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The Play Guide for BOOM was created by: Zachary Moull with files from Kidoons
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BOOM runs from October 11 to 29, 2016 For tickets, visit theatrecalgary.com or call (403) 294-7447
Table of Contents THE BASICS The Company ....................................................................01 Who’s Who? ...................................................................... 02 The Story ..........................................................................02 EXPLORATIONS Rick Miller Goes BOOM ...................................................... 03 The Birth of the Baby Boomers …………................................ 04 Terms to Know .................................................................. 06 From Boom to Boom A Generation’s Coming of Age ……………………………….. 07 Calgary in the Boom Years ................................................. 12 CONVERSATIONS Conversation Starters ........................................................ 13 Share Your Story ............................................................... 13 Changing the World ........................................................... 13 Soundtrack for the Boom Years .......................................... 14 Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation ................................................ 16 Recommended Reads from Calgary Public Library ................ 17 Sources ............................................................................ 18
THE BASICS
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The Company Theatre Calgary presents
BOOM by Rick Miller Produced by Kidoons and WYRD Productions Rick Miller
Writer/Director/Performer
Jeff Lord David Leclerc Bruno Matte Creighton Doane Yannik Larivee Olivier Bourque Marylise Gagnon Laurel Oneil Ravi Jain Logograph Craig Francis Ardon Bess
Executive Producer Projection Design Lighting Design Composer & Sound Design Set, Costume, & Props Design Production Manager Stage Manager (Oct 11 to 13) Stage Manager (Oct 14 to 29) Directing Consultant Graphic Design, Multimedia, & Marketing Director of Outreach Marketing Laurence Davis, on video
Catharine Crumb Chris Jacko Scott Morris Ron Siegmund Bronwyn Bowlby
Head of Lighting Head of Sound Head Stage Carpenter Wardrobe & Wig Master Assistant Head of Sound
THE BASICS
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Who’s Who? The Narrator: A man performing a time capsule of the Baby Boom years, to experience what it was like for his parents to grow up at that time. Maddie: A woman born in small-town Ontario in 1946. Laurence: A man born in Chicago in 1945. Rudi: A man born in Vienna, Austria, in 1937.
The Story BOOM documents the culture and politics that shaped the Baby Boom generation during the years from 1945 to 1969, through the memories and experiences of its three main characters.
Rick Miller in BOOM (David Leclerc)
EXPLORATIONS
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Rick Miller Goes BOOM One of Canada’s most respected interdisciplinary theatre artists, Rick Miller works as a writer, performer, and director across the country. BOOM is one of Miller’s many popular solo shows that draw from history, literature, and pop culture alike and fuse hightech multimedia designs with his low-tech virtuosic performances. Miller’s other solo hits include MacHomer, in which he conjures dozens
of
voices
from
The
Simpsons in a riotous retelling of Shakespeare’s
Macbeth,
and
Bigger Than Jesus, a thoughtful and
irreverent
“multimedia
mass” that explores the story of Christianity. BOOM began as a personal project
for
Miller,
after
he
became fascinated by his father’s penchant for cataloguing his family’s
history
and
its
Rick Miller (headshot by Michael Cooper)
connections to world events. “I began to dig into the history, politics, and culture of the Baby Boom period,” Miller says, “and hooked into the concept of a solo documentary time capsule.” Chronicling the years from 1945 to 1969, BOOM begins with one “boom” – the atomic bombing of Hiroshima – and ends with another, more hopeful one, as the rockets of Apollo 11 take the first humans to the surface of the moon. Using his immense vocal and physical talents, Miller transforms himself into his parents and the scores of historical figures who influenced the world in which they grew up. “I felt that part of the audience experience is to be
EXPLORATIONS
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immersed in one man’s journey to rediscover his past,” says Miller. The result is a show that views the profound and public cultural shifts of the Baby Boom era through the private lens of his own family’s story. Miller was born in 1970, just after the period he explores in BOOM, but the process of creating the show gave him insight into his own life as well. “I think we can learn about ourselves today if we just look back and see the cycles and patterns of history,” says Miller. “History repeats itself, and we become more like our parents than we wish to think.”
The Birth of the Baby Boomers For two decades after World War II ended in 1945, both Canada and the United States had a strong spike in their birth rates. Fuelled by reunited families and post-war prosperity, Canada reached a peak of nearly 500,000 births per year during the 1950s – more than twice as many as some years in the 1930s or the 1970s. These “Baby Boomers,” as the generation came to be called, were a demographic shockwave that forced dramatic changes in North American schools, workplaces, politics, and cultural life. “There were so many of them born in such a short time,” says BOOM creator Rick Miller, “that they were able (and still are able) to remodel society as they pass through it.”
