Cities I Have Known – Edmonton, Alberta

In September 1978 my first wife and I moved from Seattle to Edmonton, Alberta in Canada.  When we arrived it was to a very tight housing market.  The professor I was going to work with put us up while we looked for an apartment.  We started by checking married student housing, which had been full when we were accepted to the University of Alberta, but it was still full and we ended up on a waiting list for a vacancy.  It took almost a week before we found a rather dismal basement apartment in the south end of town at about 91st Ave. and 94th St.  I remember that the apartment was painted purple inside.  Our cat, Ralph, didn’t like the place because the people upstairs had a dog.  That apartment was also a long way from campus.  Parking at the University of Alberta was quite expensive, so we generally took the bus to campus (both of us were grad students).  The bus trip took about 40 minutes and required a transfer.   We had only been in that apartment for about two weeks when we got a call from student housing saying that they would have n apartment for us in six weeks.  So we jumped on it.

We moved into Married student housing, called Michener Park, at the beginning of November 1978.  We had a two bedroom apartment in a townhouse style building.  Our apartment included a small (16’x20′) yard and was entered from an enclosed foyer that served two apartments.  Ralph liked that apartment because of the yard despite it being snow covered when we moved in.  Michener Park is located about 5 miles south of the University, but there was a direct bus, which was convenient. There was also a Safeway store across the street from Michener Park.

That Safeway brings up an interesting story.  Back in 1978, Alberta had very restrictive blue laws.  Nothing, except gas stations and restaurants was open on Sunday.  In addition businesses were only open business hours (8-5) Monday through Saturday except Wednesday when stores were open until 9 PM.  Our commitments for class and teaching (my wife and I were teaching assistants) made it difficult for us to shop during the day, so we had to shop on Wednesday evening or Saturday when the stores were jam packed.  It generally took the better part of an hour to check out at the local Safeway because of the lines.  Shopping at the local Mall (Southgate) was just as bad.  It took some getting used to after Seattle, where blue laws had disappeared by 1973.  Prices were also a bit of a shock.  Except for gas, which was actually cheaper in Edmonton than in Seattle back then, everything was more expensive, particularly fresh vegetables and fruits.

Unfortunately, my first wife hated Edmonton.  That culminated in early January when I found a note on my desk saying she had left and gone to visit her mother in Missouri.  That was rather a blow.  After way too much time talking long distance (something that is now a thing of the past), it became clear she wasn’t coming back and that she had left Edmonton and not me.  We finally decided that I would move back to Seattle and she would join me there.  So at the end of February 1979, a month when the temperature never went above -20C, I packed up my 1966 dodge dart, said good by to my Ph.D. program and Edmonton, and headed south to Seattle via the Yellowhead highway through the Canadian Rockies at Jasper.

For various reasons my marriage ended at the beginning of 1980.  During the summer of 1980 I decided to return to grad school in Edmonton, so I drove back north from Dallas Texas, via Los Alamos, Seattle and Victoria, BC.  Kind of the long way, but that is a different story.  I arrived back in Edmonton in early September 1980.  I quickly found a room in a house just north of Southgate Mall at about 53rd Ave NW and 109th St.  The house was filled with grad students, mostly from the Biology department.  I actually knew a few of them from my previous stint in Edmonton because my first wife had been a Biology grad student.  The only negative of that place was that it was quite a ways from the University.  I biked until the snow came in early November then took the bus.  I stayed there until the end of 1980 when I got an apartment in Hub Mall on the University of Alberta Campus.

Hub Mall was a combination student shopping mall and student housing building.  It is located on the east side of the campus and stretches about 250 yards south from near the edge of the North Saskatchewan River valley.  The building is still there and consists of two parallel student apartment buildings that housed studio to three bedroom apartments.  The 50 foot gap between the two buildings is roofed over and houses lots of small shops (book stores, coffee shops, small restaurants, a small grocery store, etc.) and several lounges.  The complex was connected to other buildings on campus by covered walkways, so it was possible to get to my office without going outside, although the route was pretty round about and I usually walked outside for the 100 yards.  I had a small studio apartment on the outside of the eastern building so I didn’t get noise from the mall area.

Looking down the central Mall at Hub Mall.  The windows above the level of the shops are student apartments.

Hub Mall was a very convenient place to live for a student.  The only downsides were that it was a bit pricey ($180 a month for my studio) and you basically never got off campus.  I lived there from January through December 1981.  During that time I got to know Edmonton a bit by biking around the city in the summer and visiting people I met who lived off campus.  I even managed to do a bit of sailing during the summer of 1981 via a girl friend whose parents had a Tanzer 26 sailboat on Lake Wabamun west of the City.  I also explored some of the area around Edmonton including visits to Jasper for downhill skiing and Elk Island National Park east of the city for cross country skiing.

I moved out of Hub Mall at the end of 1981 when a good friend got into a bit of a bind.  My friend LLoyd was a Ph.D. student in Biology I had met because he shared an office with my first wife back in 1978.  Lloyd was from New Zealand and lived with his wife in married student housing at Michener Park.  At the end of 1981 his wife got sick of Edmonton and moved back to New Zealand. Lloyd stayed behind because he had less than a year to go to finish his thesis.  He had a great two bedroom apartment on the top floor of Vanier House, a 22 story high rise in Michener Park.  His rent was only $260 a month, so Lloyd decided to stay in married student housing despite his wife leaving (he “forgot” to tell the housing office she was gone).  However, he couldn’t afford the rent on his own so he needed a roommate.  Ideally he should have found a female roommate to make keeping up the fiction that his wife was still there easier, but his wife wasn’t keen on that idea, to say the least.  So he asked me if I was interested in becoming his roommate.  The move would reduce my rent from $180 to $130 a month.  Since $50 a month was big money to me then, I said yes and moved back into Married Student housing.

