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It all started 120 years ago, on July 1. The town of Raymond, with its population of under 5000 people, has perhaps one of Alberta's longest and most notable histories of any basketball program. In 1904, the Raymond Exhibition sponsored what has become known as the first official game of basketball in, what was then, the Alberta region of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Alberta became a province in 1905.

Construction of the original Galt Hospital in 1891 was financed by Sir Alexander Galt, owner of the Northwest Coal and Navigation Company. Coal miners in the Oldman River Valley desperately required health care due to unsafe working conditions. Frequent exposure to dust and toxins often led to illnesses such as pneumoconiosis (black lung disease), pulmonary disease, asbestosis, and cancer.

Prairie short grasses, rolling foothills, the Rocky Mountains, and the Chinook winds. These words, spoken to a Southern Albertan whether they still live here or not, evoke a myriad of memories, each unique to the individual, yet all rooted in the concept of home. Family names like Tollestrup, Hicken, Gibb, McMurray, Molcak, Rice, Karren, West, Bourne, Heggie, Stevenson Rollingson, Mirkovich, and many others evoke another set of memories of “home”. Home on the basketball court.

Past issues of the Lethbridge Herald have long served as an encyclopedia of community life, a Who’s Who of Southwest Alberta. However, not everyone was fairly represented. In the Galt Museum’s archives are images of Blackfoot people once featured in the newspaper without identification, leaving their stories untold. The 1,000 Faces Project was designed to bridge this gap by recovering and preserving their names in archival records.

Few constants exist in the ever-changing world of high school. Perhaps none have proven as nostalgically valuable as the portraits, signatures, and memories found in a high school yearbook. Much of Lethbridge’s own high school history sits in its shelves full of these volumes, dating as far back as 1922!

Not all humour ages gracefully, as anyone who grew up subjected to dad jokes can tell you. Context gets lost, punchlines become predictable; when was the last time a knock-knock joke got a laugh from you? It’s easy to see, then, how printed jokes in the newspaper fell out of fashion. This doesn’t mean, though, that old newspapers are entirely humourless today. Indeed, some jokes published over a century ago still prove funny today!

Sometimes, certain indicators—a scrap-paper bookmark here, a scribble on that corner—will pop out at just the right time, serving as immediate reminders of the people who used, owned, and, in many cases, loved these items. While the exact dates or authors of these personal touches can be hard to pin down, these small treasures can sometimes humanize the residents of Lethbridge’s past more than any catalogue or municipal record.

In January of 1923, Lethbridge resident E. G. Sterndale Bennett published a letter in the Herald. The column, a thoughtfully penned request to connect with theatre lovers like himself, received only one written response. This year, Sterndale Bennett’s theatre group celebrated their centennial. Clearly, an opening isn’t everything!

Whether you’re repulsed by or devoted to tattoos, it’s hard to deny their significance in human history. Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,000-year-old mummy, sported sixty-one small lines of ink around his body. Body modification has long been used around the globe to denote characteristics like strength, social standing, or battle experience. In modern-day Lethbridge, many of us wear them for a slightly less compelling reason; we like how they look!

Lethbridge’s Oliver Block, located across the street from Draffin’s Pharmacy on 5 Street downtown, has borne an interesting story since the day it was built. Constructed at the turn of the twentieth century, the building was named for its owner William Oliver during his term as Lethbridge’s seventh mayor. The building opened in two separate segments at Oliver’s behest, as he was eager to open his blacksmithing business as soon as possible! In the 120-odd years since, the building has housed a wide variety of tenants. Perhaps what the building is best known for now, however, is how close it came to destruction.

As Lethbridge lost the 104-year-old Bow On Tong building to a fire in early February, many feared that the last remnants of Chinatown were gone with it. Some staples of the historic community still stand along 2 Avenue; most of us are familiar with the bold architecture of the Chinese Freemason building, or the Traditional Chinese lettering atop the Wing Wah Chong Co. building. As more historic buildings are lost to time, however, it is worth examining exactly what purpose they served in the first place—and why they still matter today.

Throughout its history, the American Hotel in Fort Macleod served as a gathering space for Indigenous peoples in a largely white, settler town. As the hotel’s ownership changed over the decades, this affected how interactions unfolded inside its doors and who was welcomed.

Many of us are uncomfortable when discussing funerals and death—and for valid reasons. Examining the history of these events in our community, however, can shed some light on how we conduct them today.

The familiar narrative of the Second World War is that of the Allies triumphing over the Nazis. However, for thousands of Japanese Canadians, their experience of this same event was one of injustice and broken promises.

When Dorothy Clark, a 24-year-old graduate of the Minneapolis Academy of Beauty, moved here in 1924, it was to a much different Lethbridge than we know today. While a swath of local spas, salons, and beauty shops can be found now with a simple search engine inquiry, Mrs. Clark was entering a much smaller market; her arrival to Lethbridge marked her as one of only two working hairdressers in the 14,000-person mining community.

For as long as humans have flown, Lethbridge has had the space for it! As aviation took off in the early twentieth century, the need for dedicated airports became clear around the world, from major cities to small rural communities. It wasn’t long before this demand manifested locally into the Lethbridge Airport.

There’s no need to explain how important hockey is to Albertans. No matter the age or the league, the sport has an impact on all of us—especially if it inspires pride in our local athletes!

While a relatively young city, Lethbridge’s history is unique in the way it surrounds us even today. It is easy for any historical organization to speak about buildings that used to be, or practices that were once in place; it’s another thing entirely to walk up to these buildings or continue these lines of work. While industries like coal mining are seen far less today, other fields—particularly the agricultural kind—define our region today as thoroughly as they used to. The past runs through any city’s veins; in Lethbridge’s case, it doubles as its face.