Edmonton Remembered: Living Memories of the City of Champions

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Hello, I'm Wayne Gretzky. Edmonton, Alberta is a special city for me. Edmonton is where I started my NHL career back in 1979, and I've never forgotten it. KSPS, your public television, has produced a wonderful documentary on my old home town, 'Edmonton Remembered.' The program captures living memories of this great Canadian city. If you remember dancing at the 'Mac,' riding the streetcar across the high-level bridge, or watching the Oilers win the Stanley Cup, this is your story. While New York is home for me now, I still have many fond memories of my years in the 'City of Champions.' That's why I'm pleased to invite you to watch, 'Edmonton Remembered.' Enjoy.

[Emily Murphy re-enactment] Edmonton is queen of the northland. Down in the valley and over on the uplands, it stretches out like a dream city. Edmonton is a place of fascinations... for Cree and cowboy, trader and trapper, governor and judge, senator and soldier, engineer and explorer, priest, professor and pioneer each doing his best to build a great city high on the banks of the Saskatchewan. And it will be a great city, but to my way of thinking, never more interesting than now. It is good to live in these first days, when the foundations of things are being laid.

[Alex Mair] They had an air compressor for the brakes. And the electric motors chuckled when you pulled up and stopped to load passengers or unload passengers. You could hear the chuckle of the motors underneath. And that's the only way I can describe the sound that they made.

[Jack Tyler] The traffic was light. In fact, the only traffic control was on 1st Street and Jasper. They had a policeman there, and one of those signs that you turn. He would blow his whistle and turn the sign to go. Blow go in the opposite direction. That was the only control that we had in those days.

[Tony Cashman] One thing that you remember is the cigar smoke. All hotel lobbies in those days were just bursting with cigar smoke. There were spittoons in the lobby. I remember those.

[Margaret MacBurney Vacheresse] I've heard a lot about this Edmonton City of Champs and I said, but you know, it wasn't the Oilers that did it. It wasn't the football team. It was the Edmonton Grads. That's when it first started.

[Helen Richards] Some Sunday afternoons, there would be so much skating, cause it's just round and round and round to the band, and the ice would just be slush by the end of the day. I kid you not.

[Marie Wright] They had this dream. It's like an impossible dream. They were going to open the north. And I just watched them and think, what they see, what they can do. It wasn't the airplanes. It was these men, with such ambition. Nothing was impossible. That just took a little longer.

[Tommy Banks] History is often yellowed paper, black and white pictures, and places that don't exist anymore. History is also exciting moments, funny stories, and nostalgic memories. Hello, I'm Tommy Banks. We're in Edmonton, Alberta, in the 1920s. Edmonton is my home town. If it's yours too, or if you've ever lived here, you know Edmonton has a special history. In the next hour, you and I are going to step into the pages of Edmonton's past and bring some of that history back to life. This car's for us. It's part of what Edmonton Remembered.

[Narrator] If the pride of a modern city is its public transportation system, then Edmonton has been a modern city since 1908. 70 years before the LRT whizzed through town, Edmonton had streetcars.

[Alex Mair] They had wicker seats, they had an air compressor for the brakes, and the electric motors chuckled when you pulled up and stopped to load passengers or unload passengers.

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You could hear the chuckle of the motors underneath and that's the only way I can describe the sound that they made. There was the hiss of the air-brakes, and they had a very distinctive whistle that you could blow, and there was a bell that the motorman could operate by stepping on a peddle in the front of the car.

[Narrator] The Edmonton Radial Railway was North America's most northern electric streetcar line. Edmonton's first streetcar was actually car number two, but numbers didn't matter much to riders because the cars were known by their colors.

[Frank Sklove] The white car came from the highlands, the red and white came from the parkdale area, the green and red went to Calder, the blue and white went down 118th avenue and went all the way out toward the airport. That's all we had were trollies, there weren't any busses. They were trolley lines. Of course, we would get to the corner and the trolley line would come off, so they'd go out and have to try and get the trolley back on.

[Tony Cashman] There was a great big coal box right at First and Jasper. So that whenever they went through this end of town, the motorman would get out and load up the coal. So when the coal box went out in the fall, it was sort of a sign that winter was coming.

[Gilbert Anderson] When we lived just west of the city here on the Indian Reserve, called Enoch, we used to drive our horses to the west end and we would tie the horses up, and if it was wintertime, we'd cover them so they wouldn't get cold. Then we would take the streetcar downtown, which was, you know, quite a bit faster than driving that extra.

[Narrator] Streetcars were just one of the things that made the first decade of the 20th century one of the most exciting times to be alive in Edmonton, when the foundations of things were being laid. Edmonton became a city in 1904. Alberta became a province in 1905, and Edmonton was selected as its capital city. In 1906, the University of Alberta, the first university in the province, was founded in Edmonton by the province's first premiere, Alexander Rutherford. The community of South Edmonton became the city of Strathcona in 1907, and the two cities amalgamated in 1912. In their infant years, the combined communities of greater Edmonton were the heart of the western prairie, bustling with 30-thousand residents.

