How sometimes archives can be fun... or at least not boring.

Bigger than a breadbox.

This is a picture of the Alberta Records Centre, where the provincial government stores its inactive records. (Inactive records are the ones the government no longer accesses regularly. They will eventually be either destroyed or transferred to the provincial archives.) To give some idea of the size of the place, the guy in the picture is about 6'3, and he's standing at row 1 of 24. The records centre has a capacity of 710 000 boxes. The Provincial Archives of Alberta accepts only 3-5% of inactive records from the Alberta Records Centre. Even so, their collection is huge.

This fall I worked on a project for a government department that involved reviewing records that the provincial archives had accepted but no longer wanted. Even though most of the info was pretty boring, there were some nuggets among the dross. The thing about archival research is that you never really know when you're going to hit paydirt. A really interesting document on medical ethics in Alberta, for example, may be tucked into in a file on the day-to-day administration of the mental health program. Or a file on the provincial government's response to the 1987 tornado stuck in a box full of accounts payable info.

If you've ever been interested in stuff like why Edmonton felt the need become an architectural wasteland, those clippings files the archivist was talking about today are a good place to start. I learned from them that one of Edmonton's mayors in the 1960s said old buildings like the McLeod Building and the old post office "have no value" whatsoever. And the editorial this was quoted in agreed with that sentiment!

Nobody, least of all I, claimed archival research, or for that matter records management, is exciting. But it's pretty cool when you come across those gems.

Why all the excitement? It's only Edmonton.

Exclamations of affect punctuate this class, have you noticed? Almost every day there is some topic that will set us galloping merrily down one tangent or another, eagerly shouting out our experience, our feelings. It began with hockey -- fierce declarations of love or hatred -- and lately our meanderings have included traffic here and elsewhere and the worthiness of Edmonton as a place to live.

Most of us are in at least our third year of university and, one would imagine, sufficiently educated by this point to feel a sense of ownership over the stuff packed in our heads. But I don't think that's the case. I think we sound out so much in this class because we are finally in a class in which we do know what we're talking about, and the novelty of it is overwhelming. Despite having learned so much, and perhaps because we're constantly in subordinate positions in our classes where we couldn't possibly be the expert on anything, we don't own our knowledge.

I know I know Edmonton. I know 167 Ave turns into Castle Downs Road and then into 113 A Street before running into the dead end of the rail yards; I know that the 9 bus to Southgate carries old grandmas going shopping at Kingsway or downtown, teens on their way to Vic Comp, middle agers heading to their office towers and desk jobs, the odd drunk, lots of moms and dads with strollers and me going to work or home or who knows. I know the petty rivalries of West Side and North Side with their silly, contorted hand signs signaling membership. I know I miss out on a parts of the city familiar and beloved by some because of my particular background, and I know those others miss out on things I love too. I know these things because this is my city, the place I grew up, the place I choose to call my own.

I'm not an Edmonton booster. A lot of the time I think this city is so mediocre, so average, I wonder why people choose to live here. But I know it and it's mine, and the opportunity to speak on a subject I know, with a knowledge I own, is exciting.

I know not everybody feels Edmonton this way, but we all feel this way about some place, the place(s) we call home. Edmonton is enough of a wallflower city that it can stand in for those other places too.

This class is about getting to know this city through the the literary lens. We're learning new things, yes, but for once we're all experts.