was having difficulty recruiting. Joyce recognized that the problems had been predictable, and set about implementing a plan focused on data, intelligence, and strategy. She has been able to make this work throughout her career.

Public involvement is something that the City needs to work on, Joyce told me. She recognizes that there are lots of Edmontonians with great ideas, and agreed that “we need to get better at engaging those people.” Looking at the City Centre Airport and the public hearings that took place, Joyce noted there were at least three conversations taking place, “at the mic, in the room, and outside,” but that the City hasn’t traditionally done a good job of recognizing the latter. There’s lots of room to improve.

I asked Joyce about the people she’s worked with during her time at the City. She thought about it for a minute, and realized that there have been so many people that she’s interacted with over the years. The one who had the biggest impact, however, was Cy Armstrong. “If I had any doubt about something, I’d talk to Cy.” He was city manager in the mid-1980s, actually the first city manager we had after then Mayor Laurence Decore dismantled the council-commission government. According to the book Alberta’s Local Governments: Politics and Democracy, Armstrong was for a time the most highly paid city manager in Canada, earning an annual salary of $120,000. “Much of what I am as a manager was shaped by Cy,” Joyce told me.

Joyce told me it’s an exciting time to be a civil servant (she has enjoyed being part of the iPad pilot project). “You can see the impact you have, you’re doing real work.” She described the City as an organization where you’re very close to decision makers, and obviously one that is “never dull.” Joyce also noted the strong sense of community at the City. For example, Joyce and many other employees have made it a tradition to start the day by singing carols for the five days leading up to Christmas! “Working for the City has been the making of many people – it has certainly been the making of me.”

Joyce will continue in her role until the end of the month, and though she’ll move onto other things, she’s staying here in Edmonton. “I won’t miss budget time,” she told me, but will miss “feeling connected and always having something new” come across her desk (she recalled opening the letter from Telus that said how much they’d pay for Ed Tel).

Joyce has definitely left her mark on the City of Edmonton, and I want to both thank her for her service, and wish her all the best in her future endeavors!

Heritage, Innovation & the Livable City: The Future of History in Edmonton

The keynote address this morning at the Edmonton Heritage Council’s first symposium was delivered, fittingly, by Edmonton’s first Historian Laureate, Ken Tingley. Titled The Future of History in Edmonton, Ken’s talk introduced a number of the topics that would be discussed throughout the symposium. It was immediately followed by “20 questions” from Linda Goyette, a sort of response that really got people thinking!

Ken talked quite a bit about the “old timer’s” and the impact they have had on the preservation of Edmonton’s history. He pointed out that although their early efforts to preserve our local history were valuable, they were often done for self-congratulatory or other selfish reasons. Linda picked up on this, asking: “Who gets to tell Edmonton’s stories? Which are excluded and which are preserved?”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Ken pointed out that history in Edmonton has always been linked to the idea of progress and to the march of civilization onward. This has had a number of impacts, not all of them positive, and Ken mentioned the way people native to the area were treated when settlers arrived as one specific example. Linda touched on this as well, and said the Rossdale lands should be the site of the proposed civic museum, an idea that garnered lots of applause.

At one point, Ken mentioned the idea that instead of “gateway to the north” we should be known as “Gibraltar of the north”. A quick search reveals that Luxembourg has already claimed that title! Linda had a quite a number of memorable comments herself, such as the idea that we should start protecting modern buildings for the future now, just as we sometimes defend our built heritage (she made it clear that we often don’t do enough).

Technology wasn’t really mentioned in the opening sessions, except for Linda asking why the complete Fort Edmonton history still hasn’t been digitized. If we’re going to be more innovative about how we preserve and share our history, I think technology is going to be key.

Ken closed his remarks with a bit of a challenge, stating that the presentation of our local history is getting more sophisticated, and could be just as innovative as other parts of urban culture. Linda’s final question complemented that idea quite nicely: “How can we work together?” Though she was referring mainly to the heritage workers in the room, I think that question applies to Edmontonians more broadly as well.

Heritage, Innovation & the Livable City: Spying on E-Town

Tonight was the kickoff of the Edmonton Heritage Council’s first ever community symposium, called Heritage, Innovation & the Livable City (on ShareEdmonton). I came across the event online a few weeks ago, and thought it would be really interesting and likely very educational. Here is the EHC’s introduction to the symposium:

“Heritage”, “innovation” and “livability” are terms not often used in relation to each other. To many people, interest in heritage seems contrary to the spirit of innovation and has little currency in the pace of urban life.

This inaugural symposium brings together community members, heritage organizations and engaging speakers to explore how Edmonton’s unique heritage has shaped—and is shaping— the city and region.

Linda Goyette was our keynote speaker this evening. She delivered a very spirited talk entitled Spying on E-Town. Linda took us on a journey across Edmonton, pointing out well-known features like the High Level Bridge as well as lesser known ones, such as the many statues around the city that help to tell the story of Edmonton. Along the way she highlighted and paid tribute to the many archivists, historians, and other heritage workers, some of whom were in the room, that ensure Edmonton’s history is not forgotten.

I wrote down a few notes from Linda’s talk to follow up on:

There are 23 distinct museums in Edmonton, but no civic museum.
A book that caught my eye, because of the subtitle as well as the publication date (2009) – Aboriginal Edmonton: A Statistics Story.
Ian Mulder, an artist responsible for many murals throughout the city. He has apparently just relocated to Toronto, unfortunately.
The City of Edmonton Archives recently hired someone dedicated to the digital side of things. Anyone have any further details?
Christian Nelson’s 3D models of Edmonton buildings are really neat and take advantage of modern technology, but they too are a form of digital preservation.