[Jack Tyler] The traffic was light. In fact, the only traffic control was on 1st Street and Jasper. They had a policeman there, and one of those signs that you turn. He would blow his whistle and turn the sign to go. Blow his whistle and turn the sign to go in the opposite direction. That was the only control that we had in those days.

[Narrator] East-west traffic was no problem in early Edmonton, but north-south traffic had to cross the river. For many years, the only reliable way across the north Saskatchewan was by Walter's cable ferry. John Walter charged a quarter for every vehicle, a dime for every person. Walter was Edmonton's first really wealthy man. The real solution to the problem of crossing the river, though, was not boats but bridges, four of them. The most dramatic of these, across the top of the river canyon, would change the city forever. Construction on the high-level bridge began in 1910 and continued for three years. When the bridge opened to traffic in 1913, it offered the highest crossing of a river by a streetcar in the world and was the fourth-longest bridge in all of Canada. Edmonton's high-level bridge was built at a cost of more than 2-million dollars, and the lives of four workmen. Its steel girders would stretch 5-hundred miles if laid end-to-end, and were assembled with 1-million-4-hundred thousand rivets. In the heat of summer the bridge was as much as two feet longer than it was in the cold of winter because of the expansion and contraction of the steel. The high-level bridge was a double-decker, the only bridge of its kind in the world at the time. It had a two-lane road with sidewalks on the bottom deck and three pair of rails on the top. The inside track carried the trains of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The outside tracks carried the streetcars of the Edmonton Radial Railway. The river was more than a hundred-50 feet below.

[Jim Edwards] The favorite excuse that kids would write for being late at Garneau school was the streetcar fell off the high-level bridge.

[Kathleen Steinhauer] I tried to sit on the inside so I wouldn't have to look down at the water

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because it drew you, you know. All you could see was the water and the river, you couldn't see any of the bridge unless you were on the inside seats. Real scary.

[Narrator] Originally, streetcars crossed the high-level bridge with the door opening off the edge. Departing a stalled car gave one fear of departing this earth. Crossovers were later installed at each end of the bridge to eliminate this risk of life. Still, the river was a long way down.

[Helen Richards] And if it was a windy day, it would really kind of shake like this, and it used to be scary when you were on the river side, but actually, the streetcars were a lot of fun.

[Narrator] Streetcars were instrumental in Edmonton's growth as a city. They made it easy for people to work downtown and live in the suburbs, like Garneau, the Highlands or Calder. No matter where people lived, the center of business was still downtown.

[Jim Edwards] Jasper avenue was alive, absolutely alive. Went downtown, everybody went downtown, that was the only place to shop. Except the odd department store like Murray and Farrah on the south side, people came downtown to shop and people came from rural areas, they'd come in on the train or on the bus, or if they had a car they would come downtown to shop.

[Maguerite Jacobs] Jasper Avenue is where it all happened. Even if you had no money, you would just wander around. And if you had a little money, there were places like Picardy's where you could get a soda or milk shake, or the Bay basement had a soda fountain and I think for a nickel you could have a cherry coke. But when your allowance was 10-cents a week, you had to be careful.

[Joe Shocter] You could get a, what do you call it, a hamburger steak, Salisbury steak, with mashed potatoes and gravy or French fries for 15-cents. I used to get a quarter and go to the movies for a dime, take 15 cents and go to the White Spot and have a wonderful meal for all of 15 cents.

[Jim Edwards] Then, of course, there was the American Dairy Lunch, which was downstairs, and you could look up through those glass bricks and the people walking by. There were some great hangouts in those days that were amazingly good quality.

[Narrator] Decades before the dawn of the "information age," there was a place in downtown Edmonton that knew what was going on around the world, and could tell you in almost any language: Mike's News Stand, on 101st Street and Jasper Avenue. John "Mike" Michaels had been a newsboy in New York since the age of ten, and came to Edmonton in 1912 aiming to have the best newsstand in Canada.

[Tony Cashman] Mike realized that everybody in Edmonton at that time, like Mike himself, had come from somewhere else. What went on in the home town was still very big. So, Mike opened the stand right on the street on First and Jasper and started bringing in hometown papers.

[Dora Sklove] It had a very grubby floor. There were cigars and tobacco and pipes and things on this side where you paid. On the right hand side was all these magazines and magazines and magazines. It was always people in there. But a lot of people just used it instead of the library. I think they would stand and read and read and read.

[Narrator] Mike's newsstand was popular for more than just newspapers and magazines. Mike's was also the city's ticket booth, scoreboard and meeting place for generations. John Michaels was more than just the man behind Edmonton's biggest newsstand. He was also one of the city's biggest civic supporters. Perhaps the most notable of Michaels' contributions to his adopted home town was the founding of the Edmonton Journal Newsboys Band in 1913 to help combat juvenile delinquency. The sole prerequisite for joining the band was that the boy had to be a paper carrier. No previous musical training was necessary. The Edmonton Journal Newsboy's Band, later called just the Edmonton Newsboy's Band, earned acclaim as the largest band in all of Canada and one of the finest bands in all the world, before it was brought to an end by the Depression in 1929.