This graph from the U.S. Census Bureau shows the elevated birth rates of the Baby Boom era
EXPLORATIONS
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Historian Anthony Esler writes that a generation is “an age group shaped by history.” The Baby Boomers were shaped by a tumultuous era, growing up in the shadow of the Cold War and learning to “duck and cover” under their school desks in case of nuclear attacks. But all the same, the post-war era was generally an optimistic time, with a growing economy and exciting technological advancements. Baby Boomers, many of whom were raised in new family-oriented and car-dependent suburbs, were the first children to own transistor radios and grow up with television. They basked in a powerful youth culture that built a sense of common identity across the continent, laying the groundwork for them to rally and organize in support of shared ideals once they came of age. As Baby Boomers grew up, Miller says, “all the big stories of the time – the Cold War, the Space Race, Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the birth of rock and roll – started spiralling together in this fusion of politics and culture.” Especially on university campuses, where the three protagonists of BOOM find themselves in the late 1960s, some Baby Boomers revelled in counterculture, felt a strong distrust of adult authority, and voiced their political dissent. These student activists lent their youth and energy to ongoing causes such as civil rights, women’s rights, environmentalism, and nuclear disarmament, and played a key role in the protest movement against the Vietnam War. In his Baby Boom history Born at the Right Time, Doug Owram suggests that counterculture hippies and activists were always the minority, especially in Canada. But while the political views of any age group are far from monolithic, he writes, “the radicalism of the sixties shaped the ethics of a generation and defined the political agenda for the next decades.”
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” –Aldous Huxley
EXPLORATIONS
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Terms to Know Cold War: The geopolitical struggle between the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union. It began at the end of World War II and lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in 1989 and 1991 respectively. The war was called “cold” because the two powers didn’t engage in direct warfare against each other, instead fighting proxy wars in countries such as Korea and Vietnam. Space Race: An offshoot of the Cold War, this was the competition between the space programs of the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was the first to launch an artificial satellite (Sputnik I in 1957) and to launch a human into space (Yuri Gagarin in 1961), but the United States became the first to put a person on the moon in 1969. Civil Rights: The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s fought racial segregation and discrimination against Black Americans, especially in the southern United States. Its powerful nonviolent tactics served as an inspiration for later protest movements. Vietnam War: This war was between communist and anti-communist factions in Vietnam, with the United States sending more than two million troops to fight in favour of anti-communist South Vietnam. This intervention in the war was especially contentious due to conscription, with some young Americans fleeing to Canada to dodge the draft. The Vietnam War became a focal point for the peace protests of the late 1960s, but the war itself continued into the 1970s. Counterculture: This term is applied to movements that stand against the dominant culture of an era. In the second half of the 1960s, “counterculture” described student activists who protested the Vietnam War, hippies who challenged social norms around sexuality and drug use, and other subgroups who experimented with new music, unconventional fashions, and revolutionary lifestyles. The counterculture of the late 1960s played a role in the peace movement, second-wave feminism, environmentalism, the fight against nuclear proliferation, and gay liberation.
EXPLORATIONS
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From Boom to Boom A Generation’s Coming of Age 1945 The United States drops two nuclear weapons on Japan, killing well over 100,000 people. At the end of World War II, troops start returning home from Europe and the Pacific. 1946 Dr. Benjamin Spock publishes The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, an influential parenting handbook that encourages flexibility and permissiveness. 1947 The Cold War begins in earnest, with the Truman Doctrine shaping U.S. foreign policy to support countries at risk of
The mushroom cloud above Nagasaki after the atomic bombing on August 9, 1945 (Charles Levy, National Archives)
falling under Soviet influence. The House Un-American Activities Committee investigates suspected communists in the public service and the media. 1948 Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated. The Soviet Union blockades West Berlin. 1949 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is formed as a bulwark against the spread of Soviet hegemony. Germany is officially divided into East Germany and West Germany. 1950 The Korean War begins when communist North Korea invades South Korea. Nearly two million Americans and 26,000 Canadians fight in the war, which results in an armistice in 1953. 1951 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage and sentenced to death, for allegedly passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.
