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Volume 3
The Boom and the Bust 1910-1914
lberta's population had quintupled to 375,000 during the first decade of the 20th century, and the great rush of settlers continued unabated in the years leading up to the First World War. Hundreds of new towns and villages were born along the ever-growing network of railroad tracks that knitted the far-flung reaches of the province together. As one headline observes in The Boom and the Bust, it was a time when "the whole province seemed to be under construction.
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"In four months, Coronation went from a scrabble of tents to a village of 524 people and 141 buildings: six real estate and loan offices, six restaurants and boarding houses, five coal and fuel dealers, three livery barns, three implement dealers, three barber shops, three well drillers, two banks, two drugstores, two butchers, two blacksmiths, two bakeries, one doctor, on print shop, a dairy, a laundry, two hotels under construction and $1,500 worth of wooden sidewalks."
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More than any other era, the pre-war years established Alberta's political and social character. A huge wave of American immigrants settled in the south—30,000 entered the province in 1912 alone—infecting the province with their republican ideas about individual freedom and limited government. In the north, the immigrant population included large numbers of Eastern Europeans; they too relished the freedom and opportunity offered by the young province. It was also a time that saw the emergence of women as a potent political force. Their fight for prohibition evolved into a fight for the vote, and they would succeed in both campaigns by 1915.
The notorious 1913 prize fight in Calgary between Arthur Pelkey and Luther McCarty gets an entire chapter in Volume 3. McCarty collapsed to the mat after taking a huge punch to the chest and never got up again. A jury acquitted Pelkey of manslaughter after a sensational trial, but the sport of boxing was discredited in Alberta for many years after the fight.
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Volume 7
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Volume 8
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Volume 9
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Volume 10
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Volume 11
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Volume 12
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