[Narrator] One of the characters who was often spotted near Mike's newsstand and elsewhere downtown, was a fellow by the name of Pete Jamieson, North America's only self-appointed unofficial "town crier." And he would advertise anything, baseball games, football games, movies, events, concerts, whatever. He marched, he didn't walk. He strolled with his head back, his shoulders back, and he swung his arms and he bellowed through this megaphone that he carried with him. And everybody knew Pete

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Jamieson. He was just a marvelous fellow.

[Narrator] Saturday was market day in downtown Edmonton. Market square was in the shadow of the Civic Block, which was city hall at the time. The market was part indoors, part outdoors, and part of most everyone's life.

[Mary Dawe] The place I think I loved most of all, my mother used to take me downtown every Saturday morning because that was where she would do her shopping and she needed an extra hand to carry all the groceries home. And we would go to the Edmonton City Market. And my mother used to meet all her friends there, so for her it was a social occasion.

[Narrator] Starting in 1912, Market Square drew hundreds of people from miles around to buy and sell home-made and home-grown merchandise. City met country here and just about anything that barked, meowed, squealed or clucked was for sale.

[Jack Tyler] Very little health inspection in those days. There were piles of chickens, usually all dead of course, piles of chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, piled up on the stall. No refrigeration. They left the heads on and wrapped the heads in newspaper, so you had all these chickens with all their heads hanging over the sides. It was quite unique when I look back on it.

[Narrator] There was time for recreation, too, in early Edmonton. Many families packed a Sunday lunch and rode the streetcar to East End Park, renamed Borden Park in 1916 after Canada's eighth prime minister, Sir Robert Borden: 150 acres of lush grass and trees where people could picnic, play and enjoy the band concerts. Borden Park had one of Edmonton's first municipal swimming pools, a small zoo, and a variety of the latest carnival amusements including a merry-go-round, a dark ride called "The Old Mill" and an enormous wooden roller coaster.

[Narrator] Noticeably absent from helping lay the foundations of things in Edmonton was fully 50-percent of the population. Women were not considered "persons" anywhere in the commonwealth and were therefore not allowed to vote. People who believed this was wrong started the suffrage movement. One of Edmonton's leading suffragette was author Emily Murphy, the first female police magistrate in the entire British Empire. Murphy and four other women, together known as the "famous five" worked tirelessly all their lives to advance the cause of equality for women.

[Mary Dawe] I'm not going to say ahead of their time, should have happened long before. But women who had the courage and the guts to stand up and say no, no, you can't do this. This has to be. Women have to have the vote. Women are part of this country. And part of the people who built it.

[Narrator] Alberta women won the right to vote in municipal and provincial elections in 1916. Canada declared women were "persons" in 1929. Judge Murphy retired from the bench in 1931. She died in 1933. Emily Murphy may not have built the foundations of things, but she did build the foundations of a people. Flowers are left regularly at the statue in Emily Murphy Park to honor her for having done so.

[Narrator] Edmonton has grown up a great deal since its first days as a city. At more than 250-square miles, Edmonton is now one of the largest metropolitan areas in Canada. One of the many prides of this modern city remains its public transportation system: added in 1978, the LRT was the first light rail system in North America. The high-level bridge, while still the centerpiece of Edmonton's cross-river traffic system, is now one of nine bridges across the North Saskatchewan. But Edmonton has not forgotten its past. It is still possible to ride a streetcar across the high-level bridge. This particular car, from Osaka, Japan, was going to be scrapped for parts until it found a new home in Edmonton. Today, it runs in a fleet of old streetcars in the hands of the Edmonton Radial Railway Society. The star of the society's collection is Edmonton streetcar number one. A veteran of one-and-a-half million miles of public service when it was the last streetcar retired in 1951, this car is the sole survivor of Edmonton's original city streetcars. Ridership of the Society's streetcars at Fort Edmonton Park is now approaching 2-hundred-thousand people a year, 10 times what Edmonton's population was when streetcars were new here nearly a century ago. Other pieces of Edmonton's

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past are still here too. This is what's left of one of Edmonton's old cable ferries, now resting on the riverbank behind the John Walter Historic Site. Borden park is still here, though the roller coaster and other amusements are gone. It's interesting to note that pieces of the roller coaster literally ended up in homes all over Edmonton, because the Muttart Lumber Company bought the entire contraption at salvage in 1935, dismantled it, and used the lumber to build houses... maybe even yours. Saturday is still market day in Edmonton, where we can enjoy not one but two markets. The traditional farmer's market moved to its current home at 97th street and 102nd avenue in 1965. The old market square is now Edmonton's main public library. There's also a lively market in old Strathcona that features arts and crafts and music. Either market is a great way to sample what's grown and made right here. Mike's newsstand lasted until 1980 when it was torn down to make room for the new Scotia Place complex, but there is a place, just like Mike's, in Edmonton, today. Hub Cigar in Old Strathcona stocks 10-thousand different titles of magazines, 2-hundred different newspapers, and a hundred different brands of cigars, all in a building only 33-feet wide that dates back to 1894.