EXPLORATIONS
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1952 Queen Elizabeth II is coronated. The U.S. successfully tests a hydrogen bomb. Former general Dwight D. Eisenhower wins the presidential election amidst fears of nuclear war. 1953 Joseph Stalin dies, and Nikita Khrushchev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union. Ian Fleming publishes the first James Bond novel. More than twothirds of U.S. television sets are tuned to a single episode of I Love Lucy. 1954 President Eisenhower authorizes support for South Vietnam, which is facing pressure from communist North Vietnam. For the first time, a majority of U.S. households have a television set. 1955 The protests of Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks spark a boycott against the segregated bus system in Montgomery, Alabama. 1956 The U.S. begins construction of the massive Interstate Highway System. Elvis Presley gyrates his hips while singing “Hound Dog” on the Milton Berle Show. 1957 The Soviet Union launches the satellite Sputnik I into orbit, taking the lead in the space race. The U.S. and Canada form the NORAD air and space defence program. 1958 Canada’s high-tech Avro Arrow fighter jet makes its first test flight, before being cancelled abruptly the next year. Drafted the previous year, Elvis Presley is inducted into the U.S. Army. 1959 Led by Fidel Castro, the Cuban
A replica of the 1957 Soviet satellite Sputnik I (U.S. Air Force)
Revolution ousts the U.S.backed dictator Fulgencio Battista. Rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson die in a plane crash.
EXPLORATIONS
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1960 Black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, hold a sit-in at a “whites only” Woolworth’s lunch counter. The charismatic John F. Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon in the presidential election. The birth-control pill is approved, but in Canada, it remains difficult for unmarried women to get a prescription until later in the decade. 1961 The CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs Invasion fails to overthrow Castro’s increasingly communist government of Cuba. East Germany builds the Berlin Wall to cordon off West Berlin. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to journey into space. President Kennedy vows to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. 1962 The world comes to the brink of nuclear war as the U.S. protests the construction of Soviet missile launch facilities in Cuba. The phrase “mutually assured destruction” enters the vernacular, describing the result of a nuclear conflict between the two countries. 1963 Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. gives his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 (National Archives)
Jobs and Freedom. President Kennedy is assassinated. 1964 The U.S. escalates its military involvement in Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act. The Beatles embark on their first North American tour. 1965 Under the government of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, the Maple Leaf becomes the
President Kennedy’s motorcade, moments before his assassination in 1963 (Victor Hugo King)
EXPLORATIONS
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national flag of Canada. Thousands of Americans dodge the draft by fleeing to Canada, which does not fight in Vietnam. Students at the University of California, Berkeley, organize protests against the Vietnam War. Bob Dylan goes electric, the protest song “Eve of Destruction” tops the charts, and The Who’s “My Generation” becomes an anthem. 1966 Author Ken Kesey hosts “acid tests” of the psychedelic drug LSD in California. John Lennon says that the Beatles are more popular than Jesus. 1967 Thousands congregate at the Human Be-In in San Francisco, which broadcasts hippie culture across the continent. Martin Luther King Jr. joins the chorus of voices against the Vietnam War. Canada celebrates its centennial with Expo 67 in Montreal. Toronto’s Yorkville becomes one of Canada’s most famous and contentious counterculture districts. The Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup for the last time to this day. 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated, sparking demonstrations and unrest across the United States. Pierre Trudeau becomes Prime Minister of Canada. Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated while campaigning in the U.S. presidential primaries. 1969 The Stonewall riots in New York catalyze the gay rights movement. Apollo 11 lands the first humans on the moon, fulfilling the late President Kennedy’s vision on live TV. The Woodstock concert takes place later that same year.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon, 1969 (Neil Armstrong, NASA)
“Turn on, tune in, drop out.” –Counterculture advocate Timothy Leary in 1966
EXPLORATIONS
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Calgary in the Boom Years The Baby Boom years were a time of tremendous growth and change for Calgary. The post-war demographic boom combined with an oil boom (which brought thousands to Alberta after oil was struck in Leduc in 1947) to transform the city. Calgary had just over 100,000 residents in 1946. By 1966, two decades later, the population had tripled to more than 330,000, and Calgary was on the road to becoming a metropolis. As in many North American cities, the explosive growth of this era led to a wave of new housing development that changed the landscape of Calgary. The city annexed swaths of territory beyond its old limits, and sprawling new subdivisions were designed for families with cars and young children. Calgary Transit stopped running streetcars in 1950, replacing rail service with a fleet of buses that could serve the suburbs. New office towers sprang up in the downtown area to house the burgeoning petroleum industry, and Calgary began to build a system of freeways to transport the city’s increasingly car-reliant population. At the height of 1960s highway craze, a planned 10-lane “Downtown Penetrator” would have demolished Chinatown and Eau Claire, along with other neighbourhoods. The threatened communities organized against the plan, which was eventually cancelled. Spurred on by the city’s growth and Canada’s impending centennial celebrations, many of Calgary’s cultural institutions arose in the 1960s. A new Calgary campus of the University of Alberta opened in 1960, which became the University of Calgary in 1966 after a student-led campaign for autonomy. The Central Library was built in 1963, the Glenbow Museum opened in 1966, and Theatre Calgary staged its first production in 1968. One of the enduring symbols of this boom era, the Husky Tower (later the Calgary Tower), was completed in 1968. At the time, it stood more than twice as high as the next tallest building in the city.
