Read: “Cruising the Downtown: Celebrating Edmonton’s Queer History”
The Edmonton Queer History Project, a community initiative documenting local queer life and culture since the 1960s liberation movement, uses public records, oral histories and personal interviews to paint a detailed picture of how the queer community has shaped — and been shaped by — the city. The project now celebrates its tenth year with the book Cruising the Downtown: Celebrating Edmonton’s Queer History. Edited by Dr. Kristopher Wells and published by NeWest Press, the essay collection expands on the Project’s mission “by moving through civic landmarks, sites of queer resistance, nightlife, celebration, and activist spaces.” Readers will recognize subjects like Michael Phair, the first openly gay politician in Alberta, and Wallbridge & Imrie, who ran the first female-run architecture firm in Canada. It’s both a celebration and excavation of stories that have been kept hidden for too long.
Cruising the Downtown: Celebrating Edmonton’s Queer History is published by NeWest Press and is available from your local bookseller.
Watch: “Back to the Future”
Audiences first met Marty McFly, the skateboarding protagonist of Robert Zemeckis’s time travel movie Back to the Future in the summer of 1985. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Back to the Future, the Telus World of Science is screening it in IMAX this weekend.
If, for some reason you’ve never seen the adventure sci-fi classic, McFly (Michael J. Fox) is a classic ‘80s hero — a resourceful underdog who thinks fast to avoid frequent hazings from Biff, the film’s signature bully. Back to the Future was the highest grossing film of 1985, and it turned Fox — already a household name thanks to his starring role in the sitcom Family Ties — into a veritable movie star and led to two blockbuster sequels. It also turned the DMC DeLorean into an icon — and if you don’t get that reference, then you’ve got homework to do this weekend.