[Music] Come and take a gateway through time, the hopes the dreams, endless as the sky. A rose scented journey a valley of gold, the crystal frozen majesty, as winter unfolds.

[Narrator] If Alberta's first premiere could see his capital city now, I think he'd be pleased with what we've done to the place, especially pleased that his old house is still here, designated a provincial historic resource in 1979 to help us remember the days when the foundations of things were being laid in Edmonton.

[Tommy Banks] If Edmonton were a kingdom, this would be its palace: the Hotel MacDonald. We're on the south side of the hotel, out on the patio, overlooking the North Saskatchewan River. Believe it or not, this garden area was a parking lot for a time in the hotel's history. The patio, and the rest of the hotel, have now been restored to what they were when the Mac opened in 1915. For more than 80-years, this is where generations of Edmontonions have come to celebrate special occasions, and for an evening, at least, live like royalty. The Hotel MacDonald was built by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and named for Canada's first prime minister, Sir John MacDonald. Construction on the hotel, described as "fireproof," began in 1912, the year of the "unsinkable" Titanic's maiden voyage. Nearly three years and two-million dollars later, the Mac was opened to the public on July 5th, 1915.

[Tony Cashman] Edmonton in those days was a very genteel place, but it was very shabby. Nothing had been built downtown for years and years. All the buildings had gotten a bit older, but when you went to the MacDonald on a Saturday night, it was like boarding a cruise ship. It seemed very big then. Nowadays, you realize it was rather small and intimate hotel, but it dominated the skyline then and it was the center, the place to be.

[Narrator] The "Mac," as everyone called it, was the last word in hotel accommodations. Each of her 2-hundred-and-four rooms had a telephone, running water and a window to the outside. A basic room cost two-dollars a night. Men and women each had their own entrance. Unescorted ladies were not allowed in the lobby. The Mac's Saturday night supper dances were legendary where anyone could be king or queen for 50 cents. The Hotel MacDonald quickly gained fame for its dignity, its

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hospitality, and its Baked Alaska. The hotel also offered free soap, as one little girl discovered in 1933.

[Marguerite Jacobs] Mother said, "What have you got in your pockets?" I said, "Soap". She said "Where did you get it?". I said "At the Castle". "Somebody give it to you?", "Oh, no mother. You help yourself, there was lots." She got her coat and hat on and her overshoes and away we went on the street car back to the hotel MacDonald. So, I took all these little bars of soap and put them on the front desk and then he gave me a little talking to, but I only remember his last sentence. He said "Don't ever let me see you in this hotel again".

[Narrator] Jacobs did return to the Mac, as an employee, in 1955. Canadian National Railways owned the hotel, then, and had just completed the hotel's infamous 300-room annex, the tallest structure in the province at the time. A Journal editorial called it a "far-from beautiful, sixteen story rectangular mass." Most people called it "the box."

[Alex Mair] They built an annex to the MacDonald hotel, but on an architectural scale of 10 it probably rated about a 2 from an appearance point of view. And people visiting Edmonton would often point to that and say "That's the MacDonald Hotel, and that's the box it came in."

[Narrator] "The Box" lasted more than thirty years until Canadian National brought it down during a huge renovation project in the mid 1980s. During the renovation, Canadian National lost interest in the hotel business, and in restoring the Mac.

[Marguerite Jacobs] Everyone, no matter who you spoke with, said "When are they going to open that hotel? That's our pride and joy of Edmonton. It's the hotel MacDonald." I think everyone felt the same way I did that this building shouldn't be standing empty. It should be reopened. Get at it.

[Narrator] The Hotel MacDonald was sold to Canadian Pacific Hotels and Resorts in 1988 for 2-hundred-60 million dollars. Renovations resumed, and the hotel was brought back to life. The Mac was back. The Hotel MacDonald re-opened to the public on May 15, 1991. [Tommy Banks] My band and I were honored to play that night in the Empire Ballroom. The Mac is no longer the tallest building on Edmonton's skyline. A big city has grown up around her. Still, she remains what she was when new, a palace on the plains, where ordinary people can enjoy an extraordinary time.

[Narrator] The Mac was famous for its dances, but so too were Edmonton's ballrooms, like the Barn and the Trocadero. The Barn was, well, a barn. Originally built to hold raw fur for the Hudson's Bay Company, the Barn opened in 1940 and became Edmonton's most popular dance hall and rendezvous spot during the war. The Trocadero opened on new year's eve, 1946, in the old Empire theater building. The "Troc" was the cream of Edmonton's ballrooms. Both were famous for "the slot."

[Tony Cashman] Yes, oh yes, the slot. It was illegal to drink in public. In fact, if you bought a bottle of liquor in a government store, you were supposed to go home by the shortest route before you opened it. Well, this wasn't very practical, so starting with the Barn, there were slots underneath the tables that would usually take a 13-ounce bottle. There were four slots under the table. You managed to circumvent the liquor laws. That was part of the ritual.