EXPLORATIONS
This map represents the expansion of Calgary's city limits over time. The central reddish squares show the city in the first half of the 20th century, and the orange and yellow rings show land that was annexed as the city grew in the 1950s and 1960s. (City of Calgary)
A postcard of downtown Calgary in 1968, with the new Husky Tower. (from Postal History Corner)
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CONVERSATIONS
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Conversation Starters
Do you identify as part of particular generation?
How are you different from your parents? How are you the same?
Do you have any family stories that connect to broader world events?
What’s the first major historical event that you personally remember?
What lessons can we learn from the past?
Does history move in a straight line, or in recurring cycles?
Rick Miller describes the Baby Boom era as a time when culture and politics seemed to fuse together. What connections between culture and politics do you see in our world today?
Share Your Story Do you have a story you want to tell? Visit www.encyclopediacanada.com/stories to add your experiences to an online tapestry of stories and memories shared by BOOM audience members across the country.
Changing the World Baby Boomers came of age during a turbulent era of social change, and some were connected to campaigns such as civil rights, women’s rights, environmentalism, and the anti-war movement.
What issue or cause do you care deeply about?
What’s one way you could make an active contribution to that cause?
“History is full of small acts that changed the world in surprising ways.” –Rebecca Solnit
CONVERSATIONS
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Soundtrack for the Boom Years Rock and roll, which has its roots in the musical innovations of Black Americans, became a powerful emblem of youth and rebellion as Baby Boomers grew up. Over the course of the Boom years, more and more teenagers gained access to new affordable personal radios, and the sheer size of the young generation made them a massive cultural force. Drawn from songs heard in BOOM, this playlist shows some of the progression from the crooners of the 1940s to the rock and roll pioneers of the 1950s, and through to the rise of new genres like funk and psychedelic rock in the late 1960s. Perry Como, “Till the End of Time” (1945) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSJ-oT2ZBa0 Fats Domino, “The Fat Man” (1950) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIz1cPfTRW4 Bill Haley and His Comets, “Rock Around the Clock” (1954) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgdufzXvjqw Little Richard, “Tutti Frutti” (1955) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_C9q4tuwXI Elvis Presley, “Hound Dog” (1956) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJnVQDA9rHA Buddy Holly, “Crying, Waiting, Hoping” (1959) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7HthOdTjCo The Beatles, “All My Loving” (1963) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twjKjcEO8qI The Who, “My Generation” (1965) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=594WLzzb3JI
CONVERSATIONS
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Janis Joplin, “Piece of My Heart” (1967) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJb7cBfrxbo Sly and the Family Stone, “I Want to Take You Higher” (1969) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDjnB_61k58 David Bowie, “Space Oddity" (1969) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYMCLz5PQVw
Do you have a song that takes you back to a certain time or place?
Which songs from the past twenty years do you think will still be played decades from now?
During the Boom years, the musical tastes of teenagers and adults diverged, and many adults had antagonistic feelings towards the new musical genres. Does this dynamic persist today?
