Alberta Book Day

Alberta boasts twenty-eight active book publishers who contribute significantly to Alberta’s culture and GDP. You’ll find university presses, trade publishers, and publishers of learning resources and guidebooks in Edmonton, Calgary, Canmore, and Banff. On May 15, the Government of Alberta is declaring the inaugural Alberta Book Day which celebrates the importance of the publishing industry and highlights the diversity of the books published in this province.

We (Athabasca University Press, Canada’s first open access publisher) will be there with stacks of books that showcase the work of authors from Alberta and beyond. Publishing in open access (making books available for free download) presents endless possibilities for sharing knowledge and stories with communities, academic or otherwise. Government support allows publishers to increase their profiles by publishing more books, by reaching larger audiences, and by acquiring the work of the best writers and thinkers. But such support is far more substantial in other provinces and Alberta Book Day is a small step toward acknowledging the imbalance that exists here. The Alberta publishing industry is a small but mighty group of passionate and creative individuals committed to the work of enriching Canadian culture. We are thrilled to have an occasion that allows us to share that passion (and our books) with Alberta MLAs.

Although we publish authors from around the world on topics from distance education to labour studies to memoirs, our Alberta authors and the research they share about our province are particularly important for understanding the context we live in and land that we’re on. Being aware of our social surroundings and the histories that have shaped the place we call home helps us in our work and also in our personal lives. Sharing alternative and sometimes difficult stories about our province with our government and the rest of the country and the world is important work and we are honoured to participate in it.

To celebrate the upcoming Alberta Book Day, we are sharing five of our favourite books about Alberta.

My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell is a simple and outspoken account of the sexual and psychological abuse that Arthur Bear Chief suffered during his time at Old Sun Residential school in Gleichen on the Siksika Nation. In a series of chronological vignettes, Bear Chief depicts the punishment, cruelty, abuse, and injustice that he endured at Old Sun and then later relived in the traumatic process of retelling his story at an examination for discovery in connection with a lawsuit brought against the federal government.

Defying Expectations: The Case of UFCW Local 401 by Jason Foster is an account of the resilient United Food and Commercials Workers Local 401, a union that defied the odds in Alberta, a province that previously had some of the most antiunion labour laws in Canada. Defying Expectations revisits some of Alberta’s most unforgettable strikes—from the 1997 Safeway strike to the 2002 Shaw Conference Centre strike and the 2005 Lakeside Packers strike. Through the labour movements organized by UFCW Local 401, Foster shows that unions have the capacity for meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century workplace.

Public Deliberation on Climate Change edited by Lorelei L. Hanson details the process of a five-year public deliberation project called Alberta Climate Dialogue (ABCD), which brought Albertans together at four public deliberations on the topic of climate change. Alberta’s heavy reliance on the oil and gas industry and its host of powerful stakeholders has created a complicated and tenuous setting for discussions about climate change which makes the lessons from these deliberations all the more valuable.

Alberta’s Lower Athabasca Basin: Archaeology and Palaeoenvironments edited by Brian M. Ronaghan discusses the impact that oil sands development has on a crucial part of our environment: archaeological resources. Archaeological assessments can provide us with crucial information about the history and the future of the oil sands and the editor of Alberta’s Lower Athabasca Basin hopes that “this book will contribute to a deeper and more nuanced public understanding of the history embedded in this landscape and, in so doing, will help to build interest in the rich prehistoric heritage of northern Canada.”

Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy in Canada edited by Meenal Shrivastava and Lorna Stefanick probes the impact of Alberta’s powerful oil lobby on the health of democracy in the province. In addition to examining energy policy and issues of government accountability in Alberta, the contributors to the volume explore the ramifications of oil dependence in areas such as Indigenous rights, environmental policy, labour law, women’s equity, urban social policy, and the arts.

Alberta books are not just about Alberta. They are about Canadian literature, Frankenstein and Marshall McLuhan, musical patterns and neural networks, the Independent Labour Party in Britain, the fur trade, and beyond!