[Helen Richards] The Trocadero Ballroom, I was a little older when we went there. But there was no liquor sold when you went to the dances, so you took a little mickey and you put it under the table. But that was really the place to go. To dance.

[Narrator] The "Barn" was torn down in 1954. The "Troc" was torn down in 1981. People just don't dance like they used to.

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[Tommy Banks] In many cities across Canada, people go somewhere else to find something to do. In Edmonton, we stay right here. I can't think of another city in Alberta, or all of Canada for that matter, that has more festivals, more concerts, more things to do than Edmonton. Much of Edmonton's culture, through the years, has been centered downtown. From the time of dirt streets and wooden sidewalks, this has been the place to go to experience the world.

[Narrator] Edmonton has been a theater town from the beginning. There has been some form of organized dramatic entertainment here since 1886, including opera, vaudeville and plays. Edmonton's first motion picture house, the Bijou, opened in 1907. Admission was ten cents. Owners of so-called "legitimate theaters" pushed for a city ordinance outlawing electric motors, so the movie houses had to turn their projectors by hand. Theaters, whether legitimate or otherwise, were entertainment palaces with an almost regal ambiance reflected in names like the Dreamland, the Princess, the Monarch, and the Empress. Edmonton's first resident professional theater company opened in 1965, in the remodeled Salvation Army Citadel. Edmonton attorney Joe Shocter had been to Broadway, thought "why can't we do that here?" and the Citadel Theater was born.

[Joe Shocter] I think most of the emigration from Europe, coming out west, came to Edmonton. So we got a lot of people from British extraction, and Italian and French, German what have you. And those people grew up with culture in their lives. Theater, music, dance. So they brought that love with them. So it helped the arts flourish in Alberta.

[Narrator] Professional theater became so popular in Edmonton, that the Citadel outgrew its first home within a decade. A new Citadel was built just east of the Centennial Library and is even more popular than the old theater. The new Citadel welcomed its first audiences in the fall of 1976. Today, the Citadel is recognized as one of the finest theatres in Canada, drawing some of the best performers and shows in the world.

[Joe Shocter] I honestly believe you can have all the high-rise buildings you want, you can have all the apartment buildings and head offices. A city needs to have a heart. It needs to have a soul, and I truly believe that the soul and heart of a city is exemplified by its culture. And one of the main elements of its culture, of course, is the theater.

[Narrator] The Citadel is now one of more than a dozen live theater venues in Edmonton. In Old Strathcona, the city's oldest surviving firehouse has been converted to the Walterdale Playhouse, founded by Frank and Mary Glenfield.

[Frank & Mary Glenfield] People have created their own special place in the arts. As they have with hockey and football, there is a very strong arts community here and I think it's due to the weather. But I also think there is a correlation between sports and theater here. People often say what do you mean? And I say well, there is the same sort of, you know, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, between the theater people as between the people to do with the Oilers and the Eskimos. I think there is that same feeling of it's ours, you know.

[Narrator] A piece of local culture, for which Edmonton has earned world fame, is its Ukrainian Dance troupes, two of them, the Shumka Dancers, founded in 1959, and the Cheremosh Dance Ensemble, founded in 1969, both by Chester Kuc. Their colorful dances are a treasure, not just for Ukrainian Canadians, but for all Canadians.

[Chester Kuc] The Ukrainian Culture is really a part of the Canadian culture in general. That it contributes to the color and diversity, and otherwise it would be very boring if we put everything aside and we didn't have all this variety. It would be pretty dull.

[Narrator] Luba Kuc believes her husband's mother and father and hers would have been proud to see dances from the old country alive and well in Canada today.

[Luba Kuc] He always believed that when you have, you have to give, because God helped you to get

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that and you have to give something of yourself. It's not good enough to just live for yourself. And I think he would have been proud of both of us. That we tried to do our best and give them what we can. You can only do so much, but at least we have done a little bit.

[Narrator] Edmonton has a habit of doing great things and then not making a big deal out of having done them. Such is the case with the city's contribution to aviation. For example, did you know the first municipal airport in Canada was here in Edmonton? Blatchford Field opened in 1926, and cost the city $400. But Edmonton's aviation story began back in the teens, after the first world war, when returning military pilots used their flying skills to build communities rather than destroy them. These bush pilots made Edmonton the gateway to the north.

[Al Brown] This is good country to fly in. The very best country. The weather is the best in Canada. But in the winter, it was pretty rough on a lot of our traveling. We would have to start long before daylight to get up and get things started, to get up and start working in the dark, getting your engine warm.

[Narrator] Ground crew for the bush pilots had equally challenging workdays. Whether the aircraft was a Bellanca, a Fairchild or a Norseman, aircraft would often need repairs in the middle of the bush country with little more than hand-tools.

[Chuck MacLaren] One time I was welding on a Norseman at Yellowknife. So you are laying on your back, trying to run a bead with an arc welder on this lug, and a big wave hits the thing and a big glob of metal fell into the top of my boot right down to my ankle. Burned a hole there about a half-inch deep. Had to lay there till it finished sizzling. Other than that, things were fairly routine.