Vanier House at Michener Park in Edmonton Alberta.  My apartment was at the top floor on the right side of the building.

Living in Vanier House was quite nice.  During the winter I took the direct bus to campus.  During the summer I biked to campus.  I was in really great shape then and often ran up the stairs to my apartment with my bike over my shoulder after the five mile ride home.  The only thing that was a bit odd and actually a bit fun, was that some of our neighbors thought that Lloyd and I were a gay couple.  We did nothing to dissuade them.  I was really into cooking back then and remember going shopping with the woman who lived across the hall and talking cooking with her.  She was convinced I was as gay as they come.  The apartment was also quite nice and had a great view to the east.

I stayed in Vanier house until mid-October of 1982 when Lloyd defended his Ph.D. thesis and left the university.  Since the apartment was in his name I had to move out too.  Since I was in the final stages of writing my Ph.D. thesis and expected to be done by the end of the term I decided not to find a new apartment.  That decision was largely because Edmonton was in one of its periodic boom cycles and housing was extremely tight.  So, I moved into my office.  At that time my “office” was a tiny room off a lab in the basement of the Earth Sciences building.  I kept a foam pad rolled up during the day.  At night, I put my chair on my desk, unrolled the foam pad so that it fit into the foot well of my desk and rolled my sleeping bag out.  At that time I was spending almost all my time writing, so except for my teaching assistant duties and trips o the gym/pool for a workout and shower, I seldom left my office.  I lived there for about a month before a woman I knew invited me to move in with her.  She shared a small house with her sister just south of Saskatchewan Drive on 100th street.  They had a small room in their basement that became my home for about 3 weeks until I defended my thesis during the first week of December 1982.  I completed my teaching duties a few days after defending my thesis, so I packed up my 1969 BMW 2002 on December 10, 1982 and headed out of Edmonton to Seattle.  I remember being very happy to put Alberta behind me when I crossed the border into British Columbia.  Little did I know.

At the end of 1983 I was a research fellow at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaigne, IL.  Life had just gotten interesting because the professor I worked for had just committed suicide.  The grant I was funded on died with him, so I was out of a job at the end of the month.  Serendipitously, my former Ph.D. adviser contacted me because he too was in a bit of a bind.  In Canada at that time science research funding mostly came from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).  NSERC grants were uncategorized, which meant the money could be used for anything the researcher wanted (i.e., hiring grad students, direct research costs, hiring post-docs, etc.).  In addition to his NSERC grant my former professor had gotten a research grant from a Canadian Crown Corporation that included money to hire a Post-Doctoral Research Associate. Unfortunately he decided not to hire the research associate and used the money for something else.  In early-December, the grantor told him that they wanted the money for the Research Associate back since he hadn’t hired anyone.  That was a major problem. He managed to work out a deal that allowed him not to return the money if he hired someone by the end of the year.  In academia hiring a Ph.D. level staff person generally takes months.  So when he heard about my situation he called me on about December 20 and offered me the job effective December 31.  Being at loose ends, I accepted the offer, which saved his bacon as well as mine.  So I headed back to Edmonton just before Christmas of 1983.

I crossed the border into Canada just south of Winnipeg, Manitoba in the middle of a blizzard early on December 24th, 1983.  I arrived in Winnipeg a bit before noon to find that the RCMP had closed the trans Canada highway and weren’t letting anyone leave the city.  I spent a lonely Christmas eve in a motel at the west edge of Winnipeg. I was finally allowed to leave the city on Christmas afternoon.  I arrived in back in Edmonton on boxing day 1983.  The next day I signed my contract and headed west to Seattle.  Back in Seattle I spent until January 5th making arrangements for and then marrying my second wife.  We left the city on January 6th headed for Edmonton.

My new wife and I arrived in Edmonton on January 8, 1984 and promptly started looking for an apartment.  While we were apartment hunting of of my former fellow grad students put us up.  Alberta Canada has a boom and bust economy that depends on the price of oil   January 1984 was in the middle of a bust, so there were lots of apartments available and they were cheap.  After only a few days of looking we decided on a one bedroom apartment on the 18th floor of a high rise building with a view north across the North Saskatchewan River toward downtown Edmonton.

Cranleigh Towers at 10135 North Saskatchewan Dr. in Edmonton, Alberta.  My apartment was on the 18th floor immediately to the right of the center section of the building.

The building had heated under ground parking, a full gym and an indoor pool.  The rent was $450 a month including all utilities.  The apartment was an easy 20 minute walk from the university.  An added plus was that it was located in Edmonton’s Strathcona district, which is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Edmonton in my opinion.

We lived in that apartment until the end of July 1985 when I took a job as a chemist in Canadian government lab a small town in eastern Manitoba.  While we lived there we enjoyed the vibrant restaurant scene in Edmonton and spent as much time as possible exploring the Canadian Rockies between Banff and Jasper, Elk Island National Park east of Edmonton and eastern British Columbia.  We also made lots of day trips around Edmonton including visiting Lesser Slave Lake and lots of other local attractions.  We were actually sad to leave Edmonton in contrast to how I had felt back at the end of 1982.

I have been back to Edmonton only twice since I moved away in 1985.  I still miss the city sometimes.  It was a great place to live in the summer.  I do have to confess that the winters were a bit hard to take, but I understand they are warmer now than back in the 70s and 80s.