Talk about an activity! Going out on the town in Medicine Hat is never what I would consider a particularly exciting venture. Though I love this place with all of my heart and I fondly call it home, there are not many places here that I tend to go. Maybe it’s easy enough to chalk that up to being a student, but a good portion of that also comes from the inability to drive and the lack of motivation. So naturally, when I left my house and my campus to go on a long adventure in search of type, I had no idea where to look first.
What did I want? Who was I looking for? Where could I go? Those were all questions that I asked myself as a friend of mine drove me to the heart of downtown medicine hat on what was, hilariously enough, the first snowfall in weeks.
I was extremely under-prepared and unwilling to sit out in the snow for hours with no jacket. So as I pondered my predicament after telling them I would be fine and would head indoors as soon as I could, I stood in the blizzard for a few moments before it dawned on me.
Medicine Hat may not be known for its rich culture and heritage, but as someone who has spent years volunteering at the Medicine Hat Esplanade, I know there is so much more here than anyone gives it credit for.
On a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of February, you’ll often find the Esplanade rather empty save for the woman who always sits at the front desk in what I assume is the same place every single day. (I find myself wondering if she ever leaves, since I’ve never not seen her present) A few security guards mill about with their duties and of course, the kind man who waits inside the gallery doors to take your donations and greet you.
I believe his name is Tom.
I found out from Tom as he was discussing my plans with me that he used to work with my dad up in BATUS. He laughed and told me that we live in such a small world now.
It got me thinking.
My first stop was the museum. It’s a tiny thing, peppered with artifacts from long before settlers came to the area, when Indigenous people were the only ones. I stared longingly at objects out of reach behind glass and up high next to warning signs that reminded me I was not allowed to touch the displays.
Of course I wasn’t.
Why would I be?
But the fun thing about the museum here is the plaques that are make shift books laminated and slammed into podiums with three giant rings that refuse to budge. Now I wish I’d remembered to take photos while I was there. But these little binders are full of juicy nuggets.
I started by looking at newspaper headings from old papers that the museum had take photos of for display. It was here that I realized that Medicine Hat had a very very long and arduous love affair with gothic typefaces. Every single newspaper I saw was in gothic slab font and I think that’s just great. Cheesy offbeat and garish red block letters that read “LOOK FORWARD” had been placed haphazardly onto pages by older staff members who I imagine knew how to use ms paint to create collages. Mostly because I loathe to think that they had been placed there by a designer.
“THE TOP” was off kilter and completely awkward to look at, and while I was leaning on the podium to trace the words “Double Fronts” which, admittedly I only wanted to get because it made me laugh so hard, a leaned on a speaker button.
A man started talking above me, and I began to be grateful that the Esplanade was always empty on those cold Tuesday afternoons because I would have hated someone to watch as I fell over at the sudden (incredibly loud) audio that followed.
But the more I went around again and again in the same tiny circle of podiums in that tiny room, more of the texts that caught my eye reminded me of what Tom and I had talked about. The world is a small place, but we’re the ones living in it. I decided to switch gears and start focusing on the smaller things. Tiny scripts of text here and there that reminded me of the people that used to live here. Some of them I imagine are still alive, but on the older side. That’s what I like to think, anyway, that they lived long, happy and prosperous lives here.
I became very familiar with miss Marlene Czember by the end of the trail. According to the records, she was a youth in Medicine Hat in the 60s and participated in the cheer squad. (I didn’t even know that we used to have one of these!) Miss Czember was an active member of our city that was responsible for a large portion of Medicine Hat’s photo archives. Though I couldn’t quite find out if she is still alive or not today, I hope she was happy at the time. Ronnie Padista also got his hands on tickets to a football game.
I wonder if he ever did get to go.
I found it charming that these snippets of someones life were captured on the pages that were supposed to give you information about what you were looking at in the displays. One thing I hadn’t noticed before was just how much they tell you without needing to read them. The blurbs that “tell” you aren’t the real stories of Medicine Hat. But these? These were everything.
Beatnick Party were two words I never thought I would see side by side, but apparently it was a very popular gathering in the 1950s in Medicine Hat. I loved how strange the text was, definitely hand written and wild. Hopefully the party was just as fun as the poster suggested.
I took a break from the museum for a little while to visit a friend in the archives. Not that she was my actual friend, but after spending some time there, I think that we could have become friends. I explained what I was doing, the nature of my reason for being there and I must have come off as excited, because before I knew it she had whisked me away into archives Map section. I’d never been back there before, but she showed me some of her favourites. After that, I think they were my favourites, too.
A map from Medicine Hat in 1910 that had been laminated and was easy to move around was the first thing the archivist showed to me. I fell in love immediately with the bizarre hand written letters. Funnily enough, it was the only one that I saw in that room that had anything like this. Someone decided in 1910 that this particular map needed these particular hand written letters in this particular style and that tickled me more than I can ever hope to explain.
I moved back into the open archive space after taking my time browsing some old files, mostly maps and declarations of fire insurance. I would have loved to have gotten some letters from these, but I was afraid to use them! I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to be touching them, since they weren’t laminated, but she didn’t say anything–
I assumed it was okay after that. At least, to hold them.
In the general Archive space, she met with me again and gestured to the table I had been at earlier where she had opened a few pages of books for me to interesting phonebooks and ads that had been placed there by someone here many years before her. We discussed her favourites, and my favourites, and decided that the book that was made for “Alexander High School” (I think this is now the junior high school) was the most fun. Its eclectic selection of student photos mirrored by recent news from the then world war II and photos of recently deceased soldiers was by far the strangest thing I had seen all day.
There was something morbidly foretelling about seeing them together like that.
I had no idea that AHS student letters would hold news of that kind of thing. They must have had it hard back then, like that. I couldn’t imagine.
The next most exciting was definitely the old ads. Again it was some kind of directory book that was filled with ads from different cities in Canada. Insurance sales in a book that claimed to be the oldest insurance company in the world! I believe it said since the 1700’s on it and, wow. Here were a few of my favourites.
I said my farewells and thank you’s to the lovely staff of the Esplanade, but before I went home I couldn’t resist stopping at The Post, one of our local thrift stores. There wasn’t a lot of time before they were closing, so I browsed the store quickly and came across a few things that I thought were absolutely darling. For the life of me I could not tell you if this box was hand wrapped or manufactured to look this way, but I loved the strange plaque that proudly emblazoned that these were cards. I don’t know what kind of cards, and I don’t know why these cards, but I love it regardless. So much so that I left with it in tow. I also found a cassette tape of terrible (objectively) music from “Planet Pop 2001”. I hope whoever owned made this was proud of all of the effort they put into it.
Well.
It’s mine now.
Even if it does bite back. (I definitely bled for this.)
I’ve never seen a city so full of strange little treasures, but I know in my heart of hearts that Medicine Hat, just like any old city in a dustbowl anywhere else in the world, has a lot of heart to it and it’s own stories and values. But the core of what makes it beautiful is the people that reside there, past, present and future.
There is nothing I would love more than to know that in another thirty or so years, people are still writing about the little things in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
Mellvetica 