[Narrator] Perhaps the most famous of Edmonton's legendary bush pilots was Wilfred "Wop" May, described as one of the finest natural fliers in the history of aviation anywhere in the world. Wop could have boasted any number of times about his many accomplishments, but he never did, not even after he made the first mercy flight in Canadian history. It happened on a winter morning in 1929. Word had come down from Fort Vermillion that the people there were fighting a diphtheria outbreak. They desperately needed some anti-toxin, but the only way in was by air. Wop May and Vic Horner would fly it from Edmonton. The minus-33 Fahrenheit temperature meant May and Horner had to keep the precious cargo in their clothes to keep it from freezing in the open-cockpit Avro Avian. The pair took off on January 2nd. Fort Vermillion was 840 miles away. It would take them three days to get there. A week later, with mission accomplished, May and Horner returned to Edmonton and a welcoming crowd of 10-thousand people. On the trip home, May's scarf had frozen to his face. After landing, when he peeled the scarf off, the skin of his lips came with it. As photographers snapped away, the normally smiling May kept a straight face, for to do otherwise was just too painful.

[Marie Wright] These were special men. Special gifts. They only pass our way maybe once in a lifetime. They were the last frontier. They had this dream. It's like an impossible dream. They were going to open up the north. And I just watched them and think 'what they see, what they can do.' It wasn't the airplanes, it was these men. With such ambition. Nothing was impossible. That just took a little longer.

[Narrator] Among May's many awards was the Order of the British Empire, the American Medal of Freedom and the McKee Trophy for "most meritorious service for the advancement of Canadian Aviation." May never made a big deal out of any of it, nor the fact that he had only one good eye. Who would have believed him anyway. In 1942, at the height of the second world war, Blatchford field handled 8-hundred-60 aircraft in one day. It was the busiest airport on the continent. With so much traffic through Edmonton, a second airport was opened at Namao, 10-miles north of Edmonton, in 1944. It was the largest airport on the continent.

[Marie Wright] Yes we laughed, yes we cried, but you

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never cried where crews could see you.

[Narrator] Marie Wright was one of the few women who flew in the war as a ferry pilot. Often, she would be among the first to see airplanes returning bases in England, often little more than scrap with engines.

[Marie Wright] "No matter what you see, you don't cry, Marie." And I said, "But look at her, she's all..." "No, don't you cry" he said, they know they might not be alive in the morning, you don't have to look like it. I remember they opened the door, the pilot sitting there with his hands on the controls and a couple of medics said "OK sir, you can let go now." He said "Not before my crew's out." And there he sat. And they got it, the nav, he got in the shoulder I think it was. Most of them had ricochets or had got a bullet one place or another, and then they came to the tailgunner. Bright red carrot hair, still had freckles. I can see him today. Brought him out on sort of a stretcher. As he went past me, he looked and he said "We brought her back!" And before I stopped to realize what I was saying, I said "But what a hell of a mess!" He laughed and he said "See ya." He lost both his legs.

[Narrator] The greatest celebration in Edmonton history was on August 14th, 1945: V-J Day. The war was now over around the world and the boys would be coming home. In the few years after the war, encouraged by government "baby bonuses," Canada's birth rate was the highest of any developed country in the western world. But Edmonton was still relatively undeveloped as a city: 80-percent of its streets were still unpaved, and three fourths of its sidewalks were still wood. Edmonton desperately needed a post-war boost. The boost came when a gusher turned up near LeDuc in 1947. Edmonton now had both reasons and resources to enjoy the second half of the 20-th century in peace and prosperity. A few aircraft, in the Alberta Aviation Museum, help us remember how intrepid flyers once dreamed of opening up the northland, and changed Edmonton's course through history. A few pipes in the ground, near the Petroleum Hall of Fame, help us remember where LeDuc oil well number one sprang to life, and changed Alberta's course through history. Words on a stone, in the heart of the city, help us remember Edmonton's "honoured dead," who changed the world's course through history. Now it is we who must build on their foundations.

[Narrator] Edmonton is known as the city of champions for more reasons than you have fingers to count. One reason is a women's amateur basketball team that started here in 1914.

[Margaret MacBurney Vacheresse] I've heard a lot about this Edmonton City of Champs, but you know, it wasn't the Oilers that did it, it wasn't the football team, it was the Edmonton Grads. That's when it first started. We were the start of that slogan and I don't want them to forget about it.

[Narrator] The Edmonton Grads were graduates of the city's MacDougall Commercial High School. Unbelievably, in their quarter century on the boards, the Grads played 5-hundred-22 games and lost only 20, a 96-percent win record.

[Malcom MacKay] I listened to them on the radio and I just lived and died for them. They were such a phenomenon. [Roger Wilson] They sure were. Probably didn't realize it at that time just how much of a phenomenon they were. They were just so good.

[Narrator] Coach Percy Page believed in teamwork, developed an excellent short passing game, and above all, taught his players they were ladies first. It was all strictly amateur. Neither the coach nor the players were ever paid.

