Singing songs and carrying banners, the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical American union, helped organize Edmonton’s forgotten labourers for a strike in September 1912.

That December 10,000 Albertans gathered to protest the government’s handling of the Great Depression — it became “the biggest single manifestation of class conflict in Alberta during the entirety of the 1930s.”

Out of Town Distractions:

Unemployed labourers from Edmonton and Northern Alberta built this make-work mountain pass in Jasper National Park.

This Depression-era make-work project — Frankensteined together using spare girders and old streetcar rails — is counting the days until it’s replaced.

Accusations of underpaid labour haunt this unassuming Depression make-work project.

Building a make-work road over the sandy hoodoos of Dawson Park sounded simple enough. Instead it resulted in Council in-fighting, five years of unending construction, and political suicide.