Rick Miller in BOOM (Paul Lambert)
CONVERSATIONS
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Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation Categorizing people by age group can be a challenging and problematic proposition, since generational thinking tends to elide the specificity of experience based on gender, class, ethnicity, or geographic location. According to historian Doug Owram, Baby Boomers were unusual in their strong self-identity as a generation, and their legacy has led thinkers to try to define the generations that have come after them. “The very fact that we are continuing to discuss issues along generational lines,” writes Owram, “reflects the powerful hold the Baby Boom had.” These are the best-known names for the next generations: Generation X: Originally called “Baby Busters,” Generation X was born as birth rates lowered in the late 1960s and 1970s. They had the economic disadvantage of following the large Boom generation into the workplace, and have been said to have a less optimistic worldview. The term was popularized by Canadian writer Douglas Coupland, who said that the ‘X’ stood for the generation’s desire not to be defined. Millennials: First known as “Generation Y,” Millennials were born in the 1980s and `90s, and many are children of Baby Boomers. Growing up during the rise of the internet and the advent of cell phones, they are often characterized as a generation oriented towards technology. They were hard hit by the economic downturn of the early 21st century and may end up as the first North American generation to be less well off than their parents. Historians Neil Howe and William Strauss coined the term, based on this group being the first to come of age in the new millennium. There’s no consensus yet on what to call those born after the late 1990s, who are still in school today. “Generation Z” and “Post-Millennials” have been used as placeholders, but names that refer to previous generations don’t tend to stick. One frontrunner is the “iGeneration” – a reference to mobile devices, as well as interactivity, interconnectedness, and individuality.
What qualities or perspectives do you share with people in your age group?
What name would you give to the new generation born after the late 1990s?
CONVERSATIONS
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Recommended Reads from Calgary Public Library By Rosemary Griebel
The Baby Boom, by P.J. O’Rourke Non-fiction, 2014. Baby Boomer and satirist P. J. O’Rourke writes the memoir of a generation that shaped the world, celebrating the “mess” they have made and capturing the spirit of “God’s favorite spoiled brats.”
The Life of the Automobile, by Steven Parissien Non-fiction, 2014. The Golden Age of the automobile was a driving force (pun intended) for the Baby Boom generation, representing freedom and escape. This book covers the rise of cars as they became a staple of western life through to modern times.
The King Years, by Taylor Branch Non-fiction, 2015. Non-Fiction. 2013. Branch’s trilogy America in the King Years shared the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for history. The massive work has been curated here in a single volume of 18 key moments from 1955 to 1968. The Civil Rights Movement burgeoned as Boomers came of age, and this selection from a meticulous history gives depth and breadth to the era.
The History of Rock ‘N’ Roll in Ten Songs, by Greil Marcus Non-fiction, 2014. In a unique exploration, revered rock critic Greil Marcus selects ten songs that define rock ‘n’ roll. He weaves the songs’ stories together through history to provide a fascinating account of the music that has shaped generations.
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien Fiction, 1990. This anthology is considered by many to be the definitive fictional account of the Vietnam War. The war was the first one to be brought directly to the world through television, creating a lasting impact on Boomers, including draft dodging, protesting, and more. Click on the book covers to check availability at Calgary Public Library!
CONVERSATIONS
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Sources BOOM website and marketing materials. Kidoons. www.boomshow.ca “Calgary in the 1950s.” Glenbow Museum, 2010. www.glenbow.org/50s Colby, Sandra L., and Jennifer M. Ortman. “The Baby Boom Cohort in the United States.” U.S. Census Bureau, 2014. www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p25-1141.pdf “Fifty Years of Community.” University of Calgary. www.ucalgarycelebrates.ca Kalish, Emma Cancian. “Millennials Are the Least Wealthy but Most Optimistic Generation.” Urban Institute, Apr 22, 2016. www.urban.org/research/publication/millennials-are-leastwealthy-most-optimistic-generation Martel, Laurent, and France-Pascale Ménard. “Generations in Canada.” Statistics Canada, 2012. www12.statcan.gc.ca/censusrecensement/2011/as-sa/98-311-x/98-311-x2011003_2-eng.cfm Owram, Doug. Born at the Right Time. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1996. Raphelson, Samantha. “From GIs to Gen Z (or is it iGen?): How Generations Get Nicknames.” NPR, 2014. www.npr.org/2014/10/06/349316543/don-t-label-me-origins-ofgenerational-names-and-why-we-use-them “Twenty Decisions that Shaped Calgary.” Avenue, Jan 1, 2015. www.avenuecalgary.com/City-Life/20-Decisions-That-Shaped-Calgary White, Stephanie. Unbuilt Calgary. Toronto: Dundurn, 2012. Williams, Julia. “A Lengthy History of Calgary That Still Barely Scratches the Surface.” www.avenuecalgary.com/City-Life/A-LengthyHistory-of-Calgary-That-Still-Barely-Scratches-the-Surface