[Margaret MacBurney Vacheresse] We never got a cent of money. We were all working, all of us. The only money I ever remembered was down in San Francisco when Mr. Page gave us a US dollar to go out and buy a souvenir, in San Francisco. That's all the money we ever got.

[Narrator] The Edmonton Grads played their last game on their home court at the Gardens on June 5th, 1940. The man who invented basketball, a Canadian by the name of James Naismith, said the Edmonton Grads was the finest basketball team that ever stepped on a floor. They were

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athletes, they were sportsmen, they were ladies, and they were champions.

[Alex Mair] I remember watching the Grads play and practice and warm up and dribble balls around. I knew the names of many of the Edmonton Grads. It was just a part of Edmonton. And again, we didn't appreciate what we had. The ladies were world champions, world champions! And they were based here in Edmonton.

[Margaret MacBurney Vacheresse] Don't forget, it started in Edmonton. I've got to get that right.

[Narrator] Coach Percy Page went on to a career in politics and became Alberta's Lieutenant Governor in 1959. He died in 1973. The Grads' mascot, a stuffed dog named Sparky, survives as a reminder of the team that sparked a reputation for winning a nickname for Edmonton as the city of champions.

[Frank Morris] Goodbye old Alouettes, farewell to you. Take one last look before our team goes through. Get some new half backs, get a new line. You'll win that old Grey Cup some other time.

[Narrator] The Edmonton Eskimos were champions on the football field in the 1954 Grey Cup. The Montreal Alouettes were heavily favored to win, and they almost did, except for the most famous play in Grey Cup History. Losing, with only a few minutes left to play, Edmonton's players were on the defensive near their own goal line. Suddenly, Montreal fumbled the ball, Jackie Parker picked it up, and ran 92-yards for a touchdown that tied the game.

[Jackie Parker] We were trailing in the game, I think it was 25 to 20. It was late in the game and Montreal was marching again. We kept up but they were a really good team. They're marching, I guess, it was two minutes to go, and there was a fumble. And I happened to be there, and picked it up and ran it all the way back. And it's kind of a big thing, I guess, because we weren't supposed to have much of a chance and all at once we were ahead and won the game.

[Narrator] The Edmonton Eskimos won the '54 Grey Cup 26-to-25, and won it again in '55, '56, '75, '78, '79, '80, '81, '82, '87, and '93, eleven times to date, proving Edmonton could produce champions on the football field too. And then there's hockey. Edmonton has had champions on the ice for half of the 20th century. The Edmonton Flyers won the Allan Cup in 1948. In 1950, the Edmonton Mercurys captured the world title, and in 1952 an Olympic Gold Medal. Jack Manson was on both teams.

[Jack Manson] I believe in western Canada, most of the cities at least in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, have strong hockey roots. The reason for that, I guess, is that back when most of the fellows were younger, there was good access to rinks. Like, you could always get to an open air rink somewhere to practice and to play. And we developed a lot of hockey players.

[Narrator] And then, of course, there's the five-time Stanley Cup Champions, the Edmonton Oilers. When the Oilers joined the National Hockey League in 1979, there were many who used the word "can't" to shoot down Edmonton's "small town" dreams of being world champions. [Announcer] The Oilers have won the Stanley Cup! [Crowd] Have won! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! [Narrator] But the word changed to "can" when the Oilers won their first Stanley Cup in 1984, their fifth year in the league, and went on to win it four more times after that.

[Glenn Sather] Maybe that's what gets people going, the word "can't." You know, you can't do it because of this or because of that. And I look at it the opposite way. I think it's a great challenge to do it when people tell you you can't do something. So I think the people in Edmonton are the same way.

[Narrator] The little team that could won the Stanley Cup in 84, 85, 87, 88 and 90, five times in seven years. Those who were part of that magical decade for hockey in Edmonton remember the feeling of being crowned world champions.

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[Kevin Lowe] Your entire life flashes before your eyes when you finally do win a championship or, in our case, win the Stanley Cup. You know, I grew up dreaming that. Hoisting the cup over our heads. We, in fact, in the playoff runs the previous years, we would plaster pictures of previous Stanley Cup winners like Jean Beliveau with the cup over his head and Bobby Clarke and Bobby Orr and we all tried to sort of envision ourselves doing it in a fun sort of way. So when it actually did happen, it was a phenomenal moment.

[Narrator] Kevin Lowe still skates for the Oilers, not as a player any longer but as a coach. This is a part of the game fans rarely see, the hours of practice that go into making champions. There is no magic potion, it takes hard work to get to the top, but Edmonton knows the way and will be there again. Edmonton remembers Lowe's former team-mate, the gangly teenager who stepped on the ice in an Oilers uniform back in 1979 and changed the game. Wayne Gretzky will forever be called "the great one" for what he did for the sport of hockey, and Edmonton will forever be proud because he did it here.

[Glenn Sather] Wayne is one guy that's never really said the wrong thing, been in the wrong place at the wrong time, ever gets a speeding ticket, you know, he's really different than most people. And that's why he's such a great player. He lives on a different planet than most of us do, and he played on that planet. He saw the game different, he understands it differently, he's been a terrific ambassador for the NHL.

