Contributors

Kevin Allen is a fourth-generation Calgarian who has been documenting and profiling queer people and events for more than thirty years. Kevin started the Calgary Gay History Project in 2012 to uncover and preserve stories from Calgary’s LGBTQ2 past (www.calgarygayhistory.ca). The project has achieved national recognition and led to the award-winning documentary film Gross Indecency: The Everett Klippert Story and the best-selling book Our Past Matters: Stories of Gay Calgary (2018).

Leon Crane Bear is Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) from Siksika Nation—one of five First Nations who signed Treaty 7. In 2015, Leon received his master’s degree from the University of Lethbridge. He currently resides in Siksika.

Erin Gallagher-Cohoon is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Queen’s University, where she explores the history of queer parenting and queer family formation in Canada. Her master’s thesis analyzed the United States Public Health Service’s Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study, a 1940s human experiment that deliberately exposed vulnerable populations, including female sex workers, in Guatemala to syphilis and gonorrhea.

Corinne George is Gidimt’en (Bear) of the Witsuwit’en Nation. She was born and raised in Telkwa and Smithers, BC by her parents Gallahgun (Rita George) and Tsaybesa (the late Andrew George Sr.). She descends from a long line of Witsuwit’en hereditary chiefs and elected leaders. She holds a master’s degree in history from the University of Calgary where she completed her thesis: “‘If I Didn’t Do Something, My Spirit Would Die. . . .’: Grassroots Activism of Aboriginal Women in Calgary and Edmonton, 1951–1985.” Corinne is the Regional Principal of the College of New Caledonia, Lakes District Campus, in Burns Lake, British Columbia.

Larry Hannant is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Victoria and a writer who specializes in dissent, state repression, and human rights in the twentieth century. His most recent book is All My Politics Are Poetry (Yalla Press, 2019).

Nevena Ivanović is a former volunteer researcher at the Calgary Gay History Project. She serves as the public policy coordinator of the Women’s Centre of Calgary. Before coming to Calgary from her hometown of Belgrade, Serbia, Nevena worked to support and empower women in politics, build the capacity of other gender equality advocates, and influence public policies to reflect women’s needs and experiences. She has a master’s degree in public policy and gender and culture and is the co-author of a study on the gender pay gap in three Western Balkan countries.

Tom Langford is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Calgary and the author of “It Takes A Village. The Case for Universal Daycare,” which appeared in Alberta Views in October 2016 (https://albertaviews.ca/it-takes-a-village). He welcomes correspondence at langford@ucalgary.ca.

Tarisa Dawn Little is a PhD candidate at the University of Saskatchewan and a White-female settler born and raised in Calgary, Alberta (Treaty 7 Territory and the original territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy). She now lives with her spouse beside the Grasse River, in Canton, New York, an area long occupied by the Iroquois Confederacy.

Ken Novakowski attended the University of Alberta from 1962 to 1967 and in 1965 he joined the Alberta Young New Democrats (AYND) and Alberta NDP. He served as president of the AYND (1965–67), and of the Federal New Democratic Youth (1967–69), was a general vice-president of the Alberta NDP (1967–69), and chaired the left wing Alberta NDP caucus, the Waffle (1969–71). He also chaired the Edmonton Committee to End the War in Vietnam (1967–70). In 1971, he moved to British Columbia where he remained active in the NDP. As a teacher, he was president of the BC Teachers’ Federation (1989–92), co-founder of the BC Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (1997), and executive director of the BCTF from 2000 to 2009. In his retirement, Ken served as the chair of the BC Labour Heritage Centre (2013–19).

Jan Olson is an anthropologist and archaeologist with over thirty years of experience studying Latin America. She teaches anthropology at the University of Alberta and MacEwan University and serves on the board of Alberta Heritage Resources Foundation. More recently, she has worked on oral histories and community development in Edmonton. Her book, Scona Lives: A History of Riverlots 13, 15, and 17 (2016), focuses on this local history. Jan acts as a land steward in Keepers of the Creek and engages in music and heritage as community building where she lives near Edmonton’s Mill Creek Ravine.

Karissa Robyn Patton is a postdoctoral fellow at Vancouver Island University studying histories of gender, health, and activism in mid-twentieth century Canada. She earned her PhD at the University of Saskatchewan, where her dissertation won the 2020–21 University of Saskatchewan Graduate Dissertation Award for Fine Arts and Humanities. Her doctoral research examined reproductive health activism in southern Alberta during the 1970s. A contributor to the volume, Compelled to Act: Histories of Women’s Activism in Western Canada (edited by Sarah Carter and Nanci Langford), her work can also be found in the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History.

Mack Penner, born and raised in Lethbridge, Alberta, is a PhD candidate, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellow, and Dr. Harry Lyman Hooker Senior Doctoral Fellow in the Department of History at McMaster University. His primary research interests include the history of capitalism, neoliberalism, and Canada in the twentieth century. His dissertation work looks at the intellectual history of the Calgary School from a transnational vantage.

Winner of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Billington Award for lifetime contribution to the Alberta film industry, Tom Radford’s career spans forty-five years in the Canadian television and film industries as a writer, director, and producer. Born in Edmonton to a Pulitzer Prize–winning newspaper family that came to Alberta in 1905, Tom has carried on a tradition of portraying the distinctive character of the West and North to Canada and the world. He has won the best director prize at the Alberta Film Awards on eight separate occasions, and his films have received ten national and international honours. Tom Radford is a member of the Order of Canada.

Baldwin Reichwein administered provincial social program services in Alberta from 1961 to 1990. His research focus is the history of public welfare and child welfare services in Alberta. He is the recipient of the Canadian Association of Social Workers Distinguished Service Award and co-author (with Gillian Hestad) of Answering Children’s Cries: Child Saving in Lethbridge 1900–1947 (2016).

PearlAnn Reichwein is a professor and historian at the University of Alberta who writes on Canada’s western prairie and mountain regions and teaches in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation. She is the author of Climber’s Paradise: Making Canada’s Mountain Parks, 1906–1974, which was awarded the Canadian Historical Association’s Clio Prize, as well as an IndieFAB Honourable Mention for Environment and Ecology. She is the co-editor (with Karen Fox) of Mountain Diaries: The Alpine Adventures of Margaret Fleming, 1929–1980 and the co-author (with Karen Wall) of Uplift: Visual Culture at the Banff School of Fine Arts, tracing the origins of today’s Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She has worked in urban parks, national parks, and UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A visiting researcher, she also lectures and teaches in France and Austria. Her leadership for parks and heritage focuses on conservation advocacy.

Jennifer E. Salahub is a professor emerita of art and craft history at the Alberta University of the Arts. Her BFA and MA in Canadian art history were awarded by Concordia University, Montréal, and she received a PhD in the history of design from the Royal College of Art, London. Her long-standing interest in decoration and ornament is reflected in her academic and personal life. In 2018, she was the recipient of the Tom McFall Honour Award in recognition of her “significant contribution to Alberta’s Fine Craft culture.” She writes and lectures internationally on art, craft, and design.

Louise Swift was born in 1930 in Rossland, British Columbia, and moved to Edmonton in 1960, where she quickly became involved in the activist community. In the fall of 1964, she and her husband moved into a house shared by the Van Alderwegan, the Van Stolk, and the Swift families. Louise became involved in the anti-nuclear movement through her association with Mary Van Stolk and the Canadian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Louise was a member of the Canadian Voice of Women and a founding member of Save Tomorrow, Oppose Pollution (STOP).