(from my Edmonton book collection; most of these pix from 1914–the first year of WW1)
(Way-y back: 1890. Hudson Bay always one of the first buildings in prairie cities because of the fur trade)
(Downtown, 1914)
(“It’s hard not to think of The Bay”)
(Take your pick of mode of transport: train, car, horse and wagon, streetcar)
(To say nothing of paddlewheel boat)
(now located at Fort Edmonton and faithfully reproduced like so; my wife and I stayed a weekend there in the early 2000s, parking back of the hotel, taking all meals there, sleeping in an authentic room, and walking around the park by ourselves early on a quiet Sunday)
(the original Vic Comp)
(Edmonton is often accused of not preserving its early buildings, but many schools are still up and intact)
(another well-known survivor when it was first going up)
(one of the city’s most beautiful buildings across form Sir Winston Churchill Square; my wife worked there in the summers of 1968-69. It was torn down to make way for what became a new Woodward’s and Edmonton Centre)
(Yes, the Old Strathcona Library is really that old!)
(ye olde hospitals)
(Fox farming and coal mining were early industries)
(Passenger trains ran to the nice CPR Station on the north side of the bridge on the north side of Jasper at 109 Street’ My wife and I took a train to Calgary across the High Level around 1971 when it was still running)
(So much depended on the railways in the early days–Edmonton was a nexus. Here you can see all the lines running into Edmonton. We took the trains to Jasper, Winnipeg, and Grand Centre (the little station was there when we arrived in 1972; since torn down)