Tomorrow starts with a keynote address from Ken Tingley, Edmonton’s first historian laureate. I’m looking forward to it!

We need to preserve our local, digital, cultural artifacts

As Edmonton continues its climb toward global status, I think it’s important that we consider the digital cultural artifacts that we create along the way. It’s rare that something big happens in Edmonton (or anywhere in the world for that matter) without a website or other online presence of some kind being created. That online presence is important in the weeks and months leading up to an event, but it’s just as important after the fact too. We need to start considering that from the beginning.

Think about big events that Edmonton has hosted in recent years. The 2001 World Championships in Athletics should come to mind. If you do a search for Edmonton 2001, you’ll find:

And linked from the official IAAF website and many other pages that show up in the results, is the the Edmonton 2001 website, at http://www.2001.edmonton.com/. The problem is, that site no longer exists.

What would happen if the IAAF took down the page they are hosting? It doesn’t have to happen on purpose, it could be an unfortunate side effect of a redesign, server relocation, etc. The article at Wikipedia is pretty sparse, containing mainly result information. And the mention on the EEDC site is insignificant. It’s almost as if the event didn’t happen.

Additionally, I’d argue that none of the links that still exist tell the story of Edmonton 2001. The effort that went into it, the many volunteers and organizations that made it happen, the effect it had on the city, etc. I think it’s important that we capture that information, and that we do so online, where it is easily accessible by all.

Another more recent example would be the ICLEI World Congress, held in June 2009. The City of Edmonton has a brief page devoted to the event, but most of the information exists at the ICLEI site. That’s fine, but again we’re relying on someone else for the information, and we’re missing an opportunity to tell our story. The advantage that the ICLEI had over Edmonton 2001 is that many bloggers wrote about the event and many photographers posted photos, and their content will likely continue to exist for quite some time. The new Transforming Edmonton blog will help too, I think.

The idea of digital preservation applies to smaller-scale events too. Try to find an online presence for the 2005 K-Days (now Capital EX), the year the event’s attendance record was set. Or try to find out about the 2008 Fringe festival.

I recognize that there’s costs associated with preserving our online cultural artifacts. Someone has to pay for them, and someone has to maintain them. And if we go that extra step and treat some online presences as legacy projects with updates and other information to tell our story, there’s obviously costs associated with that too. I think the costs would be quite minimal, however, and definitely worth it.

Perhaps this is something for the Edmonton Heritage Council to tackle? Or the Edmonton Historical Board? Or maybe just you and me. Either way, we need to start taking digital preservation more seriously.

I'm sad to see CNET's yellow and green go

cnet Earlier this week, Dan Farber posted a preview of CNET’s new, improved look. The main changes are to the logo (the pipe between the “c” and “net” is now gone, as you can see to the right) and the color scheme (yellow and green have been replaced with red, black, and grey). I’ll admit that I like the new design, because it is cleaner and simpler. At the same time however, a part of my own personal web history is dying along with the yellow and green.

When I was in junior high (grade seven if I remember correctly), living in Inuvik, NT, I had a summer job at the Inuvik Centennial Library. Part of my job was to scan in old yearbooks and other volumes so that they could be viewed (and presumably searched) using a computer. The other part of my job was to assist library patrons in using the computers and the web (this was around 1996, so the web was still new to most people). Both of these jobs meant that I had a lot of free time, either waiting for the slower scanner to do its thing, or waiting for people to need assistance. To pass the time I would read whatever technology news I could find online. In 1996, that meant CNET’s News.com.

Every morning, I was greeted by the yellow and green coloring of CNET’s properties. My passion (or addiction) for following tech news started at that library, reading News.com. I daresay I became quite fond of the yellow and green!

Over the years I have visited News.com less frequently, of course, due to the appearance of blogs like TechCrunch and aggregators like Techmeme and FriendFeed. Occasionally I’ll still check it out, but usually I find myself clicking through from Techmeme. News.com is no longer the destination for me.

For a trip down memory lane, check out the Wayback Machine. The version of News.com from December 22, 1996 is particularly trippy!

So long, CNET yellow and green, and thanks for all the fish.

Broadcast radio turns 100

It was on December 24th, 1906 that Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden produced the world’s first public radio broadcast. When you consider how many technologies have met their deaths in recent decades, it’s amazing that radio is still so prevalent today (Via Engadget):

On Dec. 24, 1906, Fessenden fired up his transmitting station at Brant Rock, Mass., a small village about 50 kilometres from Boston. Together with his wife Helen, a secretary and a small crew, Fessenden started his broadcast at 9:00 p.m. with a brief speech, followed by a Edison phonograph recording of Handel’s “Largo.”

Apparently Fessenden earned over 500 patents during his lifetime, had a U.S. Navy destroyer named after him, and was paid $2.5 million by the U.S. Radio Trust in 1928 for his contribution to radio technology.

Kind of odd that I’ve never heard of him before! As broadcast journalism professor Len Arminio says:

“Fessenden was a true Canadian genius,” said Arminio. “He got lost in the historic shuffle, and that’s too bad.”

Happy Birthday broadcast radio!

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