[Narrator] Many of Edmonton's champions were brought home on Radio. Radio was an exciting thing when it came to Alberta in 1922. CJCA was the first on the air in the province with studios in the Edmonton Journal newsroom. Behind the microphone was 22-year old Dick Rice, already a veteran broadcaster who started with the Marconi company in England when he was 15. Rice bought his own radio station in 1934, changed the call letters to CFRN, added an FM station in 1951, and TV in 1954. [Announcer] CFRN TV presents News in Review.

[Narrator] Many adults in Edmonton today remember growing up with CFRN's kids shows, including Popcorn Playhouse. Station weatherman Erik Neville was Klondike Erik, and Muskeg Moose his trusty sidekick.

[Terry Bartley] I guess enough time has passed that we can probably tell people that Erik Neville himself used to pull a little string underneath Muskeg's prize bag, a little mail bag that held the prizes. He would basically be the ventriloquist answering for Muskeg in the riddle segment.

[Tommy Banks] In 1974, Edmonton surgeon and entrepreneur, Charles Allard, asked me to join a group of partners in creating Alberta's first independent T-V station. We signed on the air in the fall of 1974 with call letters CITV. [Announcer] From television center in Edmonton, it's the Tommy Banks show.

[Nic Wry] When the station first opened, one of the things they did was a daily Tommy Banks show. We brought many artists up from the United States and it was a pretty exciting time. Tom has a magnetism that goes through the camera and we did a variety show in Edmonton which, someone had said, you can't do a variety show that will rival something coming out of Hollywood in Edmonton. We did, and it was successful, and we did a lot of episodes with the show and Tom was very pleased with it.

[Narrator] CITV is probably remembered best for its "In Concert" series at the Jubilee Auditorium. Using state-of-the art equipment and innovative production techniques, the series was not just Edmonton television at its best but world class television produced in Edmonton. ITV led the way to Canada becoming the second largest producer of television programs in the world.

[Nic Wry] Part of the promise of performance, to originally get the license, was to do concerts with the symphony. To do several a year, and it branched out to including major stars with the symphony, and that will bring us audience to the symphony and bring us sales to the show so as programs progressed over the years, we got to about 40 shows that were seen in 80 countries.

[Narrator] Charles Allard died in 1991; Dick Rice in 1992. The broadcasting stations they started are still on the air in Edmonton, still helping to bring

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our champions home. Perhaps it's natural for this city of champions to do things on a grand scale. Take shopping malls, for instance. The West Edmonton Mall is the world's largest shopping and entertainment complex, with the world's largest indoor amusement park, and the world's largest indoor wave pool. Built in four phases, the first of which opened in 1981, the mall covers the area of more than a hundred football fields and has 8-hundred stores. Nearly half of all the money tourists spend in Edmonton is spent here. But for all its international flavor, there is still something very Canadian here: a hockey rink. Every week, there are skaters here who remember learning how to skate at the Central Rink. For some the attraction there was the live band. For others, it was...

[Joe Shocter] Girls. You went there Saturday. Sunday they used to have a band in the middle of the thing in a little bandstand, freezing whatever it was they froze off, cause it could get pretty cold. But we had a lot of fun skating there and picking up girls. It was like the picking up ballrooms. It was a social gathering place for Edmonton.

[Helen Richards] Some Sunday afternoons there would be so much skating, cause it's just round and round and round, to the band, and the ice would just be slush by the end of the day. I kid you not. I was there one day and by the end of the day it was just slush.

[Tommy Banks] One of the outstanding success stories in the history of Edmonton was the 1978 Commonwealth Games. I composed the official theme song, "We're Gonna Show the World," which we did, proudly. In order to get the games, Edmonton had to lobby hard six years before in Germany. Ivor Dent was mayor at the time, and says Edmonton won the bid because of a surprise appearance by an Edmonton band that just happened to be in town.

[Ivor Dent] The doors were thrown open and this raucous group of young ladies came prancing into the room and just doing a fabulous job, and they marched around the room three or four times, and then out the back doors. And this so enthralled the audience that they were just in pandemonium. They really loved that little extra episode. One of the guys from Africa, their leader, actually, ran over to me and said Ivor, you've won this bid and he picked me up and he was a strong man, and spun me around, my feet were way out in the air, and indeed, we knew we were going to win.

[Narrator] The opening ceremonies of the games were watched by 42-thousand spectators in Commonwealth Stadium and millions more around the world on television. The Commonwealth Games were everything that is good about Edmonton... beautiful weather, terrific volunteers and true sportsmanship. [Tommy Banks] I couldn't have been more proud of my home town.

[Tommy Banks] We've come to the end of the line in our journey through Edmonton's past. I've had a grand time and hope you have too. The good old days aren't past, they're here now. Treasure and preserve them. Someday, in the next century, you'll open that scrapbook and be glad you saved some history of your own. I'm Tommy Banks. Thank you for being a part of what Edmonton Remembered. So long.