Sex-work, backroom deals, claims of conspiracy, and one of Edmonton’s most colourful characters led to an all-out brawl between an Alderman and Mayor during a meeting of City Council in August 1914.

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.”

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.